


Sailor Moon: Millennials by The Judge

by orphan_account



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, End of Chapter Morals, F/F, F/M, Gen, Incomplete, New Weapons, New enemies, Post-Canon, THE JUDGE is the author, Time Travel, Worldbuilding, new powers, not the author, old fic rehosted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-08-15
Updated: 2003-06-18
Packaged: 2019-01-30 23:19:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 689,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12663492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The year 2000 has arrived in Tokyo, and the girls are enjoying the long peace that they've earned. Sadly, it's not gonna last much longer. The sudden appearance of Setsuna, stricken with amnesia, is the herald of a chain of events that will pit the girls against the ancient kingdom of Atlantis.A re-hosting on AO3 of a classic of Sailor Moon fanfiction. Originally written by The High Judge.  INCOMPLETE/DEAD FIC





	1. Calling of the Court: Pluto Gets a Nasty Surprise

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sailor Moon Millennials](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/335712) by The High Judge. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally archived on A Sailor Moon Romance. Since that site is down/has been down for years, and the author's original site has been down for a decade, I have decided that the world, and AO3's tag and sorting system, should be graced with this unfinished masterpiece.
> 
> I do not have permission from the author to post this; she has been missing on the internet for years. This fic will be orphaned after all chapters are posted and formatted correctly. All images are currently hotlinked from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. This will be changed to a different image hosting service after all chapters are posted.
> 
> Original:   
> http://web.archive.org/web/20070208034408/http://www.fanfic.net:80/~thejudge/

Senshi Pluto stepped forward from the swirling mists, her face cool and dispassionate. The looming mass of the Time Gate stood solidly atop the nothingness behind her, as it always had, did, and would do, while the featureless mists drifted—as they always had, did, and would do—about the Gate and its keeper, the only solid features in this grey eternity—as they almost always had been, were, and would continue to be.

Almost always.

But not quite.

“I call the Court,” Pluto said in a loud, clear voice, striking the butt of her staff three times against the featurelessness beneath her. There was nothing there for her to stand on, let alone to strike, and yet, at the same time, _everything_ was there. Three solid strikes sent their echoes rolling into the mists, and as the greyness shifted, it changed. Where there had been nothing, there was now something. More precisely, it was the beginning of something.

“I call Order,” Pluto said, and a tall podium appeared to her left. Five feet high, five feet wide, seemingly carved from featureless grey stone, the podium was a sudden burst of reality in this otherwise unreal place. It was occupied by a single figure in grey, hooded robes. Every line of those robes was crisp and clearly visible, every patch of light and shadow clearly marked, and a blank face, carved of the same grey stone as the podium, looked out from the hood. There were no features in that face except two iron-grey eyes: unblinking, stern, and radiating authority. The face turned to nod at Pluto, its gaze neither friendly nor hostile.

“I call Chaos,” Pluto said, and a second podium appeared next to the first. This stand, at once sharing and defying the dimensions of its neighbor, seemed to drink in the shifting mists all around, but also to be the source of those same whips of fog. It was every color at once, and none at all. It was square, sphere, pyramid, and prism, it was there and it was not there. The occupant was equally strange. First it was a shapeless mass of shadows, then a precise imitation of the rigid figure to its right. Then the grey robes exploded in a riot of color, and in the space of a heartbeat, the face shifted through a profile of a thousand separate visages. Male, female, neuter, human, animal, alien. Three eyes that danced with mad glee became fifty as the head became a hand and nodded—or waved—at Pluto, continuing the unpredictable metamorphosis.

“I call Evil,” Pluto said next, and a night-black podium took its place beyond the one occupied—or not—by Chaos. Here, podium and occupant seemed to be one, a single jagged shadow which drank in the mists and returned nothing, a hole in the unreality of eternity. Even at this distance, Pluto could feel waves of cold terror, malice, and a hundred other dark emotions, all of them pulling at her physically and mentally. Only long experience allowed Pluto to ignore the whispers dancing through her mind, but even she felt a shiver of—what? Pain? Pleasure? Fear? Desire?—as the two blood-red eyes of that shadow locked with her own. She shook off the momentary sensation and went on.

“I call Good,” Pluto said, causing a fourth podium to take form. Next to the shadowy presence of Evil, the white marble was a sun against midnight, the quiet but unyielding candle amidst shadows. Looking up from the comforting glow of the stand, knowing that the gentle gaze of Good would reassure her after her momentary brush with the eyes of Evil, Pluto gasped in astonishment when she realized that the podium was unoccupied. For a moment, her self-control evaporated. “What...” she blurted.

“Continue,” the flat, emotionless voice of Order demanded.

“COntinUe,” the myriad, shifting voices of Chaos suggested. “Or NOt.”

-Continue- the eerie, silken voice of Evil whispered.

“I call...” Pluto began unsteadily, then shook her head and tried to get a firm grip on her will. “I call Life,” she said, her voice clear and calm once more. The fifth podium was rich brown wood, not carved so much as grown into the desired shape, the base seeming to take root in the blankness beneath as would a tree. Delicate vines of ivy wrapped about the pedestal, budding and blossoming in the space of a few moments until a tiny garden had taken shape along the surface of the box. The figure within wore a robe fashioned from the flowing lengths of its own hair, radiant green tresses inset with tiny flowers. The face and figure were more female than anything else, though Pluto had to wonder if she was seeing what she wanted to see rather than the actual form—assuming Life or any of the others even had a true form. Golden eyes shone brightly as Life nodded to Pluto.

“Continue,” Life said in a melody of animal voices. As always, Pluto thought she heard a lion's growl of faint disapproval amidst the birdsong and other calls; Life had never been completely happy about her existence here, cut off from the flow of time and the path of life that should have been hers. As always, there was the faintest suggestion that Pluto could go back and pick up her life once more, to find the home, love, and family denied her by her duty. As always, Pluto allowed herself the briefest moment of regretful speculation before going on.

“I call Death,” Pluto said, and her fingers tightened uneasily around her staff as the last and most distant of the six seats warped into existence. The podium was fashioned from hundreds of unidentifiable bones, bones which might have come from kings or commoners, man or beast, and which had all been brought low by the force they now supported. Atop the grim jigsaw sat a wiry figure in tattered robes of dull brown. A pair of bony hands rested folded atop the podium, but neither face nor eyes could be seen beneath the frayed rim of the hood. That emptiness turned to add its own silent greeting, and Pluto kept her eyes lowered until the unsettling presence had moved on. There was no malice in the gaze of Death, only the single grim truth it offered to everyone—and, in a strange way, more compassion than either Good or Life could offer—but not even the Guardian of Time could meet that immaterial gaze for long.

Not waiting for words—for Death seldom spoke—Pluto proceeded. “I call the Past, the Present, the Future.” A larger podium appeared to Pluto's right, the same length as the six it sat across from. This box appeared to be formed from the flowing mists, and within sat three figures wearing robes of the same immaterial material. Again, the Guardian of Time suspected that her mortal mind was trying to make sense of the true nature of these forces by giving them forms she could comprehend, for each aspect of Time wore a face strikingly similar to her own.

“Continue,” Past said. Its face was that of a young Pluto, but it spoke with the voice of an old woman who remembers days gone by.

“Continue,” Present said. Its face and voice were eerily identical to Pluto's.

“Continue,” Future giggled. Its face was old, Pluto as she might be should she leave this timeless eternity and age half a century, but it spoke in the voice of a child with her entire life yet to come.

“I call Balance,” Pluto said. Opposite from her, another podium appeared. Ten feet to a side and just as tall, it was strangely neutral in shape and color, having some of the properties of each of the six gathered forces. The figure seated here wore judicial robes somewhat similar to those of Order, except that they flowed and moved with Chaotic patterns. Its face was half Life and half Death, half the creeping shadow of Evil and half the absent face of Good. It, too, nodded to Pluto.

“Continue,” Balance said in a surprisingly normal voice. “All will be explained. In time,” it added, lips quirked in a slightly Chaotic grin.

“I call the Court,” Pluto repeated, once again striking her staff against the mists.

“The Court is called,” Order said firmly.

“tHE HoRSEraDIsh couRt Is CAllEd stEaMLiner,” Chaos giggled.

-The Court is called- Evil whispered. Pluto shivered at the absence between Evil and Life, at the words left unsaid. What was going on?

“The Court is called,” Life sang. Beside Life, Death remained silent, the slow nod of its unseen head all the reply necessary.

“The Court is called,” the three voices of Time said in unison.

“The Court is called,” Balance said, completing the ritual. “Before we proceed, I believe some answers are necessary,” it said, looking apologetically at Pluto. “Are there any objections?”

“It is a disruption of the proceedings,” Order said disapprovingly. “But the absence of Good is also a disruption, which must be addressed. I therefore have no objection.”

“a CHAngE MigHT be nIce,” Chaos agreed. “THen AGaiN, it miGHT nOt.”

“Do you object or not?” Balance said flatly. Chaos considered it for all of two seconds, probably a record for its ever-shifting awareness.

“mOnKEY NoT at THis apRICot TIMe. We MAY snOWflAkE laTEr.”

-I object- Evil said. Pluto had rather suspected it would; with Good absent, Evil was unbalanced, a situation it would have found ideal. Anything which might threaten its current advantage would be opposed.

“Your objection is noted,” Balance said in a dry voice.

“I do not object,” Life said.

Death again remained silent.

“We do not object,” Present said after a moment of discussion.

“So be it,” Balance said. “Four unopposed, one objection, one absent, and one abstention. The motion is carried.” Balance sighed and thought for a moment. “Some time ago, there was an imbalance on the mortal plane. Though it was eventually corrected, the nature of the imbalance was sufficient to threaten a massive disruption of the forces even after it had been repaired.”

“I don't understand.”

“we DO Red JELly,” Chaos hissed. “SoMEtimeS. WE weRE rATher intimAtelY InVOlveD wIth the ALaRM clOCk PRoblem, afTer aLL.” Pluto considered its statement, and one word came to mind.

“Galaxia.”

“Correct,” Balance said. “From your own experience, you know that Senshi Galaxia was able to entrap a sizable portion of Chaos-force for an extended period of time. Her actions destabilized the balance between Chaos and Order, and in so doing, affected the rest of the Court as well.”

“WE diD NoT paRTIculArlY enjoy tHE exPeriEnce,” Chaos said, for once not even trying to contradict itself.

“Not many did,” Balance said, sighing. “Unpleasant at it was at the time, Galaxia's timing of the affair is the real problem.”

“Excuse me?” Pluto asked.

“We meet each century to review the conflicts of the Past, to assess the state of the Present, and to plan the challenges of the Future,” Order said. “So it has been, so it is now, and so it will be.”

“Galaxia's imprisonment of Chaos-force altered the balance near the end of this century,” Balance explained. “Ordinarily, we would solve the issue by assigning the next century primarily to Chaos, to counter its recent weakness. Unfortunately, this is not merely the end of a century, but of a millennium as well.”

“I still don't understand,” Pluto said.

“Don't you? You exist outside of Time in this place, Pluto, but you were born over two thousand years ago. From here,” Balance went on, indicating the foggy nether-realm with a wave of its hand,“you have witnessed the past and looked into the future. Consider each age you have watched and tell me this; what do you see?”

Pluto considered the question carefully. Three thousand years and more coiled around in her mind, memories of things long past, memories of things yet to be. As she looked through the centuries, something that might have been the answer took shape.

“Currents,” she said finally. “The flow of events in each century follow a general path, whether for Order or Chaos, Good or Evil, Life or Death. The actions of humanity in response to those currents can change the course of events, but the flow remains. And each century is but a branch from the flow of its millennium.”

“A flow which we determine,” Balance finished for her,“based on that which was, that which is, and that which is yet to be. Now do you see the problem?”

“Yes,” Pluto said. She briefly entertained the thought of stepping back into the time stream and knocking Galaxia one across the back of the head for what her idiocy had caused. “Is this why Good is absent?”

“Partially, but not entirely. Although the imbalance caused by the imprisonment of Chaos was an undeniable act of Evil, Evil itself has suffered a number of defeats in the last few years. By themselves, these losses were evenly matched by Evil's prior victories, but the restoration of Chaos—being an act of Good—tipped the balance again. Countering it would have required a ruling in Evil's favor, in addition to a ruling for Chaos in the next millennium.”

“Ten centuries allotted to Chaos and Evil is not a pleasant thought,” Life said grimly. “Good volunteered its absence in these proceedings to prevent such a ruling; by weakening its own presence and that of Order, Good has negated most of the recent imbalances against Evil and Chaos.”

-But not all-

“No, not all,” Balance admitted, sparing a hard glance at the red-eyed void of Evil. “And you would do well not to push the issue any further. I am still not entirely convinced that Galaxia's plan was of her own devising.”

-Irrelevant. I whisper to all in the night, in the silence of their souls. I cannot force them to act in my interests; they must choose to do so- The angry sound of a growling wolf issued from Life as Evil finished its hissing recital.

“Enough,” Balance said grimly, looking back to Pluto. “Because the imbalances were created by the actions of mortals, they must be redressed in the mortal world. Only then will we be able to properly conduct our deliberations. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Pluto replied, echoing Balance's earlier sighs with one of her own. “What happens now?”

“The Court must proceed,” Order stated.

“eVentS MiGhT be reVIEwed, PLanneD. KIck DirT voDkA.”

-New tests have been devised and set in motion- Evil seemed to savor its words.

“There is much to be done,” Life hummed.

Death remained silent.

“The Past will be reviewed,” the first of the three not-Plutos said, vanishing in a ripple of mist.

“The Present will be studied,” the second not-Pluto replied, phasing out.

“The Future will be planned,” the last finished. As Future faded, so too did the rest of the Court, each of them vanishing in a different manner. Order's material form, deprived of the iron will of its guiding awareness, dissolved back into the mists, while next to it, Chaos chose to leave in a flash and bang of—falling sweatsocks? Evil's shadow slid into itself and disappeared, while the empty podium of Good seemed to gutter and fade like a blown-out candle. Life's avatar went through a reversal of the growth that had created it in the first place, podium and occupant alike shrinking into youth before sinking into the mists and fading entirely. Death was simply there one second and gone the next, leaving Pluto alone with Balance.

“It's about time,” a new voice said impatiently. Pluto turned to see a most unwelcome and disturbing sight. From the neck down, the new arrival was ordinary enough: a fairly normal body wearing a slightly less-ornate version of the robes the vanished incarnations of the forces had, this one a dull shade of red, trimmed with black. Above the neck, however, the figure took an abrupt turn from normal to unnatural. One side of its face, the right, was that of a handsome man in his early twenties, with dark blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a flashing smile. On the left side, the face was suddenly female. No makeup, no clear line between halves, just a blurred middle ground between two undeniably different sides.

“Janus,” Pluto said flatly.

“Aren't you happy to see me?” The figure's voice was softer now, its lips pouting and its eyes wide with mock hurt. “Alive, unharmed, and free from an endless existence of nothing? Oh, wait,” it went on, voice deepening and features changing,“that's right. You were the one who put me there in the first place.”

“How did you get free?” At this, Janus laughed and walked past Pluto.

“My dear daughter of time, of all people, YOU should know that there is no such thing as 'forever.' To all things, there is a beginning and an end, and an existence therein.” Now standing between Pluto and Balance, Janus turned, the male eye gleaming darkly. “This is my time, now, despite your interfering efforts to the contrary. My freedom was inevitable, just as I told you. Do you remember? Do you remember what else I said?”

“I do,” Pluto admitted, taking a tighter hold on her weapon. “And I can see that an eternity in infinity hasn't done anything to improve you.” She looked past the divided features to Balance. “What is the meaning of this? Why has _that_ been set loose again?”

“The Balance must be preserved,” Balance said simply. “Regardless of the cost. The tests have been revised and approved. The trials will commence,” it said, lifting a gavel. Balance, Pluto noticed with a chill, was looking at her apologetically, even sadly. Janus, on the other hand, seemed triumphant.

“What tests?” Pluto asked, as the gavel came down. “What trials?”

“...NOW,” Balance said in a thunderous voice. As the echo of the gavel striking home reached her, Pluto felt a very strange sensation...

The last night of 1999 was winding to a close. All across the world, people went home early to prepare for New Year's Eve parties—or the end of the world, depending on which side of the millennium question they happened to follow. In Tokyo, the five Senshi had watched the buildup to the new millennium with a mix of excitement and exasperation. They knew from their own experiences that, although the world had been in real danger of annihilation in recent years, it was going to be around for quite a while yet, due in no small part to their efforts. It was nice to know that all their hard work had paid off, and that people would have real reason to celebrate—even if nobody else was actually aware of what those reasons were.

But still, it would have been nice if somebody had thought to dedicate even _one_ of these parties to _them._ As Ami had pointed out, though, they really still had another year before the millennium was truly over. Somebody might wise up over the next twelve months—and in the meantime, they could kick back and enjoy the well-nigh global celebration.

“After all,” Ami said,“I think we've earned a little peace, don't you?” Her friends had to agree with that. Epic battles between good and evil aside, the last few years had been busy for all them. Not that saving the world wasn't an important and stress-filled part of life, but just growing up was every bit as important—if in a more personal way—and it could be every bit as insane. The last half of this year, in particular, had been crazier than usual.

But that, as Rei said, was all Usagi's fault.

Mamoru had returned to the States at the end of summer to continue his studies, and the Senshi had watched as, without him, Usagi had wandered through a fog of worry, loneliness, suspicion, and simply moping around. Given the track record of their seemingly disaster-plagued relationship and the number of times Mamoru had wound up amnesiac, distant, or just plain dead, worrying was the most normal thing in the world for Usagi to do. Usually, she would have morbidly entertained herself with fits of crying and a splurge of chocolate and ice cream, after which she would remind herself about ten thousand times that this whole relationship was preordained, and then get better. It usually took about a week or two for the whole thing to work its way through her system, three at the outside, so the girls had sat back and waited. Nearly a month after Mamoru's departure, Usagi was still uncharacteristically moody. Just as her friends were starting to really worry, she perked up quite literally overnight and was suddenly back to normal. _Too_ normal, in fact. For almost two weeks, the Senshi had the distinct impression that their leader was laughing at them about something, a private joke that they had all somehow missed.

Even with all these early warning signals, the announcement in early October that Usagi was pregnant had been seriously unanticipated.

Without actually explaining why, Usagi had wheedled her father into letting her host a weekend dinner party with a semi-formal dress code and a fairly extensive guest list. The four Senshi had been invited, naturally, as had Naru, her mother, and Umino, but Usagi had also extended invitations to Minako's parents, Ami's mother and—despite some protests from Ami—Urawa, Rei's grandfather and Yuuichirou, Motoki and Reika, and even Haruna. When pressed about the matter, Usagi had replied that it had just occurred to her that half of the important people in her life had never met the other half—or, if they had, _she_ hadn't met the important people in _their_ lives—and she felt it was time to change that. With his wife in support of the idea, Kenji had little choice but to agree.

The party had started with the simultaneous arrival of the Aino family, Umino, and the Osakas. When Minako, glittering in a golden gown, the freshly- combed Artemis in one arm, had introduced her parents in a too-polite tone of voice, Usagi remembered that Minako and her mother did not get along very well, and usually went to considerable lengths to avoid one another. Fortunately, the number of guests proved enough to keep them at a safe distance for much of the evening.

Haruna had shown up next, and then the Mizunos, mother and daughter alike wearing nearly identical dresses in pale blue. Ryo had trailed a short distance behind, slipping quietly in the door and confessing to Usagi that meeting Ami's mother was not high on his to-do list. Ami had apparently agreed with him about that, as the two spoke to one other only slightly more than Minako and her mother. One does not get to be a doctor by being stupid, however; Usagi noticed at one point that Ryo, looking rather like a man before a firing squad, had been cornered by Mizuno-san, whose face said she was considering him with the same clinical attitude as she might consider the illness of a patient. Afterwards, though, Usagi had seen Ryo and Ami talking together quietly, neither of them noticing Mrs. Mizuno as she watched them from across the room with a faintly satisfied smile. Mizuno-san noticed Usagi noticing, winked, and raised her glass in a one-sided toast.

Rei, resplendent in a fiery red dress, was the next to arrive, her grandfather—as ever, wearing that same, slightly battered old robe—and Yuuichirou in tow. She had bullied her grandfather into a semblance of good behavior with the evening's promise of food, but still spent a great deal of time with one or both eyes on the old man. Those eyes spent most of the rest of the evening keeping a close watch over Yuuichirou, who, in a decent suit and with his hair combed out of his eyes for the first time Usagi could remember, was getting along with Haruna a little too well for Rei's taste.

Motoki and Reika arrived not long after that, but it was nearly another half an hour before Makoto finally showed up. When Usagi answered the door, she was not surprised to see her friend in a close-fitting gown of deep green, but neither had she expected the look of hurt. The fact that Makoto arrived by herself drove the point home and explained her lonely expression better than words. Minako might dislike her mother, Ami's mother might never be home, and Rei's grandfather might embarrass her, but at least they were there. Makoto was not so lucky, and being around the families of her friends would only remind her of her own loss.

Usagi stepped outside and embraced Makoto, apologizing for her mistake. Then, after looking around to make sure no one was listening, she whispered a quick explanation. After a moment of surprise, Makoto's face had gone from pained to overjoyed in a flash, and her enthusiastic return hug had been only a little short of bone-crushing. Once she had calmed down and wiped her tears away, Makoto's face settled into her normal cheerful smile so as not to spoil the surprise for the others. The smile grew a little less forced when she saw Motoki and Reika.

Aside from her slip-ups with Minako and Makoto, Usagi had been the perfect hostess that evening. Wearing a modest white gown that absolutely screamed 'Moon Princess knock-off' to the Senshi, she was charming and witty, on-hand to introduce everyone, make sure there were enough seats, keep the various conversations going smoothly, and generally announce to the world that she had an ulterior motive. Nobody could figure out exactly what it might be; Makoto kept quiet on the matter, and Ryo, despite several pointed inquiries from Ami and the others, denied any prescient knowledge of the matter. He was lying, of course, but after weighing what the three Senshi _might_ do to him to get some answers against what he knew Usagi _would_ do if he spoiled the surprise, Ryo chose the path of least pain.

Usagi had waited until after dinner to drop the bomb on everyone, and the results were suitably explosive. Makoto and Ryo, having been forewarned, took the opportunity to enjoy the varied expressions of surprise, but they were both somewhat curious to note that Ikuko was as serene as her daughter. Usagi later admitted that her mother had been the first to know, almost two weeks in advance of everyone else, and that the party had actually been her idea.

Everyone other than Ikuko, Makoto, and Ryo had been stunned into several moments of utter silence, while Usagi endured the combined stares with no outer reaction beyond a demure smile. Haruna, Naru, and Umino, who had known Usagi the longest out of any of the guests, seemed the most surprised. Then Rei, Minako, and Ami had let out a unified“WHAT?!”, which had opened the gate for everyone else to start talking.

Everyone—with two exceptions. Usagi's father and Luna had both sort of keeled over sideways at the news. It had taken three attempts to get Kenji back on his feet, and the first two tries had been neatly foiled as soon as he heard the news again. Rei's grandfather had finally solved the problem by producing a small bottle from somewhere in his robes and pouring some of the contents into Kenji. Whatever the stuff had been, it had done the trick.

After that, the rest of the evening had been swallowed up in congratulations, questions, answers—though not as many as some people would have liked, and far too many for others' peace of mind—and, for the Senshi, who alone among the others really knew what—or more specifically, _who_—this announcement meant, a lot of ridiculously happy hugs. Kenji spent most of his time alternating between standing around in a daze and maniacally giggling to himself as he planned what he was going to do when he got his hands on Mamoru.

Ikuko spoke with Rei's grandfather at that point, and by the time the two men had finished the contents of the little brown bottle, Kenji was much more mellow. He was profoundly hungover when he woke up in the morning—well, early afternoon, to be entirely precise—and Ikuko used that advantage and every other weapon in her arsenal to extract a promise of some sort from him. When Usagi got home that afternoon, her mother had informed her that Kenji had sworn off any sort of vengeance against her fiancee. Usagi was very happy to hear that, although the fact that her _mother_ had made no such promise still bothered her.

Usagi's afternoon return had followed a meeting of all five Senshi and their two guardians at Hikawa. They already had the answers to the more mundane questions; now they needed answers to some slightly more unusual ones.

First and foremost was whether or not Usagi could transform into Sailor Moon if she were needed, and, if she could, what effect it might have on the unborn ChibiUsa. Luna and Artemis both admitted to uncertainty on that part. They were both reasonably sure that the transformation itself wouldn't cause any harm, but the effects of fighting and use of Sailor Moon's powers would certainly tire Usagi out, which could lead to serious problems. It went without saying that any use of the ginzuishou was to be even more strictly last-resort than usual.

The next question was the ginzuishou itself, and how _it_ would react to the pregnancy. In all the history of the Moon Kingdom, no daughter of the royal line had ever been so closely linked to the stone and its power. Not even Queen Serenity had been so fully intertwined with the ginzuishou as her daughter now was, and if the source of the crystal's power truly was the love of its wielder, what effect would the intensified love of a mother for her growing child have? How would close proximity to the stone's energy, should it suddenly grow or be altered, affect mother and child—or anyone else, for that matter?

Ami had put forth a particularly disturbing question: what might the ginzuishou's own peculiar awareness do to protect Usagi and her baby if they were to suddenly be threatened? Luna and Artemis had no idea, but given the sheer power of the thing and the rather extreme nature of its solutions to that sort of problem, nobody was eager to run the risk of finding out.

The solution to most of their potential problems was to keep Usagi under as constant a guard as they could manage, and to get her as far away from trouble as possible, should it materialize. Minako suggested calling Michiru, Haruka, and Hotaru—first to tell them the good news, and then to get them back to Tokyo as soon as possible so that they could aid in keeping watch on Usagi— but Usagi put her foot down. They had seen neither armored hide nor razor-sharp hair of a monster since defeating Galaxia, and there was no point in uprooting the Outer Senshi from their own day-to-day lives without cause. _If_ that cause ever appeared, Usagi promised to be the first one to make that call, but until then, everyone was to forget the idea.

The discussion of calling people brought up another point: when was Usagi going to tell Mamoru?

“Don't tell him,” Ami had said quite suddenly, surprising the others.

“Why in the world not?” Rei had asked.

“Ryo-kun mentioned this to me last night,” Ami explained. “Nothing bad will happen whether you tell Mamoru or not, but Ryo-kun sort of implied that you might want to wait until he actually comes home for a visit.”

“Implied how?”

“Well, he walked out onto the balcony, looked up at the stars, and said that the expressions on our faces when you told _us_ were nothing compared to what Mamoru's going to look like when you tell _him._ He thought you might enjoy seeing that.”

“Thanks,” Usagi said, grinning. “I think I will.”

“Ami-chan,” Minako had asked then,“where exactly did Ryo-kun tell you this? We were downstairs last night, and Usagi's house doesn't have any balconies on the ground floor.”

“This was after the party,” Ami replied. “Mother was called to the hospital, so Ryo-kun walked me home, and...” She had suddenly stopped talking and blushed.

“And?” Makoto and Minako demanded together. “You invited him in?”

“No!” Ami said immediately, knowing exactly what they were thinking. “I mean, yes... I mean... we just talked,” she finished lamely, face a fiery red.

Makoto and Minako groaned in unison, knowing that this was nothing more and nothing less than the truth.

The weeks afterwards had stretched into months, and things went more or less as they were supposed to. News of Usagi's condition raced around the school in no time, sparking the inevitable rumors and crude jokes, but none of those ever reached her ears. Umino's invisible network of informants allowed him to locate the sources for every last one of the ugly tales, and once that information was passed on to Makoto, the rumors dried up in short order. At least one Senshi was with Usagi at all times during daylight hours, and she had the faint suspicion that her friends were taking turns watching her at night. It got to the point where Usagi would have welcomed a monster attack, just to get a few minutes alone. But the department of supernatural menaces remained uncooperative, and no creatures appeared to distract the Senshi from their mission.

As far as their concerns about the ginzuishou went, there seemed to be nothing to worry about. Usagi had not noticed any particular change in the stone's usual soft glow, and Ami's repeated computer scans had not revealed any change in its energy field. Sometimes at night, though, Usagi would half-awaken and hear a strange, musical sound in her room, a sound that blended sighing wind chimes and softly ringing bells. The sound had the same haunting familiarity as the music of her star locket, a not-quite memory from a place and a time long ago, but it was even more vague. Despite her inability to remember where and when she had heard it, the music was soothing, and Usagi always drifted back into sleep with a feeling of safety.

Now it was New Year's Eve, and the Senshi had gathered at Ami's for a little celebration of their own.

In truth, this was something of a housewarming party as well as a New Year's celebration. Ami's grandparents had decided to celebrate their forty- fifth wedding anniversary with an extended trip around the world, and Ami and her mother would be house-sitting for them for the next several months.

The Mizuno home was a comfortably mid-sized residence with a great deal of family history tucked away within its walls. Ami had spent many hours here as a child, either just for visits or when her grandmother was looking after her while her mother was at work, and she couldn't deny that she felt more comfortable here than she did in the apartment. The reason was that she and her mother had been in and out of their residence so often over the years that it had never become much more than the place where they stopped to sleep; it lacked that lived-in feel that Ami always noticed in her friends' homes, even Makoto's apartment. In her grandparents' house, though, Ami felt... at home.

“Close the door!” Rei shouted.

Which was one reason why she'd taken the precaution of hiding some of the more fragile pieces of family history before her friends came over tonight.

“But it's such a beautiful night,” Usagi said, looking up at the winter sky. She was standing halfway in, halfway out of a sliding door that led to a balcony on the second floor of the house. Outside, the stars glimmered brightly around the shrinking sliver that was the moon; their winking light and the illumination from the city's countless windows and streetlights reflected off the snow and made it nearly as bright as day.

Caught by the beauty of the night, Usagi failed to notice that while it might be almost as bright as day outside, moonlight and starlight were, as sources of heat, not nearly as good as sunlight.

“It's sixteen below, odango-atama!” Rei shouted out between chattering teeth, yanking her inside before slamming the glass door shut practically in her friend's face. “Are you _trying_ to give yourself pneumonia?! And what about the rest of us?!”

“Calm down,” Makoto told her, trying—and failing—to suppress a shiver.

“Yeah,” Minako added,“spill out.” Everyone blinked at the mangled expression.

“I think that's supposed to be 'chill' out,” Ami corrected her, not even looking up from the book that rested in her lap.

“Oh. Well, chill out, then.”

“Like I'm not cold enough already?” Rei muttered, rubbing her hands along her arms in an overacted bid to restore warmth. She let the matter drop, but made a point of sitting as far from Usagi and the door as she could, wrapped to the chin in a blanket. Usagi, leaning against the glass despite its chill, ignored Rei and continued to look up at the fading moon. She sighed once, a familiar enough sound to the others, and toyed with the ring she wore as her hands rested on her enlarged waistline.

“So,” Minako asked Usagi, shifting around on the couch she shared with Makoto and the two curled-up cats so as to face their moonstruck leader,“what was his excuse this time?”

“Studies,” Usagi replied flatly. In her mind's eye, she could see the letter that had arrived only the previous day. She had read and reread it several times, and though her memory was not usually the greatest, she recited it back to her friends in a manner even Ami would have been proud of:

Usako,

I'm not going to be able to make it back to you during the winter break. I know it's unfair of me not to have told you a few months ago—the way the postal service is, I wouldn't be surprised if it's already New Year's by the time this letter arrives, so you'll probably be ready to hang me out for the crows—but things have been really busy here, and I wasn't sure until a little while ago how it would all end up going.

Do you remember that intern program I told you about last time? Well, my preliminary application was accepted, but if I'm going to attend, there are three courses in my next term that I absolutely have to know inside and out. If I use the winter break to study, I know I'll get the marks I need to join the program in Tokyo—and a few weeks lost now and during the spring break mean I'll be back with you for all of the next two years, instead of having to keep coming back here.

Unfortunately, all this means that I won't see you again until summer. It's rough, and I deserve every word you care to fling at me, but if it makes you feel better, I promise to be completely miserable from now until the next time I see you.

I miss you,

Mamoru

“That was quite a recital,” Artemis said.

“It ought to be,” Luna replied with a yawn. “She spent an hour reading the letter—two, if you count all the histrionics.”

“Bad?” Artemis inquired.

“She didn't manage to break anything,” Luna said clinically,“but she did come up with some interesting plans for Mamoru. I think the nicest involved a tree, a rope, and a large stick. The letter itself is a mess.”

“We haven't seen each other since the end of summer,” Usagi went on. “I was all set for two weeks—or even one! Just one week!—of things being back to normal, and he has the... the... _gall_ to go and tell us he can't make it. And in a _letter!_” She made a wordless sound of anger, one fist clenched.

The other girls and the cats looked at each other. They knew Usagi wasn't really angry at Mamoru. Well, maybe a little—more likely a lot—but not as much as she claimed to be. The show of ire was just that; a show, a mask to cover Usagi's real feelings. They also noticed her use of the word“us” rather than just“me.”“Us” was not the five of them, nor was it an unconscious use of the royal plural that the past Moon Princess and the future Neo-Queen might employ; “us” was Usagi and her baby. And Mamoru's baby. The one he still didn't know was on the way.

“An overseas phone call?” Rei forced herself to laugh. “Do you have any idea how expensive that would have been?”

“At least he doesn't try to hide anything,” Makoto observed.

“And it is sort of sweet,” Minako added,“how he's working himself silly just so you can see each other on a regular basis again.”

“I think he's making the right choice,” Ami said firmly. “Overseas study programs are extremely competitive, and he'll need excellent marks to even be considered. Never mind that he actually lives _here._”

“I know.” Usagi sighed, her angry facade gone in a blink. “That doesn't mean we... I miss him any less.” There was a moment of awkward silence before Minako glanced at the television.

“Hey, they're getting ready.” The others all looked to the screen, where the local news was broadcasting from near the Tokyo Tower. Thousands of people had crowded into the park around the structure, which was completely dark. Large, double-sided electronic billboards stood at each corner of the tower's base, flashing patterns of digital fireworks above the crowd below.

“Luna,” Usagi asked suddenly,“did we celebrate New Year's in the Moon Kingdom?”

“Yes,” the black cat replied. “Of course, you have to remember that, back then, New Year's was celebrated at the beginning of spring. There were a few winter celebrations at about this time, too, but I couldn't really tell you which one would take place now; they all sort of blurred together.”

“How did we celebrate, exactly?”

“The usual way,” Artemis grinned. “Wine, women, song, and v-oomph!” He finished from under a pillow Minako had dropped on him.

“Joking aside,” Luna said with a scathing glance at her smothered companion,“he's right. There wasn't all that much ceremony involved beyond a proclamation by the Queen telling everyone to go out and have fun. Not that anyone ever needed much encouragement for that.”

“Here it goes,” Makoto interrupted. Their attention turned back to the screen. Huge numbers had appeared on the boards and were slowly ticking away, the crowd roaring in chorus.

“GO!” the crowd on the television shouted. Ami frowned, distracted from the televised festivities by a faint echoing sound. Where was it coming from?

Overhead, unnoticed, a hole was opening in the ceiling, a hole which connected to a tunnel that seemed to swirl and spiral on into infinity.

“YON!” the crowd continued. Usagi stepped away from the door to get a better look at the television screen, unknowingly putting herself directly beneath the growing space in the ceiling.

“SAN!” Ami looked around, then up.

“NI!” Her eyes widened as she saw the hole—and more importantly, saw something falling down towards them from an impossible distance.

“ICHI!”

“LOOK OUT!” Ami shouted, leaping from her chair.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” The crowd roared, fireworks exploding and confetti flying everywhere. The tower seemed to disintegrate in a rain of rainbow-colored fire, and lasers traced complex patterns through the air above the cheering crowd.

“Huh?” Usagi looked up just in time to recognize the phenomenon and get hammered by what felt like a meteorite impact, but was, in fact, merely Senshi Pluto, the Guardian of Time, falling from an unanticipated space/time vortex and landing most unceremoniously on her butt—and her Princess. Assuming that either of them were still conscious at that point, the subsequent arrival of Pluto's staff quickly remedied the problem, somehow managing to strike both its mistress and the girl she had crashed on across their respective heads before it clattered to a stop on Ami's floor.

For the first minute or so of the new year, as Usagi and Pluto lay in an unconscious heap on the floor, the only sound in that room was the televised cheering. Then Artemis, still half-buried under the pillow, spoke.

“We never used to do _that_ for New Year's.”

Senshi Pluto was over two thousand years old. For most of her life, she had lived in a place where she could observe the flow of Time without being touched by it, and had learned more about the world than any mortal historian could ever dream. Her control over her element was at once both subtle and profound, and she had, moreover, a curious ability to see what one wise man had once called “the big picture.” Whether because of her immensely logical frame of mind, her timeless eternity of observation from the Time Gate, or due to some strange mystical power, Pluto could judge—in advance—what the result of a certain action was likely to be. She knew how Time was supposed to move and shape the world, and could take steps to correct mistakes before they were ever made. The young Inner Senshi were all in awe of her to one degree or another, for she had always seemed to be in complete control of a situation, knowing what had to be done before it was needed.

None of that had prepared Pluto for the sensation of being dumped out of her quiet solitude without so much as an explanation, to land disastrously on a being she loved and respected more than almost any other, and then, as a final insult, be knocked cold by her own weapon.

To say she was having a bad day would be putting it mildly.

At the moment, however, the Inner Senshi were unaware of their senior soldier's particular predicament. All they knew was that she was currently lying in a tangled heap with Usagi on Ami's floor.

Once the initial shock had passed, the girls moved quickly, assuming for the moment that Pluto's entrance had been the prelude to an attack. After switching off the television, Minako moved to cover the door, sliding it open just far enough so that she could look out into the hall; across the room, Makoto backed herself against the wall near the sliding door that Usagi had so recently been staring out through, hidden by the angle of the wall but ready to jump at anything that might come in from the balcony. Rei went directly to Usagi, first untangling and dragging her out from the pile Pluto's crash-landing had created, then checking to make sure she was merely unconscious and not more seriously hurt. After a few moments, the worry on Rei's face melted away into relief, and then a sort of wry fondness as Usagi began to snore softly.

Ami, meanwhile, attended to Pluto. She took a certain degree of reassurance in the fact that the Outer Senshi was in relatively the same condition as Usagi. Minus the pregnancy, of course. It probably meant that she hadn't been fighting when the portal had opened. Of course, it could also mean that she'd been caught by surprise, but as far as Ami knew, Pluto couldn't _be_ surprised—not when she was in the misty void that surrounded the Time Gate, anyway.

After five minutes had passed without monsters leaping in from other dimensions or tearing through the walls, the Senshi relaxed. Slightly. There was still the question of why Pluto was here, and whether or not something else had been responsible for her abrupt entrance, but the only person with the answers was, in Ami's estimation, likely to be asleep for some time yet.

Makoto helped Ami move Pluto to the larger couch while Rei and Minako moved Usagi to the other. After pulling a blanket over Pluto and brushing a few strands of dark hair away from the sleeping Senshi's face, Ami turned, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she came face-to-face—so to speak—with the hovering key-staff. The weapon hung motionless in the air near the middle of the couch, ignoring the stares and the law of gravity with equal ease.

“That thing never ceases to be weird,” Artemis said. “Check this out.” He padded over to the floating weapon, rose on his hind legs, placed his paws on the end of the staff, and pushed. Nothing happened. Artemis pushed a second time, and again, Pluto's staff did not budge. “Creepy, isn't it?”

The girls did not have time to answer, as the sound of a door opening echoed up from downstairs.

“Ami! Are you here?”

“Mother,” Ami said needlessly.

“I thought you said she was at some doctor's New Year's party,” Makoto said. “How are we going to explain _this?_” She waved her arms, taking in Usagi, Pluto, and the quietly floating staff in the same gesture.

“At least the hole in the ceiling is gone,” Artemis joked lamely.

“Never mind the humor,” Minako told him. “Do you have any useful suggestions?”

“I'll try to stall her,” Ami said, heading out the door. “Do something about Pluto so she looks—well, normal. And hide that staff!”

Fixing Pluto's appearance was easy enough. Minako pulled the blanket Ami had placed over the sleeping Senshi a little higher to hide the distinctive fuku collar, and then slid the tiara from Pluto's forehead, tucking it away behind a pillow.

The staff proved more troublesome. Makoto was trying to pull it towards the closet, but her face looked as if she were trying to move a mountain. Rei and Minako added their own strength, but even all three of them together couldn't budge the staff from its place—and the sounds of footsteps were on the stairs. Rei looked back at the door and then turned to confront the staff.

“MOVE, you lousy stick!”

It moved.

In point of fact, it vanished. Between one blink of an eye and the next, Pluto's staff was gone.

The girls didn't have time to question it. Artemis yelped in surprise as Minako picked him up and sat them both down in front of the television. Rei sat down on the armrest of the couch where Usagi lay, and Makoto leaned against the wall near the sliding door, trying to look casual and match Usagi's earlier gaze. The footsteps were almost at the door before Minako remembered to turn the television back on.

“Hello, girls.”

“Ohayo, Mizuno-san,” they replied.

“Ami,” her mother asked, looking back over her shoulder,“who is that young lady?”

“Her name is Meiou Setsuna, kaachan,” Ami replied, trying to sound relaxed, “a friend from out of town. She just arrived tonight, and she was pretty tired.”

“Usagi-chan was as well, I see,” Mrs. Mizuno said, smiling. “That's to be expected.”

“If you don't mind my saying it,” Rei said quickly,“that's a very nice dress.”

“Do you like it?” Ami's mother smiled and twirled about once. The dress was one of those sleeveless designs that hung off one shoulder and left the other bare, except that this one _had_ sleeves; the right one was ordinary, while the left, lacking any fabric on that shoulder to attach to, was more like a long, fingerless glove. Except for that sleeve-glove, the dress was a single piece of dark blue material, against which Mrs. Mizuno had chosen to wear gold earrings and a matched necklace. It _was_ quite a nice dress, although not exactly what the girls had pictured when Ami had told them about the 'hospital party' her mother was going to.

“Broken any hearts yet tonight?” Minako smiled.

“Mina-chan,” Ami protested, blushing, but her mother just laughed.

“Not yet, dear, but as they say, the night is young.”

“_Mother!_”

“I just wanted to check and make sure you girls were okay,” Mrs. Mizuno went on, ignoring her daughter's embarrassment. “I tried calling a little while ago, but the phone lines seem to be down.” The girls blinked. Rei reached down for the phone next to the couch and lifted the receiver up to her ear.

“No dial tone,” she reported. “Did somebody knock over a telephone pole? Or was there a blizzard in the last five minutes?”

“It isn't snowing,” Makoto said, looking up at the sky. “I don't even see a cloud.”

“Hang on,” Minako replied, directing their attention to the television.

“We interrupt our New Year's Eve coverage with an important update. City officials have informed us that phone lines in Juuban and the surrounding districts are currently out of order. The problem is attributed to a software glitch in the computers which regulate the network, and work is underway to reroute the affected lines to backup systems until the computers have been repaired. Officials expect the rerouting will take several hours to complete, and public use of the lines will likely remain problematic for the next few days, but emergency lines to fire, police, and medical services are still operational. The city of Tokyo apologizes for the inconvenience, and wishes everyone a happy New Year's Eve.”

“Wonderful,” Makoto said. Minako shook her head.

“Y2K in action, hmm?”

“I guess so,” Ami admitted. “But the city finished upgrading its computers over six months ago. There shouldn't have been any problems.” Rei rolled her eyes.

“So much for modern technology.”

In one of Tokyo's central telecommunications centers, several workmen were moving through orderly rows of computer processors. Many of the machines hummed and sparkled with little rows of red and green lights, rather like digital Christmas trees. Others were dark and silent, and when the workmen passed any of those, they stopped to examine the defective tower and make notes.

“Some programming error,” the lead workman said, looking up from an opened maintenance panel. “Half the circuit boards in here are fried.”

“Same thing over here,” another man replied. A woman looked up from a functioning computer monitor, on which were displayed representations of the rows of processors. Many were shown in red, as 'inactive.'

“Did we have a power surge in here?”

“I don't think so,” the first man answered. “The amount of current it would have taken to cook these boards would have melted the power lines, too, but I don't see any damage to the wiring.”

“Here's another one,” the fourth man said from further down the line. “Wires intact, chips fried. It'll take days to replace all this.” The woman turned at a bleep from her computer.

“Number 19 just went down.”

“I've got it,” the second worker replied, moving over to the afflicted unit. He fiddled with the access panel for a moment and then opened it. His eyes went wide. “What in the... Hiroshi, get over here!”

“What is it?” Hiroshi moved over next to his fellow worker and looked into the computer. Something inside looked back at them both. Something that was not a part of the machine, but a strange, organic blotch, clinging to the circuit boards with tiny tendrils. As they watched, the thing shimmered with energy and seemed to melt into the boards, leaving them in the blackened and ruined state they had seen in the other machines. “What _is_ it?” Hiroshi repeated.

“Wh... wha... what...” Both workmen stared in shock as a slow, croaking voice issued from the computer. “What is it?” The words were clearer this time. “What is it?” Now the voice was recognizable as Hiroshi's. “What is it? What is it? Whatisit? Whatisitwhatisitwhatis...” As the words accelerated into a screeching blur, several of the inactive computers whirred to life.

“Hiroshi!” The lead workman yelled. “What did you do?”

Tiny popping noises became audible through the plastic casing of the computers, as if ten thousand tiny hammers were battering away at each of them from the inside. As the noise grew, narrow wires burst from each computer, lancing across the aisles to sink deep into other machines. The woman jumped aside as several of the seeking wires shot into the disk drive of her computer. The other workers scrambled out of the way of the growing number of wires.

By now, the outer surface of the computer in which Hiroshi and the other workman had seen the bizarre thing was covered by a greenish mass. Many of the other computer processors were similar, and the substance was spreading across the wires sprouting from them. In only a few seconds, most of the equipment in the room had been speared by the tiny lines, creating a vast, chaotic web.

A security camera in the far corner, connected to one of the infected computers by a long length of wire, turned to view the five workers as they backed towards the door. Wiring erupted from terminals all over the room, from light fixtures in the ceiling, from wall sockets, from everywhere.

The noise of shattering tiles and cracking walls drowned out the screams.

After walking her mother to the door and reassuring her several times that they would be fine, Ami went back upstairs to rejoin her friends. Minako and Makoto were sitting near the balcony door, discussing the dress Mrs. Mizuno had been wearing, and Rei was checking Usagi for signs of consciousness.

“Any improvement?”

Rei shook her head. “This _is_ Usagi we're talking about here,” she added with a rueful smile.

“I _still_ say that was too nice a dress for a get-together with a bunch of doctors,” Minako insisted.

“And _I_ still think you've been reading too many romance novels,” Makoto replied.

“Oh, look who's talking!”

“What are they going on about?” Ami asked.

“Those two?” Rei chuckled. “They're debating whether your mother went to a party or a date. That dress has Mina-chan convinced your mother's trying to impress someone.” Rei looked at the two arguing Senshi. “You might want to give some thought to keeping Mina-chan away from your house for the next few weeks; if she gets it into her head that there's a potential romance brewing here, she's going to do everything she can to help—and you know what a disaster she is when she's being helpful.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Ami groaned.

“Don't look so glum,” Artemis said from the arm of the couch. “I'll keep an eye on her for you.”

On the back of the couch, Luna rolled her eyes. “And that's supposed to make her feel better?”

“Keep it down, Luna... m'trying to sleep...” They all looked down as Usagi mumbled her way back into semi-consciousness. Her left eye opened slowly, taking in two friends, two cats, and the ceiling beyond. “What hit me?”

“Pluto,” Rei replied. Usagi sat up so fast that her head nearly collided with Rei's and Ami's.

“_Pluto?_” Ami and Rei both clamped their hands over Usagi's mouth.

“Not so loud,” Ami said. “She's still asleep.”

“Forry,” Usagi mumbled. After the others pulled their hands away, she went on in a loud whisper. “How did she get here?”

“We're not sure yet,” Ami said quietly. “You've both been out cold since she... uh... landed. Aside from being unconscious, she seems to be okay, so I don't think she was fighting.” Usagi looked around the room.

“I seem to remember getting hit by her staff,” she said flatly. “Where is it?”

“It disappeared,” Rei admitted.

“What?”

“You heard me. Ami's mother came home to check on us—the phones are out, by the way—so we had to try and make Pluto look as ordinary as possible. We couldn't get the staff to budge so much as an inch, and Mizuno-san was practically at the door, so I got angry and told it to move.”

“And it moved?” Rei shrugged.

“What can I say? When I talk, things listen.” She drummed her knuckles across Usagi's forehead. “Though some listen better than others, it seems.”

The fight got started right then and there.

Rei and Usagi had made it as far as the point of grinding their teeth and shooting invisible daggers at each other from their eyes when they noticed Pluto beginning to move.

“Mmm...” Her eyes opened much more slowly than Usagi's, but with generally the same sort of bleary-eyed confusion.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Minako said.

“Thank you,” Pluto said slowly. She tried to sit up and began to sway until Ami caught her.

“Take it easy,” she advised the older girl. “You hit your head.”

“I believe it,” Pluto said with a wince. “My brain feels like it's going to explode.”

“I know the feeling,” Usagi said dryly. “You need to work on your landings.” She stopped laughing when she noticed how Pluto was looking at her; blankly. Actually, now that she looked more closely, Usagi realized that Pluto's entire face had the same empty quality as her eyes. It wasn't her usual reserved expression, but something else, something which set off a caution light in Usagi's head. “What is it?”

“Who are you?” Everyone in the room stared.

“What do you mean?” Usagi said, dumbfounded.

“I don't remember...” Pluto began. Then her voice trailed off into silence, and a look of stark terror came over her. “I don't remember,” she repeated, tears welling up in her eyes. The awful finality in her words told the Senshi that she had forgotten far more than Usagi's name.

Pluto did not know who she was.

The other Senshi and the two guardian cats looked at each other in despair. Usagi stood and walked over to the other couch in silence. Pluto flinched away as Usagi—a complete stranger—sat down next to her. Usagi reached out and gently turned Pluto's face towards her, taking the older girl's hand and letting her feel both the shared fear and the unconditional love reflected in Usagi's eyes. For just a moment, something in Pluto's mind reacted, a shadow of a memory, an echo of a dream. For just a moment, she knew, without knowing how, that this blue-eyed girl, this stranger, was a friend.

Then the moment passed, and emptiness returned. Senshi Pluto did not exist; her body was now home only to a frightened young woman with no history, no memory, no name. She hung her head and began to cry. Gentle arms enfolded her in understanding, but she did not know whose arms they were, and the tears only grew worse as the nameless girl curled into a ball of fear, turning her face away from these strangers who should not be strangers.

“Shhh,” Usagi said softly. “It'll be all right. I promise, it'll be all right.” She looked at her other friends, eyes rich with tears of her own, silently asking a question.

*It will be all right, won't it?*

Their own gazes held no answers, and Usagi squeezed her eyes shut, two tears working their way down her cheeks.

In her arms, Pluto continued to cry.

**Ami** : Today we gained more evidence that Usagi-chan is apparently a designated landing zone for people traveling through space and time.

**Usagi** _(pushing on-screen from the left)_ : We _also_ learned that if I ever find out who's been responsible for dropping people on me out of nowhere, there's going to be one almighty reckoning for it.

_ (Cut to a shot of Balance, gavel in hand, looking suddenly like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.) _

**Usagi** : And I've got a few choice things I'm saving up for Mamo-chan, too, if he tries to announce any more surprises to me by mail. A letter! A lousy letter! Oohhh...

_ (Cut to a shot of Mamoru, looking up from his books at a nearby television screen from which Usagi is glaring back at him with the words“Sailor Says” below her. He quickly changes the channel and breathes a nervous sigh of relief.) _

**Pluto** _(entering from the right, head bandaged)_ : Calm down, Usagi.

**Usagi** _(rounding on Pluto)_ : And _you!_ Don't any of you time-traveling, dimension-hopping types know how to use a _door?!_ You're lucky I have a soft spot for people with total memory loss, because I've got a good mind to...

_ (On cue, another space/time vortex swirls open above Usagi. Ami and Pluto jump clear as ChibiUsa, Genki from“Monster Rancher,” the kids from“Digimon,” Trunks from“Dragonball Z,” and little kawaii versions of SG-1 fall out and crash-land on Usagi in a massive pile.) _

**Usagi** : Oomph!

**ChibiUsa** : Sorry.  _ (She looks at Usagi) _ Have you been pigging out on donuts again?

**Kawaii Tiel'c** : I do not recognize this place, O'Neil. We appear to have taken a wrong turn.

**Kawaii O'Neil** : Ya think?

**Tai** : Who the heck are these guys?

**Usagi** : Okay, now I'm angry! Moon Eternal, Make-Up!  _ (She transforms, throwing everyone off.) _ NOW you're gonna get it!

**Genki** : Wow!

**Izzy** : What in the world was _that?_

**Pluto** : I thought she couldn't do that right now.

**Ami** : Never underestimate the power of irritation.

_ (Kawaii Tiel'c fires his staff-weapon at Sailor Moon; at the same time, Trunks lets loose with his trademark “Burning Attack.” After the smoke clears, an extra-crispy version of Sailor Moon coughs up a puff of dust.) _

**BBQ Sailor Moon** : THAT DOES IT!

_ (She proceeds to chase the entire assembly off-screen, leaving Ami, Pluto, and ChibiUsa behind to stare after her.) _

**ChibiUsa** : Pu? Is it too late for you to tell me I'm adopted?

**Pluto** _(looking confused)_ : Who are you?

_ 28/11/99 (Revised, 15/08/02) _

_ Well, that was fun. :) _

_ For the continuity freaks out there—you know who you are—this story obviously takes place after the last season of the official—see also: Japanese—series. Some of you—again, you know who you are—are probably slightly irked with me that it's close to five years later, and the Senshi haven't changed with the times like the rest of us. _

_ It's called creative license, people. I wanted to do a turn-of-the-millennium story using the Senshi, so I did—and if I have to play fast and loose with the space-time continuum to get the job done, I will. Additionally, those who know their Sailormoon calendar and do some careful counting on their fingers may note a slight discrepancy in the length of Usagi's pregnancy. For those who didn't notice or bother to count, it's a bit long. Let's review, shall we? _

  1. _A) Sailor Moon fact: ChibiUsa is born in June; the 30th, I believe._
  2. _B) Real fact: Human pregnancies traditionally last nine months._



_ Trace back nine months from our target date of June 30, and you wind up in the back end of September. Problem is: _

  1. _C) Other real fact: Universities start their mainstream courses in early September, or even late August. And;_
  2. _D) Story fact: Mamoru is still studying in the US._



_ That presents a bit of a conundrum, doesn't it? Solving the problem by having Mamoru show up over Thanksgiving Break—do they even have that in Japan?—or at Christmas would have had the end result of making ChibiUsa about two or three months premature. That sort of bothered me, so I went the other way. I just hope that Usagi—and any female readers who've gone through the whole nine months themselves—aren't too upset with my solution of one more month. _

_ Also, for anyone who objects to my rather harsh treatment of Pluto, I apologize, but it's fairly important that she have this breakdown right now. If you object to it more because it's out-of-character, remember that her memory—and thus a major part of her personality—is gone. How would YOU react to something like that? _

_ Well, for those looking forward to the next installment, I'll try not to take too long. The thing is, I'm going to try and spread this mess out so the story runs the course of a year—the year 2000, natch—so it could very easily take that long to finish. And then again, given the way I can write at times, it might not. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we? _

 


	2. Messages Mysteries, and Mayham: Seasons Greetings, Senshi Style

# 

Usagi closed the door quietly as she and Ami stepped out of the room where Pluto now lay in a deep and, hopefully, dreamless sleep on Ami’s donated bed. They walked along the hall in silence, returning to the den where the other Senshi and their guardian cats waited quietly. Minako was the first to speak as Ami and Usagi entered the room.

“How is she?”

“Asleep,” Ami replied. “Beyond that, who knows?”

“Did she say anything else?” Luna asked. Usagi shook her head.

“Luna, I don’t think she even remembers her own name. It was almost all we could do to get her to stop crying, and after that she was too tired to stay awake.” Usagi settled herself on the couch next to Minako, sighing. Her eyes were still tinted red from her own tears.

“There’s not much we can do right now except let her sleep,” Ami said, taking a seat next to Rei on the other couch, “but we should make some plans.”

“Do we have any ideas about what could have done this to her?” Makoto asked from her place near the balcony door.

“Only that it almost has to be something supernatural,” Luna replied, “and likely an intelligent something.”

“Why do you say that?” Usagi asked.

“There are a lot of things in the world that can lead to amnesia of one kind or another,” Luna explained. “Physical trauma or emotional shock are the most common, but Pluto is a Senshi, and all of you have a certain degree of protection from your powers against ordinary injuries. In the case of memory, it’s sort of like the back-up files on a computer. Everything you see and hear becomes a part of you, a part of your powers; when your bodies or minds are affected in such a way that you would normally lose part of your memories, your power reacts and allows you to hold on to them instead. The process is automatic, _unless_ a stronger power interferes with your own. That was why I had to restore you after you fought Beryl. The ginzuishou restored you to life by sending you back in time, but it sent you to a point before you had learned how to harness your powers, so it blanked out your memories of the whole year in the process.”

“Luna,” Makoto said, looking confused, “you and Artemis didn’t remember who Usagi was until the ginzuishou was put back together, right? So if you got sent back to a point before it restored your memories, how could either of you know who we were to restore us?”

“Well,” Luna said. “Artemis and I were able to remember because we’ve had our abilities all our lives. Everything we remembered because of the ginzuishou was imprinted on our own back-up file, if that’s what you want to call it, and since it couldn’t send us back to a time when we _didn’t_ have our skills, we were able to remember.”

“I _guess_ that makes sense,” Makoto said dubiously.

“What about Ryo-kun?” Ami asked suddenly. “How is it that he was able to remember me... I mean, us... I mean...” Ami blushed when the others looked at her, most of them with knowing smiles. “Does it have something to do with the fact that he carried one of the Rainbow Crystals?” she asked, pronouncing each word very carefully.

“It might,” Luna admitted. “It’s entirely possible that Urawa’s powers gave him the same kind of memory-preservation as you girls have, so if the point in time to which the ginzuishou reset everything was _after_ he’d acquired his ability, he would have retained his previous memories. I think. Then again, none of the others seem to remember the whole business.”

“We don’t know for sure that they can’t remember,” Makoto said. “Most of ’em were sort of dazed after Usagi-chan changed them back to normal, so they probably just dismissed the whole thing as a bad dream.” She frowned again. “But if that happened before we went back, then they should be able to recall the entire year, and then... this is giving me a headache,” she growled.

“Ryo-kun _did_ say once that he’d been able to predict things since he was little,” Ami said. “He just got better at it with practice.”

“And Joe’s still a legend at the arcade,” Usagi added. “Whether he’s still using that mind trick he showed Mako-chan, I don’t know. Reika’s still a biologist, that priest we met is still preaching, Yumemi still paints, and Rei’s grandfather is still... uh...”

“Twisted and hyperactive?” Rei said wryly. “Don’t forget that cat who had a crush on Luna,” she added. “I saw him a few months back, and he’s still the size of a small army.”

“_What_ cat?” Artemis asked curiously.

“Oh, no one in particular,” Luna said hastily, suddenly even more red- faced than Ami had been—which was a neat trick through her fur. “He sort of saved me from an army of alley cats before Zoicite turned him into a youma. Anyway,” she continued hurriedly, ignoring Artemis, “we’ve gotten off track here. Usagi wanted to know why I thought Pluto’s memory loss was the work of a supernatural force, and not just the result of hitting her head.”

“Right,” Usagi said. “Do you think you might be able to restore her memories the same way you did ours?”

“Ordinarily, I’d say yes, but Pluto seems to have lost a lot more of her memories than any of you did. That might only mean it’ll take longer to restore her, but it might also mean that I won’t be able to help her. In either case, I’d like to wait until after she’s rested before I try anything.”

“I think we can wait until tomorrow,” Ami said, “but we’d better think up a story in case Mother starts asking more questions—and just in case it doesn’t work.”

“Don’t say things like that!” Usagi insisted. “It _has_ to work!”

“Usagi,” Rei said, “we all want it to work, but Ami’s right. We have to be ready for the possibility that whatever is wrong with Pluto is something we can’t fix right away, or maybe even something that we can’t fix at all. If Luna can get her back to normal, fine, but if it doesn’t work, we need to know what to do.”

“Beyond making her comfortable and seeing to it that she has somewhere to stay,” Minako said glumly, “is there anything else we _can_ do if Pluto doesn’t get her memory back?”

“We might try calling the Outers,” Makoto said after a moment of thought. “Pluto never said very much about herself to any of _us,_ but she lived with them for a while. They might be able to tell her something about herself that could shake the rest loose.”

“What about that staff?” Usagi asked. “I got my memories back the first time when the ginzuishou was put back together, so maybe if Pluto got her staff back...”

“That’s assuming, of course, that we had any idea where or even _when_ the blasted thing went,” Rei pointed out.

“And whose fault was _that?_” Usagi muttered.

“Don’t try to blame this on me, odango-atama!” Rei shot back.

“You’re the one who made it disappear!” Usagi shouted.

“Both of you, stop it!” Luna snapped. “This isn’t...” *the time for more of your childish bickering* was what she had been going to say, but at that moment, they heard an awful scream from down the hall, followed immediately by the sound of shattering glass.

Even four months pregnant, Usagi was out of the room before the others could do more than get to their feet.

# 

She awoke suddenly, alone in a bed and a dark room that she did not recognize. Her body felt drained and weak; her back in particular felt bruised, though she had no idea why, and her face was sticky with dried tears.

*I... cried? Do I do that?*

There was no response from the emptiness in her mind. There wasn’t much of anything in her mind, she realized. Some hazy memories of waking up surrounded by strangers, panicking, crying—*I guess I do cry*—being led away by someone with gentle eyes and strong arms... but before all that, nothing. A wall beyond which her consciousness could not pass.

She rose and stepped out of the bed, noticing as she did that her feet were bare, the floor was carpeted, and a pair of boots were tucked against the side of the bed, with long-backed gloves folded and laid neatly across the feet. There was a little light coming in through the half-closed door on the other side of the room, enough to guide her towards another door and the bathroom beyond. She blinked once when her hand found the light switch, and then again when she noticed the mirror set into the wall above the sink.

*What do I look like?* she wondered, turning to face the reflection.

The face looking back at her was that of a young woman, older than what she had expected after waking up with a group of teenaged girls gathered around her, but not greatly so. Her hair was dark green and very long, though a bit tangled, and her eyes were deep red. All in all, despite the damage done by her tears, she thought it was a rather attractive face.

*Or maybe that’s just my ego talking,* she thought with a wry smile. That smile shifted into a puzzled frown as her eyes drifted down to regard what else the mirror had to show her. That is not to say that she was displeased with what she saw. She was actually quite satisfied with her figure—even a bit smug that it was in such good shape—but she couldn’t understand _why_ she was dressed like she was.

*Maybe I was at a costume party or something,* she thought, taking in the form-fitting fuku with its wide collar, ribbons, and miniskirt. *At least I _hope_ I was at a costume party,* she added nervously, realizing just how much of her legs the short skirt revealed. They were nice legs, but...

After checking the unusual outfit for pockets and the possibility of an ID card—*how do I know what that is?*—and finding neither, she decided to ignore the clothes for now and clean up.

Once the tear stains had been washed away, the face in the mirror looked much better. She looked at it for a long time, hoping—praying—that the image before her would jar something loose in her head.

It didn’t. Not even a name.

She felt like crying again, but even more than that, she felt angry. At herself for not being able to remember. At the world in general for doing this to her. At the mirror for not showing her what she wanted to know. Her hands clenched on the rim of the counter as the fury built.

“Who am I?” she asked aloud. Even the sound of her own voice was still new and unfamiliar, and it too failed to set off any signal of recognition. The feeling of sick fury grew until her entire body shook with the effort of suppressing it, and finally, she could contain it no longer; with a howl of rage, she lashed out at the nearest target.

After the pieces of the broken mirror stopped falling, she pulled her hand back slowly. Where she expected to see slashed and bleeding knuckles, there was not even a bruise. The blow had been guided by nothing but rage, and yet her body seemed to know instinctively how to reposition itself for maximum effect and minimal personal harm. A useful piece of knowledge, that.

*Am I an athlete of some sort? A fighter? Or something worse?*

She heard footsteps in the hall and was turning to face the door almost before she realized it. The light in the bedroom flickered on as the five girls she recalled from before entered. The one in the lead was the blue-eyed blonde with the peculiar hairstyle, the one that had almost seemed familiar. She looked at the empty bed before noticing the light in the bathroom.

“Are you okay?” the girl asked, stepping slowly into the bathroom. “We heard the crash, and we weren’t sure what...”

“Who are you people? Where am I?”

“First thing’s first,” the short-haired girl said firmly. “Do you know _who_ you are?”

“No. Do... do you know who I am?”

“Not completely.” The blonde girl sighed. “Why don’t we sit down? This may take some time to explain.” She looked closely at the taller girl, slowly extending her right hand. “Please, don’t be afraid. We’re your friends.”

“Why should I believe you?” The blonde girl’s hand stopped and then withdrew. She actually seemed to be hurt by the question.

“Because it’s the truth?” she replied hesitantly.

“You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“I can’t.” The girl was silent for a moment. “I know you’re scared, and I know you can’t remember us. Anything I could try to use to prove we’re your friends is gone. All I can do is promise that we want to help, and ask that you trust us. Just a little. Okay?” Maybe it was that flash of almost-memory, but something made the girl sound sincere.

“All right.” She followed them back into the bedroom, sitting up on the bed with her back to the wall. With some help from the dark-haired girl, the blonde sat down on the end of the bed. The girl with short hair settled down on the bed between the other two occupants, and the dark-haired one knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed. The tall brunette leaned against the wall near the door, arms crossed, while the second blonde took a seat on a wooden chest next to her. Two cats were in the room as well, the black one sitting on the bed, the white one curled up in the lap of the second blonde girl.

The was a moment of silence as the blonde girl played with a ring she wore -*Is she married?*—apparently thinking about where to start.

“What do you want to know first? Who you are, where you are, or who we are?”

“I want to know all of it, but... it might be easier to ask questions if I knew your names first.” The blonde smiled.

“All right then.” She turned to the blue-haired girl. “This is Mizuno Ami. This,” she said, pointing to the dark-haired girl, “is Hino Rei. The girl by the door is Kino Makoto, and the one on the chest is Aino Minako. This,” she went on, patting the black cat next to her, “is Luna, and that self-absorbed furball in Mina-chan’s lap is called Artemis. It’s a he, by the way, and he hates being teased about the name, so feel free to.”

“Hush,” Minako giggled, covering her furry friend’s face with one hand as he started to retort.

“And you?”

“Tsukino Usagi,” the blonde replied. “Both of us,” she added somewhat oddly, indicating her belly and smiling.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Usagi smiled again. “Now that you know who we are, I’ll try to explain who you are. Your name is Meiou Setsuna.”

“Se... Setsuna...?” *I... I like it.*

“Now,” Usagi said, “it gets kind of complicated.” She looked at Setsuna, thinking about how to proceed. “Do you know why you’re dressed like that?” she asked at last.

“No,” Setsuna—*Yes. Setsuna. I am Setsuna.*—replied.

“Well, it has to do with who you are. Or maybe what you are. It depends on how you look at it.” Usagi frowned, tugging at the locket attached to her shirt. “This might go better with a visual aid. I’ll...”

“Usagi,” Rei said warningly.

“Rei, I know we agreed I wouldn’t do this except in an emergency, but I think this qualifies, don’t you?”

“You’re not thinking, Usagi. There are five of us, remember?”

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” She released the locket, blushing. “I just...”

“I know,” Rei sighed.

“What are you talking about?” *What does a locket have to do with how I’m dressed?* “And what did you mean, ‘visual aid?’” The girls looked at each other.

“I’ve got it,” Makoto said, stepping away from the door and pulling a small, green and gold pen from a pocket in her slacks. Something in Setsuna’s mind pushed forward at the sight of the odd little symbol on the tip of the pen.

“That’s the symbol for Jupiter, isn’t it? Why would you be carrying something like that around?” Makoto smiled.

“This is why. JUPITER CRYSTAL POWER, MAKE-UP!”

“Wha...” Setsuna’s words cut off as a bright flash of light swallowed Makoto. When it faded, someone else was standing in her place. *That outfit is almost the same as mine,* Setsuna realized.

“Meet Sailor Jupiter,” Usagi told Setsuna.

“What happened to Makoto? Where is she?”

“Look a little closer,” the new arrival suggested. Setsuna frowned; the other girls were silent, watching her as if waiting for something, so she did as she was told and took a second look at the tall stranger. Something about her face was familiar. And the voice. It was almost as if... Setsuna blinked.

“You... Makoto?”

“Got it in one.” Jupiter grinned. Her gaze grew momentarily distant, as if she were looking inwards rather than outwards, and her uniform disintegrated in a burst of dancing ribbons and electric sparks, leaving Makoto behind, as she had been before.

“Can... can you all do that?”

“Yes,” Usagi replied. “Ami, Rei, and Minako become Sailors Mercury, Mars, and Venus, respectively. I become Sailor Moon. Although,” she added, making a face, “these busybodies haven’t let me transform since they found out I was pregnant.”

“We put it to a vote, odango-atama,” Rei stated flatly, “and you agreed with the rest of us that it might not be safe. It was your call, so quit complaining.”

“I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”

“Sure,” Rei agreed. “You can change it as often as you like. We’re still not going to let you take stupid risks.”

“_Stupid?!_” Usagi protested. “Are you calling me stupid?!”

“No, I’m not!” Rei hollered back at her. “And quit screeching in my ear!”

“SCREECHING?!” Usagi screeched.

“STOP IT!” Luna roared—or maybe growled. She was really too small to generate a true lion-scale roar, but she could earn points for effort. “Honestly, you two pick the worst times for these... oops.” Luna turned her head to look at Setsuna, who was staring at her, and then covered her eyes with one paw. “Oh dear.”

“You can talk?”

“Nice going, Luna.” Artemis commented, still curled up in Minako’s lap. “What’s one more shock to her system going to matter?” He opened one eye to glance at Setsuna. “Well, you might as well go for the whole nine yards,” he suggested.

“You might be right,” Luna admitted. She padded across the bed and sat down in front of Setsuna. “Scared?” she asked.

“Yes.” *Am I going to go insane now, too?*

“Well, you have a right to be afraid. And no,” Luna added in a long- suffering tone, recognizing the look, “you’re not going crazy, and this is not a dream. Artemis and I _can_ talk, and Makoto _did_ just turn into someone else. The only thing wrong with your mind is that a lot of it seems to have been closed off.” She looked at Setsuna closely. “Exactly how much can you remember?”

“I’m not sure. The first _memory_ I have is waking up in the other room, but there are all sorts of bits of information floating around.” She closed her eyes, and when she spoke again, it was in a recitory manner. “’Hark, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the dawn, and fair Juliet is the east.’ The square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the other two sides squared. The speed of light is approximately 295,000 kilometers per second. What’s a henway? About two pounds.” Setsuna opened her eyes again. “Right now, I could give you the value of pi out to ten million decimal places, recite every word in the dictionaries of at least ten languages, or write down the recipe for duck flamb . I have no idea where any of it is coming from, and I can’t get it to stop.”

“That’s a start, at least.” Luna paused. “There is a way that I might be able to restore your memory,” she suggested hesitantly. “Do you trust me?”

“I’m not sure. I think so. What are you going to do?”

Luna responded with a beam of light, linking their foreheads together. Setsuna’s eyes widened as the jumble information in her mind began to rapidly rearrange itself; Luna frowned and then fixed her face into an expression of extreme concentration. The Senshi watched as the dark red sign of Pluto flickered into existence on Setsuna’s forehead, then just as quickly faded out. The sign appeared again, shone brightly, and then faded a second time.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to work,” Artemis said suddenly. “Luna! Let her go! Get out of her mind!”

The beam remained in place.

“Usagi!” Artemis barked, all traces of humor gone. “Something’s wrong! Get Luna away from Pluto! Break the link! Now!”

“How? What do I do?”

“Just move her! Hurry!”

Usagi reached for Luna, but Ami was closer. As soon as Luna had been moved aside, the mindlink flickered out of existence, and Setsuna slumped back against the wall, sweating. In Ami’s arms, Luna went limp.

“Are you okay?” Usagi asked, leaning forward to lay a gentle hand on Setsuna’s shoulder. The elder Senshi scrunched her eyes tightly shut and took a deep breath, nodding mutely in response. Usagi looked over to where Luna was slowly lifting her head. “Luna?”

“I’m fine, Usagi. Just a bit of a headache.” She looked up at Setsuna. “Did it work? Can you remember anything?”

“No. The jumble seems to have sorted itself out, but beyond that...” Setsuna winced. “Is it supposed to hurt that much?”

“No,” Luna replied with a wince of her own. “It’s not supposed to hurt at all.”

“What went wrong?” Artemis asked. “It’s not like you haven’t done this before.”

“I couldn’t find the memories,” Luna explained. “Pluto’s head is full of all kinds of information, but it’s all just a bunch of random facts. There’s no trace of anything even remotely connected to her own life or the Senshi.”

“Like what Beryl did to Mamoru?” Rei guessed.

“Not even close,” Luna disagreed. “Beryl was almost as careless as she was powerful. When she blanked out Mamoru’s memories, she either didn’t or couldn’t confine the effect to just part of his mind, and she left little bits and pieces of memory behind, which allowed Usagi to break the spell. Whatever happened to Pluto is a lot more precise. It’s limited to just a few memories rather than everything she knew, but whoever did this makes Beryl look like an amateur. They didn’t leave _anything_ behind that I could see.”

“Pluto?” Setsuna asked.

“That’s you,” Usagi said. “But don’t tell anyone. Secret identity and all that.”

“I see.” She looked down at the fuku. “How do I change back?”

“It’s pretty automatic,” Ami explained. “Just concentrate on changing, and it’ll happen.”

“It helps if you get a mental picture of yourself as you normally look fixed in your mind,” Minako added.

Pluto closed her eyes, trying to recall the image from the mirror, and take away the tiara, the earrings, the collar... Somewhere in the middle of building the image, she felt a curious shift, and then a great surge of dizziness. When it had passed, she could tell that she was wearing something else. She opened her eyes, and sure enough, the fuku had been replaced by a purple jumper and white blouse. The boots beside the bed had altered as well; the heels were lower and thicker than before, and the tops were now lined with a thick ring of insulation. A long winter overcoat in the same color as the jumper was neatly folded on the bed next to her, with not one but _two_ pairs of soft gloves—one thick, the other extremely fine—tucked through the belt alongside a furry, purple-dyed hat and an emerald green scarf made of what might even have been silk. Setsuna looked herself over, noting that her transformation had not been nearly as obvious as Makoto’s. At least, not where her body was concerned.

“Is there... does anyone have a mirror?”

“Here,” Ami said, handing Setsuna a small, blue-rimmed hand mirror from her bedside dresser. She smiled. “Just be nicer to it than you were to the other one.”

“Oh,” Setsuna said, blushing faintly. “Yes. Sorry about that.” She looked at her reflection, tracing the lines of her face with one hand. “I don’t _look_ any different.”

“Well,” Usagi said, “you’re a little older than we are. When one of us transforms, we seem to age a couple of years. I’m not really sure why.”

“It’s to protect you,” Luna said.

“From our enemies?” Minako asked.

“And from your own powers,” Luna added. “Why do you think Artemis and I keep having you conduct all those training exercises?”

“_I_ thought it was because you got some twisted enjoyment out of seeing Rei use my butt for practicing drop kicks,” Usagi muttered.

“No, Usagi.” Luna sighed. “The training is to help you build up your strength and endurance so you can use your abilities without hurting yourselves. The traditional training period of a Senshi usually started when the girl was thirteen, and she wouldn’t be assigned to active duty until her nineteenth birthday.” Luna looked at the Senshi with an apologetic expression. “In your cases, though, we didn’t have much choice except to accelerate the training as much as possible. If we were back in the Moon Kingdom, none of you girls would have been put through the kind of experiences you’ve had to endure for at least another two or three years, and you would have taken up your duties with the powers you command now, instead of the ones you had when I first located you.”

“It’s okay, Luna,” Usagi told her feline friend. “We don’t blame you for any of it.”

“Yeah,” Makoto grinned. “We blame the monsters—and then we dust ’em.”

“But that doesn’t explain why we age,” Rei noted.

“It’s a precaution built into the power of the transformation,” Artemis explained. “The power of the Senshi evolved naturally over the course of thousands of years, but at first, it was just like natural growth, with the powers manifesting very early in a Senshi’s childhood and then developing along with the rest of her during adolescence. It could take decades for the powers to grow to fighting strength that way, so the transformation magic was developed to accelerate the process, *and* to give the Senshi a measure of anonymity while they were still young. The henshin wands grant even a very young Senshi the strength to defend herself, without revealing her to the world at large. The enchantments which keep people from recognizing the similarities between your two forms were originally developed to protect a Senshi from being recognized and tracked down by her opponents, but you’ve seen how useful they are when the secret needs to be kept from society, as well.”

“’Thousands of years?’” Ami repeated. “How many, exactly?”

“A lot,” Artemis said. “The oldest surviving records in the Moon Kingdom during the Silver Millennium were about ten thousand years old, and they described kingdoms on Earth that were even older. Even we didn’t know much about those realms, though, except that they were there once. Paper—or even papyrus— hadn’t been invented yet, and writing on stone doesn’t work too well when there’s a war every other decade and people keep breaking down your walls. Then there was that last Ice Age.” He shook his head. “There are—or were—ruins on the Moon, Mars, and some of the moons in the outer system at least fifty thousand years old, but whatever civilization created them was wiped off the face of _this_ planet by a few hundred centuries of ice, long before the Moon Kingdom even got started. And we found something floating in space one time that was definitely artificial, but well over a million years old.”

“Excuse me.” Setsuna interjected. “’Moon Kingdom?’”

“Oh yeah,” Usagi exclaimed. “You don’t remember.”

“We’d better do something about that right now,” Ami decided, “before anything else drops in on us. We might not have the time later.”

“Good point,” Usagi agreed. She looked at Setsuna. “You may want to make yourself comfortable,” she suggested. “This could take a while, and it gets pretty weird at times.”

“Weirder than talking cats and people who change clothes in bursts of light?” Setsuna asked, smiling faintly.

“That’s just the drip of the iceberg,” Minako proclaimed ominously.

“That’s ‘tip,’ Mina-chan,” Ami corrected. “Not drip.”

“Oh. I knew that.”

It only took them about an hour to explain the history of the Moon Kingdom and the adventures of the modern Senshi to Setsuna, and that included a five- minute tongue war between Rei and Usagi. Setsuna, for her part, listened attentively, only interrupting once or twice at particularly confusing parts of the story. Most of the real interruptions came from the Senshi, who constantly disagreed with Usagi’s retelling of certain events:

“I did _not_ ambush Mamoru! And it wasn’t a serious relationship, anyway!”

“I’m not _that_ much of a klutz! I was just trying to help! And you’re a fine one to talk about being clumsy! The cat calling the kettle black!”

“I do _not_ fall in love with every guy that walks past! Just the ones that remind me of my senpai...”

“I am NOT dating Yuuichirou, odango-atama!”

When it was finally over, Setsuna was looking at her face in the mirror again.

“I’m HOW old?”

“Going on two thousand,” Artemis replied. “I think. But that’s only because you’re here, now, in the time stream. You don’t age in the in-between place where the Time Gate is. You were born right around the beginning of the Silver Millennium, but you’ve only spent about twenty or so years in real time. The rest of it, you’ve been keeping guard on the Gate and watching events in the real world.”

“I suppose that would explain where all this information in my head came from,” Setsuna mused. “And why I can’t remember where I learned any of it.” She tried to smile. “At least I’m well-preserved.” Then she put the mirror aside and took a deep breath. “So. Assuming for the moment that I’m not going insane and that I believe your story; what happens to me now?”

“Well,” Usagi began. The doorbell rang, and the Senshi froze. It rang again after a few seconds, and then a third time. Ami glanced at her friends and then rose slowly. “Mako-chan,” Usagi said, “go with her. Just in case.”

“Right.” The others waited in silence for several minutes, Rei and Minako with their transformation pens in hand, until Ami and Makoto returned, looking rather confused and carrying several pieces of luggage and a black purse between them.

“What’s this?” Luna demanded.

“It was just sitting on the doorstep,” Ami responded. “There was no one in sight, no footprints in the yard, and no sign of a car or truck. I scanned all of this with my computer twice, and the yard as well. No sign of anything except ordinary luggage.”

“And this,” Makoto added, pulling a small envelope out as she and Ami set the suitcases down. “It’s addressed to you,” she said, handing the letter to Setsuna.

It was, too. Just her name, ‘Meiou Setsuna,’ written across the front in beautiful calligraphy, with the sign of Pluto inscribed beneath. Setsuna turned the envelope over; it was sealed with a circle of red wax, on which another strange symbol had been impressed. It looked like a one-way arrow with two heads, one pointing left, the other right. Not surprisingly, she didn’t recognize it. Finally, Setsuna opened the envelope and removed the contents, a letter and a small brass key, which obviously went with the locked luggage. She read the letter carefully for a few moments and then looked up.

“What time is it?” Minako raised her right hand and looked at her watch.

“I have 1:22, but this watch is a bit slow. Why?” Setsuna did not respond, but began reading the letter again, her face going white before she screamed, crumpled the paper into a ball, and threw it as far away as she could. The Senshi looked at her and then at each other. Then Ami recovered the letter, unfolding it carefully and sitting back down on the edge of the bed before beginning to read out loud:

> _Dear Setsuna, Some of us apologize for what has been done to you. Others do not. Believe us when we say it is not something done on a cruel whim, but as a necessity. The contents of this letter are, likewise, not given as a comfort, but as necessity. Rest assured that the story you have just been told is true, as far as the Senshi know it to be. You _are_ Pluto, the Guardian of Time, and the five girls before you _are_ your friends. You can trust them, even if you do not know them any longer. You will want proof, of course. So be it. You will finish reading this paragraph and ask what time it is. Aino Minako, Sailor Venus, will look at the watch on her right hand and say that it is 1:22, but that her watch is a bit slow. You have just re-read the previous lines, thinking it must be coincidence or a carefully planned trick. It is not. The number you are thinking of is forty-two, and the first thing you thought when you woke up in this room was to wonder whether or not you cried. Mizuno Ami, Sailor Mercury, you are now reading this letter aloud, after Setsuna has crumpled it and thrown it away. You are thinking to yourself that there is a perfectly logical explanation for the contents; you are correct. You are also worrying that Setsuna will suffer a nervous breakdown; this will not happen. Even devoid of her memories, she is strong enough to survive this. The suitcases left on your doorstep contain items for Setsuna, as her stay in your time will be extended. There is nothing supernatural or dangerous about either the luggage itself or any of the contents, except when Usagi drops the medium case on her right foot two weeks from now. Everything was selected based on Setsuna’s own tastes and requirements. The driver’s license and other identification in her purse are part of the identity she assumed in your previous encounters, and they are in fact quite accurate, so long as you employ a certain degree of fourth-dimensional thinking. And no, Aino Minako, we are NOT providing Setsuna with a car. We are not a rental service. Hino Rei, Sailor Mars, you did not in any way damage Sailor Pluto’s staff. It is quite safe, and will remain so until Setsuna is ready to reclaim it. Luna and Artemis, there is no danger to the Time Gate while Setsuna remains in your part of the continuum. WE are guarding it. It will only be used four times in the course of this year, and one of those uses was Sailor Pluto’s arrival. You will find out about the second in a few days, and the others in due course. Incidentally, some of us are a little sorry about that crash-landing. Tsukino Usagi, Sailor Moon, Princess and Neo-Queen Serenity, it was nothing personal. We were actually aiming for the bed in Ami’s room, but someone thought it might be funny to alter the trajectory at the last second. Take care of Setsuna. You will need her almost as much as she needs you._

Ami lowered the letter.

“Well, of all the nerve!” Usagi huffed indignantly. “As if I’m going to go anywhere near that luggage, now!” She glared at Ami, who was biting back a smile. “What’s so funny?”

Ami raised the letter again. “’P.S.: You ARE going to drop the suitcase on your right foot, odango-atama. Get over it.’”

“GIVE ME THAT!” Usagi roared, tearing the letter out of Ami’s hands and reading it over. Sure enough, that irritating nickname was there, written in the same flowing hand as the rest of the letter. Somehow, that only made Usagi’s teeth grind harder.

“So,” Ami asked the others. “Was it accurate?”

“Yes,” Rei admitted. “I was worrying about Pluto’s staff.”

“And I was concerned about the Time Gate,” Luna said.

“Same here,” Artemis added. “Minako?”

“Never. Mind.”

“Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me,” Makoto observed. Minako glared at her, to find Makoto innocently examining her fingernails, apparently indifferent to the world. The glare intensified.

“Who wrote that?” Setsuna demanded in a shaken voice.

“I’d like to know that myself,” Usagi muttered darkly, examining the broken seal and the top of the letter, where the same double-arrow symbol was repeated. “Does anyone recognize this sign? Luna? Artemis? Ami-chan?” All three shook their heads.

“Maybe there’s something in these suitcases that might help,” Rei suggested, tugging the nearest one over. She glanced back at Setsuna. “That is, unless you’d rather not have us going through your things?”

“Actually,” Setsuna replied, “I was going to ask you to hand me the purse.”

“Good,” Rei grinned. “Now where’s that key?”

As the letter had suggested, the contents of the suitcases were in no way supernatural. The largest contained several carefully pressed and folded outfits in varying shades of purple or dark green, undergarments—some of which earned Setsuna some VERY curious looks from the younger Senshi—and a mix of more informal clothing which was presided over by one incredibly thrashed old pair of blue jeans. There was even a bathing suit tucked away among everything else, and an umbrella strapped to the outside of the case. Of the three medium-sized pieces, which had been mounted in a wheeled carryall, one contained a couple of hairbrushes, several vials of perfume locked in a protective coffer, various other toiletries, and a pale maroon nightgown; the second piece, a briefcase, held a thick binder, several folders stuffed with loose sheets, a few computer discs, and assorted office supplies. The last of the three cases turned out to be a small sewing machine, one with the contents of an entire sewing kit tucked away in various places. The final, smallest piece of luggage was the carrying case for a laptop.

“Well,” Rei said at last, “I’d say whoever sent this stuff wanted to cover all options. And that they know your measurements down to the last stitch.” She held up a slim green dress to emphasize the point. “This is really very nice.” Rei draped the slightly overlarge dress in front of her own body and smoothed out some of the wrinkles. “I wonder if I could find it a little smaller. And in red. Hmm...”

“Put it away, Rei-chan,” Minako teased. “Your grandfather wouldn’t let you buy it anyway.” Rei frowned, and then sighed, knowing Minako was right. They started re-packing Setsuna’s things, but no matter how carefully they folded or repositioned things, they couldn’t seem to get it all back in the cases.

Makoto turned to Setsuna while Rei and Minako waged their losing battle with the obstinate luggage.

“Having any better luck with the purse?”

“Hmm?” Setsuna looked up from the tattered jeans. “Did you ask me something?”

“I asked if you found anything useful in the purse.”

“License, travel visa, a map of the city, pager, cellphone, a list of numbers and addresses—yours.” Setsuna listed off the items. “A few pens and pencils, a calculator, and about five hundred thousand yen.” She looked at the ID papers. “Born October 29, 1975, in Taiwan. Single. No next of kin. Japanese, Taiwanese, French, German, Swiss, English, and American citizenship,” she added in a slightly surprised voice. “I seem to get around.” She looked at the jeans again. “Apparently, these have been with me for most of the trip. Why in the world am I still carrying around something so ratty?” she wondered.

“Can you actually speak all those languages?” Minako said curiously from where she was struggling to zip up a dangerously overloaded suitcase. “I had enough trouble just learning English.”

“I think I can,” Setsuna replied, running the fingers of her mind through page after page of a half-dozen different languages. She looked at the date and place of her birth again. “This can’t be right, though. Not if I’m as old as you say I am.”

“The letter said to think fourth-dimensionally,” Ami noted. She had, of course, repacked the laptop perfectly on the first try. “You probably really were born on the island we call Taiwan on the twenty-ninth of October, but...”

“...but it was two thousand years ago,” Setsuna finished, nodding sadly. “That would make the ‘no next of kin’ part pretty accurate.”

“You’ve got us,” Usagi said, hugging her. “And the Outer Senshi. You know,” she went on, “I think we should call them. She did live with Haruka and Michiru for a while when they were looking after Hotaru. They could at least tell her more about herself.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Rei agreed. “I’m surprised you thought of it. Oh, that’s right. Mako-chan suggested it earlier. I should have remembered that.”

“Ha ha ha.” Usagi stuck out her tongue. “Do any of you know where they are right now?”

“Italy,” Ami replied immediately. “I’ve been keeping track of the concert tour Michiru was asked to perform in. The last part of it went through Rome, and I think the final performance was scheduled for tonight at ten.”

“They’re probably asleep by now, then,” Usagi sighed. “I guess we can call them tomorrow.”

“Actually,” Ami disagreed, “they’ve probably just finished dinner.”

“Ami, it’s almost two in the morning!”

“Here, yes. But they’re in Rome, Usagi-chan. We’re eight hours ahead of them.”

“Huh?”

“You studied geography last term,” Luna growled slowly. “Do you remember things called ‘time zones?’”

“Are you getting silly in your old age, Luna? What does geography have to do with time?” Luna hung her head.

“Just call them, Usagi.”

“If you say so.” Usagi found her communicator. As the device sent out its signal, she grinned at her friends. “It’s a good thing we don’t have to use the phones, isn’t it?”

# 

Haruka slid the door to Hotaru’s room open slightly, looking in on the girl while she caught up on her sleep so she could attend tonight’s concert. Haruka doubted that Hotaru really cared for orchestra all that much, but it was a chance to see Michiru on stage, and it would have taken something on the scale of a world war to make the youngest Senshi miss that.

*Hard to believe,* Haruka thought, closing the door with a slightly sad smile. *A little over a year ago, we were ready to kill this little angel, and now she’s become the most important thing in our lives. I guess Setsuna and Usagi were right.*

She sighed and walked softly down the hall to avoid waking Hotaru. Haruka wasn’t really that much older than Hotaru, but there was something almost perpetually childlike about the little Senshi. Maybe it was her small size, or the pet names ‘papa’ and ‘mama’ she customarily tacked on when addressing Haruka and Michiru; regardless, Haruka felt more like a parent than an older sister, and she was fairly certain that Michiru—who was in the shower now, getting ready to get ready for this last concert—felt the same way.

Oddly enough, Haruka found that she didn’t mind feeling older than she was. The presence of the sweet little Hotaru had slowly taught her to understand what it really meant to be a Senshi, a caring protector of human life against all odds, rather than the cold, watchful guardian she had been before, ready to sacrifice almost any individual to protect the greater whole.

Before being entrusted with the care of a supernaturally reborn infant, Haruka had only really understood three kinds of love. One was the bond of souls she shared with Michiru, a love far too intense and private to be applied to anyone else; the second was the love for humanity which allowed her to carry out even the most difficult of her duties as Uranus, a thing too generalized to enable her to connect with her charges as individuals; the last was her personal passion for racing cars, unquestioning things of steel and plastic and fuel, with no emotions of their own to confuse her.

None of these helped her to understand how the Inner Senshi—in particular, Usagi—could be so willing to risk their lives and everything they fought for to save one life, often a life they knew only distantly, if at all. But after having looked after a quiet, dark-eyed infant, after having experienced moments of sheer, terrified panic to protect that child from the dangers of the world, be they mundane or mystical...

Everyone was someone’s son or daughter; everyone had been a child, once. And everyone had someone, somewhere, who would feel that same icy fear if they were in danger, who would grieve when they were lost. Knowing that, knowing _Hotaru,_ had allowed Haruka to begin to appreciate and understand the real importance of her duties.

In the kitchen of their suite, the noise of the shower was a little louder, and Haruka chuckled to herself, thankful that Michiru didn’t have the time for one of her insanely long baths. Haruka wasn’t sure if it was a personal quirk about cleanliness or just Michiru’s affinity for water, but she could soak in a tub for hours on end with perfect contentment, and somehow manage to not have her skin prune up in the process. The only reason she wasn’t enjoying one of those hours-long immersions was because she needed to prepare and practice before the concert.

*Well, she can come back after the concert and soak for a week if she wants. Or she can sleep. Or do both. I might even join her.* The last few months had been hectic, and it was good to know that they could go home soon. Haruka didn’t begrudge Michiru getting recognition for her talent with the violin, but being dragged halfway around the world for close to six months was just too much. The fans in particular could be a pain; high-class concert-goers were better-dressed and certainly far more polite and refined than the screaming teenage fans who mobbed pop stars, but they could be every bit as annoying. And the bloodsucking reporters... ugh.

On cue, the phone rang.

*That’ll be one of the bloodsucking reporters now,* Haruka thought, *trying to get an interview. Or maybe another one of Michiru’s star-struck admirers with a wedding proposal. What does that make now, five?* She chuckled again.

“Hello?” There was no one on the line, just a dial tone. And when the ringing went off again, Haruka realized that she recognized the sound. *I must be getting old,* she thought in embarrassment, hanging up the receiver and hunting around the room for her communicator, which continued to beep. By about the fifteenth time, she finally found the thing tucked in the inside pocket of the suit she’d be wearing tonight. *Right where I left it, of course. First place you think of is always the last place you look.* “Hello?”

“Haruka? Is that you?”

“No,” she replied flippantly, “it’s Mimete. Of course it’s me, Usagi. What are you calling about?”

“Well, Happy New Year’s, for one thing.” Usagi’s face grinned.

“You’re six hours early, kid, but thanks. I’ll pass that on to the others. Now was there something else?”

“Actually... yes. Um... we’re at Ami’s. We were having a New Year’s Eve party of our own and, well... Pluto fell through the ceiling.”

“Why is Setsuna there? What do you mean, ‘fell through the ceiling?’”

“One of those portals opened up in the ceiling, and she fell out. We’re not sure why she’s here, though. You see, she’s sort of lost her memory.”

“What?” Usagi quickly summed up the night’s events. When she got to a description of the mysterious letter, Haruka vaguely remembered the old wisdom about being careful what you wished for.

“All right,” she said at last, interrupting Usagi’s flow of chatter. *That girl can talk forever. She’s going to make a good politician.* “Let me get this straight. Setsuna’s in Tokyo. None of you have any idea how she got there. She’s lost her memory. And someone or something which can predict the future sent her a letter.”

“And a half-dozen suitcases,” Usagi added. “When do you think you’ll be able to get back?”

“I’m not sure,” Haruka admitted, running one frustrated hand through her hair. “Michiru’s last performance is tonight, but we can’t just up and disappear immediately afterwards without everyone wondering about it. We’ve got plane tickets reserved for the eighth, but with all the people who travel at this time of year, there could be any number of delays. And that’s not even considering what the panic over this Y2K foolishness could cause.”

“Yeah, we caught some of that over here. Most of the phone lines are out for no apparent reason.” Usagi sighed. “A week or more, then? All right. I guess there’s nothing we can do about it.” Her head turned away from the communicator. “Did you want to...? No? Okay.”

“Who was that?”

“Setsuna. She said she’d rather talk to you in person when you get back.”

“Will she be staying at the house?”

“No,” Usagi replied firmly. “That place is empty without the three of you, and we’re not taking the chance that something which knows about her memory loss might try to catch her by herself. We’re going to find some place where she won’t be alone.”

“Nice to see you can think straight,” Haruka applauded. “There might be hope for you after all.”

“I’m so glad you approve. We’ll be in touch, Haruka.” Haruka sighed after the signal ended.

“I’ve got to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

# 

“Well, _that_ was a lot of help.”

“Don’t get snippy, Rei,” Usagi asserted defensively. “It was a good idea. It’s nobody’s fault that they can’t do anything to help until they get home, is it?”

“No,” Rei admitted.

“Glad to hear it. Now,” Usagi continued, turning to Setsuna, “we need to figure out where you’re going to stay.”

“There’s plenty of room here for all of us,” Ami said. “At least for tonight. But I think mother might start asking questions about a long-term houseguest, and I’m not really very good at lying to her.”

“I think we can rule out hotels,” Minako noted. “They’ll all be booked solid with tourists and conventions for the next two weeks at least.”

“What about if she stays with me?” Makoto suggested. “I’ve got room, and since I live alone, there wouldn’t be anyone to ask questions. Or she could stay at the temple with Rei.”

“We have school,” Ami reminded her. “The whole idea is to find Setsuna a place where she won’t be alone.”

“But not too un-alone, either,” Rei added. “I don’t think I trust Grandpa to behave himself when I’m at school.” *Or Yuuichirou,* she thought.

“Good point,” Makoto admitted.

“That probably rules out my place, too,” Minako sighed. “Nobody except Artemis is home during the day, and mother would make an absolute pest of herself the rest of the time.”

“Too bad we can’t just take you to school with us,” Usagi joked.

“I think I might be a little too old for that,” Setsuna replied.

“Hang on,” Usagi said suddenly. “That might actually work. Luna, do you happen to remember where I put that transformation pen?”

“It’s in the drawer in your nightstand,” Luna told her. “I can see where you’re going with this, Usagi. It’s a good idea, but it won’t work.”

“Why not? Setsuna can use the pen, can’t she?”

“Anyone can use the pen, but that’s not the point. It’s only meant to operate for short periods of time. It can go as long as eight hours in a pinch, but Setsuna would have to stay transformed almost around the clock. The pen would burn itself out after a few days of that.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“You never asked.” Luna glanced at the clock. “Look, it’s getting late, and we’d all be able to think clearer if we got some sleep.”

“Most of us would,” Rei muttered, poking Usagi’s leg.

“I’ll ignore that. All in favor of crashing for the night?” Usagi asked. The show of hands was universal. “Okay. Next order of business; who gets the bed?”

# 

The room where the six telecommunications workers hung, suspended in coils of a material that looked partly alive and partly mechanical, was dark now. Many of the lights had been shattered when the entity that had invaded the computers had reacted to stop the workers from escaping to spread word of its presence, and most of those that were left were either too far apart or too heavily hidden behind the network of wires to provide any real illumination.

But that was all right.

The entity did not need light to see. It didn’t need to see at all. That wasn’t its purpose. The five men and one woman hung unmoving in the entity’s snares. They were alive, but not out of any sense of mercy or cruelty on the part of their captor. As with the being’s indifference to light and vision, random killing was not its purpose. Its purpose was to seek, to remain hidden, to learn. To find.

Infecting the computers had been an unconscious sort of action. The entity did not understand machines, nor did it misunderstand them. Again, understanding had not been deemed necessary to its purpose. It had ability, and a certain degree of awareness with which to guide that ability, and certain rules to guide the awareness, but that was all. The rules said to find. The awareness said that the phone network, extending as it did throughout much of the city, was an ideal means of finding. The ability fused the entity with the computers controlling that network, slowly spreading its awareness out into Tokyo, allowing it to seek out the traces of its quarry.

When the awareness realized it had been discovered, the rules told it to stop those who knew, but not to reveal itself in doing so. So it held them. The awareness then used its ability to do something to the computers, creating a false record on the surveillance videos so no one would come looking for the missing workers in that room, at least not for some time. Then it returned to its search.

There. The awareness extended itself in a certain direction. There were traces of the quarry in that direction. It had been there, and recently. The entity’s ability did something else, sending a signal. Another would be dispatched now, to scout and, if possible, capture. If it succeeded, the entity’s job would be finished. If not, it would continue to seek for as long as necessary. It would call others to scout, to capture, to divert, to destroy. It would seek and call until either it was found and destroyed, or its quarry was.

That was its purpose.

It would not fail.

# 

The Senshi had insisted that, given her condition, Usagi take Ami's bed, and she was smart enough not to argue about a good thing when she got it. The others gave Setsuna the largest couch, then staked claims to the others; Rei ended up getting the floor.

Usagi had to pester her about that, of course, and she did so right up until the point where she came back from the washroom, to find Rei setting out a makeshift mattress of pillows on the floor in Ami’s room.

“What are you doing?” Usagi asked.

“What does it look like, odango-atama?”

“I meant, why are you in here?”

“It’s my night to keep an eye on you,” Rei said. “Get used to it.”

“But you snore!”

“I do not!”

“You do too!”

“No, I don’t! And who are you to talk about snoring, anyway? You sound like a rusty chainsaw in a lumber mill!”

“I do not snore!”

“I’ve been listening to it every other night for the last four months!”

“I’ve been listening to it nightly for the last three years,” Luna muttered.

“You stay out of this, Luna!”

“Both of you, KNOCK IT OFF!” Makoto yelled from down the hall. Rei and Usagi glared in Makoto’s general direction, stuck out their tongues at her, then tried to go to sleep.

“Pain in the butt,” Rei muttered as she settled down.

“Brat,” Usagi retorted drowsily.

“Crybaby.”

“Wallflower.”

“Cow.”

“Brat.”

“You said that already.”

“I did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“SHUT UP!” Makoto hollered. Usagi grumbled, rolled over so her back was to Rei, and tried to go to sleep. In the living room downstairs, Setsuna looked over at Ami.

“Are they always like this?”

“Perpetually.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t change them for the world.” Ami closed her eyes. She opened them again a moment later when something crashed upstairs. “Well, maybe a little,” she amended.

“Artemis!” Minako shouted from the den.

“Sorry! It’s dark up here!”

“You’re a cat!”

“He’s a klutz,” Luna said from Ami’s room.

“I heard that, Luna!”

“QUIET!” Makoto roared. Downstairs, Setsuna tried to keep from laughing.

“There’s one good thing,” she observed to Ami.

“And that is?”

“If I’m going crazy, at least I’m in the right company for it.” They both started giggling. It was the first real laugh Setsuna could remember. It was... good, and she felt much better for it. Ami looked at her curiously.

“How do you feel? About all of this, I mean.”

“Scared,” Setsuna admitted. “And confused. So much of this doesn’t make any sense, and the idea that I’m supposed to be some sort of mystical superhero...”

“It’s a lot to take in, I know. We all had to go through it, but then, none of us had amnesia at the time. I’m surprised you’re holding up so well.”

“Didn’t you read the letter?” Setsuna tried to laugh. “I may be scared out of my wits, but I’m not going to have a complete nervous breakdown. Even as much as I might want to.”

“We’ll all be here for you, you know.”

“I know.” The frustrated fear that had been lurking in the back of her emptied mind was still there, but between the laughter and the sense of knowing that at least she was not alone, Setsuna could fight it off, now, maybe even enough to sleep. “Good night, Ami. And... thank you.” Ami smiled.

“Good night, Setsuna.”

Then something exploded.

“USAGI!”

“ARTEMIS!”

“It wasn’t me!”

“It wasn’t me either!”

Then they heard screams. From outside.

Downstairs, Ami and Setsuna got up from their respective couches and ran to the window. In Ami’s room, Usagi, Rei, and Luna pressed against each other in their attempts to see outside. In the den, Minako was halfway off her couch and headed for the door while Makoto buried her head under her pillow and began swearing slow, painful retribution on whoever was responsible for this.

Outside, a car was burning. The house directly across the street had a lot of lights on for so late at night—or early in the morning, depending on how one looked at it. After a moment of observation, the Senshi realized that there was only one light in that house, a sickly tinge of green, and it was moving.

Someone ran out through the front door—literally, since the door itself hung from the frame in splinters. Ami recognized Mr. and Mrs. Kiseru, the owners of the house. She didn’t know them all that well, but she didn’t think that running around in the snow in their nightclothes at two in the morning was something they’d be interested in. At least, not without a pretty good reason.

The reason exploded out through the wall of the house, sending the Kiserus flying in a shower of debris and kicked-up snow. It was neither pretty nor good; it was big, ugly, and obviously unfriendly. It looked a bit like a huge, mobile mass of stringy green fungus compressed into a vaguely human shape, but there were also bits and pieces of metal and plastic sticking out from its body. At this distance, none of the watching Senshi could tell what those bits and pieces might be. The thing was also glowing a bright green.

“Stay here,” Ami and Rei said at the same time. Upstairs, Usagi pouted but did as she was told; in the living room, Setsuna just stared at the creature outside and nodded dumbly. So much for feeling better.

Ami ran into Minako and Rei on the stairs.

“Wrong way, Ami-chan!”

“We’re not using the front door,” Ami replied. “Somebody might see us. We can go out by the balcony off the den.”

“Okay,” Minako said. “About time!” She turned sharply in a vaguely military manner.

“It’s ‘face,’ not time,” Rei muttered, following her back up the stairs.

“There might be a physics equation in there,” Ami remarked. “You know, face and time?” Rei groaned.

“Don’t _you_ start.”

The three Senshi trooped into the den, transforming as they crossed the room. Mercury went for the door while Venus and Mars tried to get Makoto up.

“Go away,” she growled.

“No can do,” Venus replied. “Up and at ’em, girl. We’ve got a monster to mash.”

“Have fun. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Come on, Mako-chan,” Mars insisted. “We have a job to do.”

“You can take that job, and shitthat’scold!” Mercury had finally gotten the door open, letting an icy gust of winter into the den. Makoto was on her feet and then behind the couch in a flash of green flannel and fluffy blankets. “Close the door!”

“Just hurry up and transform,” Venus ordered her. “We’re wearing less than you are, and you don’t see _me_ complaining about the cold, do you?” She prayed that Makoto didn’t notice the faint chatter of her teeth. Whatever magical backups this transformation had been given with regards to environment, a miniskirt was still not the best thing to wear in the middle of winter.

Her prayer was answered, it seemed. It took some doing for Makoto to find her transformation pen among all the blankets she was carrying, but a moment later, Jupiter joined her friends as they stepped out onto the balcony.

“Okay,” Mercury said as they leapt up to the roof and surveyed the situation. The creature was standing a short distance away from the two humans, its green glow reduced to a few fast-fading sparkles, the misshapen head turning about slowly as if it were trying to find something. “Venus, Mars, you attack and draw that thing away from the Kiserus. Don’t get too close, but keep its attention on you. Jupiter, you get Mr. Kiseru; I’ll get his wife.”

“Right,” the others responded. Mars and Venus lifted off, touching down a short distance from the green creature.

“Hey, stringbean!” The ugly head turned around. “Yeah you, the walking fungus farm! Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s impolite to... whoa!” Venus cut off her speech in a hurry as something—two somethings, actually—thin and glowing shot out of a metal object lodged in the creature’s right shoulder. The projectiles sailed past both her and Mars to sink deep into a snowbank, sending up a hissing cloud of steam and melting half of the piled snow in a matter of seconds.

“You want to play rough?” Mars asked. “Fine by me. Mars Flame Sniper!”

The fiery arrow took the creature straight in the head, knocking it over backwards into the snow. Beyond the toppling green goon, Mars could see that Jupiter and Mercury had already gotten the two homeowners out of harm’s way.

“It’s toast,” Venus reported from somewhere behind Mars.

“Not entirely,” Mars disagreed, watching the creature twitch in the snow. “It’s not going anywhere just yet, but I think it’s still got some fight left in it.”

“Not that,” Venus told her, coming up from the melted snowbank with something in her hand. “Those things it shot at us were pieces of toast!”

“Toast? As in, twice-baked bread, peanut butter and jelly, the only thing Usagi ever seems to eat for breakfast? That kind of toast?”

“Burnt to a crisp,” Venus affirmed, holding up a charred slice of what was indeed toast, black as coal, still steaming after its impact in the snow.

“That gets my vote for weirdest attack of the year,” Mars muttered, turning back to the rising monster. Now that she could see it more closely, the metal thing in the creature’s arm was easily identifiable as a garden-variety two-slice toaster. There were a lot of household appliances wedged into the shifting organic mass that made up the rest of this unusual enemy’s body. Mars could identify a blender and an electric eggbeater on the end of the left arm, and a microwave in the thing’s belly. Then the toaster fired again, and she and Venus had to step out of the way of the deadly, edible barrage.

“SUPREME THUNDER!”

The creature half-turned before staggering under the electric assault. It fired off another volley of toast, missing completely as Jupiter and Mercury leapt over and around to rejoin their friends.

“That wasn’t what I think it was, was it?” Jupiter asked.

“Nuclear toast,” Venus confirmed. “Or something like that. Mercury, what _is_ this thing?”

“I don’t know,” Mercury admitted, calling up her visor. “Its organic composition is very strange, but it doesn’t seem to have any of the usual negative energies. It doesn’t have much of anything, for that matter, not even in the way of a brain, and what it does have appears to be... decentralized. No major internal organs, no obvious controlling mechanism like the Black Moon droids; it’s all spread out over the entire body.”

“Which means we have to take out most of or all of the body to stop it, right?”

“I think so.”

“Then I’ve got something it should like,” Jupiter grinned. “Interrupt MY sleep, will you? SPARKLING WIDE PRESSURE!” And she let the attack fly.

The creature watched the crackling energy sizzle its way through the air. Right before impact, the door of the microwave imbedded in the thing’s chest popped open; Jupiter’s attack hissed straight into the cavity beyond, and the door swung shut behind it. There was a bright flare, and lights on the appliances all over the thing’s body lit up. It raised its left hand towards the Senshi, the blades in the base of the blender whirring madly before a huge funnel of wind leapt out from the glass, throwing snow and four girls in miniskirts halfway down the street.

Jupiter looked up at the others from the remains of the snowman that had broken her fall.

“Right. Electrical appliances. Silly me.” She glanced over at Venus. “Your turn.”

“Let me think, let me think. Something to hit the whole body... Okay. VENUS LOVE AND BEAUTY SHOCK!”

The eggbeaters beneath the blender started up as the attack got near. The creature plunged its hand directly into the energy, and Venus watched in dismay as the spinning metal dispersed her attack into a hundred separate pieces, none of which went anywhere near the monster itself.

“BURNING MANDALA!”

The blender began whirring again, and the blazing rings vanished in a veritable blizzard.

“SHINE AQUA ILLUSION!”

The toaster unloaded a rapid-fire barrage of white-hot bread, boiling away the geyser of sub-zero liquid in mid-flight.

“Hoookay,” Venus said. “The usual stuff doesn’t seem to be working.”

“I almost wish we’d let Usagi transform,” Rei admitted. “She’s a ditz and a half, but she’s probably stronger than any two of us put together.”

“We’d better figure out how to stop this thing quick,” Mercury replied, “or you may get your wish.” She pointed at the living room window, where Usagi had joined Setsuna to watch the battle’s progress, or the lack thereof. The expression on Usagi’s face clearly said that she wasn’t liking what she was seeing, and pregnant or not, she wasn’t going to sit by and let her friends get trounced by someone’s reject science experiment for much longer.

The Senshi weren’t the only ones who looked where Mercury was pointing. The creature’s head twisted around as well, and a large, high-wattage lightbulb fused into the back of its head lit up immediately. The rest of the body swung around, and energy began to build up in front of the toaster.

Inside the living room, Setsuna and Usagi stared apprehensively at that growing green glow. The idea of being shot at by a toaster would have been laughable, except that this was not your everyday breakfast appliance. This was an Evil Toaster, an Appliance of Death, and right now, it was looking very scary indeed.

“No!” Mercury shouted. “MERCURY AQUA...”

Too late. With an earsplitting roar, the toaster disgorged a green surge nearly as tall as the entity it was attached to, driving the stringy mass backwards through the snow from the sheer force of the blast. A wall of roiling energy ploughed through the air towards the window, lighting up the sky as clear as the sun at noon.

In the moment between the thunderous firing of the attack and its impact with the window, something clicked in Setsuna’s head. She turned, lifted Usagi, and jumped to one side as hard as she could. They had just barely cleared the edge of the window when the entire frame and a goodly chunk of the wall it was attached to blew apart.

Usagi screamed.

“Venus.” Mercury spoke in a flat voice that felt colder than the snow. In the wake of the severe damage just inflicted on her grandparents' house, her face was expressionless, her right hand clenched into a quivering fist.

“Y-yes?”

“We need to coordinate to stop this thing. Use your Beam Shower and aim for the weapons; I’ll do the same with my Aqua Rhapsody.” She glanced at Mars and Jupiter. “After we’ve busted its weapons, you two follow up. Mars, your Flame Sniper seemed to hurt it before, so use it again. Jupiter, use your Thunder Dragon so it can’t harness the energy like last time.”

“Right,” Jupiter agreed quickly. Mars nodded in silence, breathing a sigh of relief when Mercury’s eyes turned back to their enemy. Explosive anger was something Mars could deal with, but Mercury’s icy rage scared her.

“Go,” Mercury said flatly. *My house.* “MERCURY...” *My friends.* “...AQUA...” *Damn you.* “...RHAPSODY!”

“CRESCENT BEAM SHOWER!”

The entity turned as what looked like half a hundred glowing jets of molten gold streaked towards it. Its shoulder weapon responded with the same rapid-fire technique it had used to dispel Mercury’s Aqua Illusion, but as the water boiled off, the energy beams Venus had launched continued on. The creature didn’t have enough time to launch a second counterattack as the beams drove home, shattering bits and pieces of its conglomerate body. The toaster crumpled in on itself and exploded; the blender shattered; the lightbulb on its head burst; the door of the microwave cracked.

“MARS FLAME SNIPER!”

“SUPREME THUNDER DRAGON!”

The creature, still staggering from the first wave, flew backwards as Mars sent a second burning arrow into its head. It fell to a hand and one knee, looking up as the incandescent mass of the dragon approached, far too large and generalized an energy source for it to absorb. In a desperate move, the entity raised its last functioning weapon, the eggbeater.

Big mistake.

The dragon funneled straight into the metal of the appliance and vanished. The remaining lights on the creature’s body flared, and for a moment, it looked as if it had successfully absorbed this attack as well. Then the entire stringy green mass exploded outwards on a wall of lightning.

# 

Elsewhere, the entity infesting the phone company computers calmly noted the destruction of its counterpart. Its response was to send out a signal, different than the one which had summoned its ill-fated ally. The loss of the scout was not a possibility that had been included in the watcher’s simple guidelines; it would need new orders before it knew how to proceed.

The orders were not long in arriving.

The scout had successfully located the quarry, but had been destroyed before it could secure the target. Additional individual scouts would likely only be destroyed as well, and neither was sending a group an option, for by the time such a force could be raised, the quarry would no longer be in the area where it had been detected. Finding the quarry in the future would require a different means than those the watcher had employed before, a means that, as yet, did not exist.

Therefore, the new order was to create observation centers throughout the city. Once prepared, a scout would be called to each. Whatever force had destroyed the first scout would undoubtedly respond to the appearance of others. The watcher’s task was to observe and transmit all possible data on this hostile force to assist in the formulation of new plans.

The new rules were in place. The awareness studied them. Its ability set to work.

# 

Mercury watched impassively as the electrified fragments of the destroyed creature fell before leading the others back inside. She used the door. She was really just too angry to care if anyone noticed later that the Senshi had gone inside and not come out.

The picture window, part of the wall, the living room, and everything in it had been pulverized. The glass that had made up the window was now a layer of fine, dusty powder along the floor and far wall, and the furniture had been blown into mulch and a blizzard of tiny fabric strands. The plaster walls and ceiling were cracked, the floor gouged deeply in the middle of the room where the beam had smashed forward. Anything even remotely breakable was broken, leaving behind only a few bits of disjointed metal, bent and twisted out of their original shapes.

The path of destruction continued right through the length of the house, a trail of annihilated rooms which ended with an outward-bulging hole in the opposite wall. Nor was the damage confined to that part of the house; just about everything made of glass was cracked or completely shattered as a result of the deafening explosion.

*Mother is not going to be amused,* Mercury thought with a sick feeling in her stomach. The things she'd hidden away in the basement to keep safe from Usagi might still be all right, but that hadn't saved any number of other keepsakes. She resolved that when the Senshi finally tracked down whatever had sent that thing, she was going to let it know just how unhappy she was by cutting the cost of those items and the repairs of the house out of whatever it had in the way of a hide. Slowly. And close to the bone.

Usagi and Setsuna were leaning against the wall before the stairs, both of them lightly dusted with the aftermath of the blast. All thoughts of practicing her vivisection skills vanished as Mercury saw them.

“Hi guys,” Usagi greeted her friends wearily. “Having fun without me?”

“Very funny, odango-atama,” Mars growled, detransforming and kneeling beside her friend. The look on her face made it hard to tell whether Rei wanted to hug Usagi or hit her. Knowing Rei, she would probably settle for doing both.

“It depends on your definition of fun,” Venus replied, stretching slowly with both hands on the small of her back. “Getting thrown through a snowbank in the middle of winter wearing _this_-” she indicated her dripping fuku with a wave “-is not my idea of a good time.” Venus frowned at the puddle growing on the floor and shimmered back into Minako.

“Better?” Usagi asked.

“It’s a start. At least I’m dry, now. How about you two?”

“I’m okay. Dusty and a bit bruised, but nothing a bath and a good night’s sleep won’t fix.” Usagi glanced at Setsuna. “But I think Mercury should take a look at Setsuna.”

“I’m fine,” Setsuna disagreed, shifting with a pained expression.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mercury told her, recalling her visor. “There’s a lot of bruising along your back and right side. How did that happen?”

“Setsuna grabbed me and jumped us both clear right before that thing blew up the living room,” Usagi explained. “She was between me and the blast, and I think she caught the tip of it. How bad is it?”

“Just a minute.” Mercury pressed gently against Setsuna’s right shoulder, and the older girl winced. “Sorry,” Mercury apologized. Setsuna smiled weakly.

“Do that again,” she said in a voice that would have been menacing if it were stronger, “and I’ll give you what I gave your mirror.” She almost laughed, then breathed sharply.

“Not with that arm,” Mercury told her. “Your right shoulder’s broken, and two of your ribs on that side are pretty close to joining it. Nothing else internal seems to be damaged, but you’ve got a mild concussion right back here.” Her fingers brushed very lightly against the lower right side of Setsuna’s skull.

“Just what I need,” Setsuna remarked wryly. “One more blow to the head.”

“Actually,” Mercury said thoughtfully, “this might work in our favor.”

“What do you mean?” Jupiter asked.

“I’ll explain it later,” Mercury replied, reverting to her normal self. Ami looked absolutely wrecked. “For now, we’d better see if the phones are working. Setsuna needs to get to a hospital, and I think we should send Usagi- chan along for a quick examination, too.”

“Hey! I’m not the one who got hit by...”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Ami told Usagi with a direct look at her belly.

“Oh.”

“I’ll try the phone upstairs,” Makoto said as Jupiter vanished in a cloud of energy.

“And I’ll see if Setsuna’s cellular has any better luck,” Minako added, following her up the stairs.

“Are you thinking what I think you are?” Rei asked Ami. “About Setsuna, I mean.”

“It gives us an excuse that might actually work,” Ami replied, sitting down to Setsuna’s right with a tired sigh.

“Long night, huh?” Usagi yawned.

“And a busy one,” Rei added.

“If it’s any help,” Setsuna said, “next time something like this happens, I’ll try to drop in on you at a more reasonable hour.”

“’Next’ time?” Ami asked. They all laughed softly, stopping when they heard tires squealing out on the street. Ami frowned as a car door slammed shut and footsteps came up the front steps. “I hope that’s not who I think...”

The door swung open to reveal Mrs. Mizuno, still wearing that killer dress. She looked at the four young ladies sitting by the stairs in their nightclothes, the massive hole in the front wall of her family’s house, the tunnel of obliteration that had been a living room and several other rooms besides, and then back at her daughter. She did not speak, but the expression on her face said plenty.

“You’d better say something fast,” Usagi whispered under her breath.

For once, though, Ami’s command of the language deserted her, and the greeting she stammered out could have been one Usagi would have used.

“Um... hi, Mom. How was the rest of the party?”

 

# 

**Makoto** : Ami-chan’s a bit busy with her mother right now, but she left some notes, so I guess I get to fill in for her. Today, we learned that...

_(Usagi pops up in front of her)_

**Usagi** : I know! I know! Ooh, ooh, ooh! Me! Pick me!  _(Waves her hand around like she was in class, then gets up and recites)_  ‘Never stand in front of a loaded toaster.’

**Makoto**  (sweatdrops): Um... well, I guess we _did_ sort of learn that...  _(Thinks to herself: Man, now I know how Haruna-sensei must have felt...)_

**Rei**   _(leaning in from screen left)_ : That sounds suspiciously like something Mina-chan would have said, odango-atama. Have you been stealing her lines?

**Minako**   _(leaning in from screen right)_ : Excuse me?  _(Best DeNiro voice)_  Are you talking about me?

**Rei** : Never mind.

**Usagi**   _(pushing both of them out of her way)_ : Get out of here, you two. This is MY segment, remember?

_(Rei pushes back on screen)_

**Rei** : Since when is it just your segment? It’s called ‘Sailor Says,’ not ‘Usagi Says’ or ‘Sailor Moon Says’ or ‘Odango-Atama Says.’

_(Minako pushes back on screen as well)_

**Minako** : Yeah, since when? You know what they say: ‘Cher and Sharon Stone.’  _(The others look at her)_

**Artemis** _(poking his head down from the top of the screen)_ : I’m fluent in Minakorisms. Allow me to translate: ‘Share and share alike.’

**Minako** : Get out of here, Artemis!  _(Kicks him into Usagi’s face)_  Oops.

**Usagi** : Ouch! That hurt!

**Artemis**   _(weakly)_ : No kidding.

**Usagi** : Take this, traitor!  _(Throws Artemis back at Minako, hitting Rei instead)_

**Rei** : Ouch! Why, you little...  _(Jumps Usagi in one of those little dust-ups. Minako gets dragged in, and a lot of unprintables start shooting out. Someone’s hand takes hold of the camera and slides it to the left, revealing Makoto again.)_

**Makoto** : Okay. What we _really_ learned today was that hosting a slumber party for the Senshi is almost guaranteed to get your house demolished.  _(Looks at the card)_  Not much of a moral, Ami-chan...

_(Ami pops up)_

**Ami** : Sorry, but what did you expect? My house got gutted, for Kami’s sake!

**Mrs. Mizuno**   _(voice only)_ : Ami! Get back here!

**Ami**   _(blanching)_ : Oh, dear. Coming, Mother!  _(She slides back off screen, leaving Makoto to shake her head and wonder)_

_(Chibi Daniel Jackson wanders on screen)_

**Chibi Jackson**   _(speaking in English)_ : Excuse me, but could you tell me where the nearest Stargate is?

**Makoto** : Um, sorry, my English isn’t very good.  _(Thinks to herself: He’s kinda cute. Looks a little like my senpai...)_

**Chibi Jackson**   _(switching to Japanese)_ : Sorry. I asked if you could direct me to the nearest Stargate.

**Makoto** : I’m not sure I know what that is.  _(Latches on to his arm)_ Maybe you could explain it to me?  _(Bats her eyelashes)_

**Chibi Jackson**   _(sweatdrops)_ : Uh...

_(Usagi sticks her head on screen)_

**Usagi** : What are YOU still doing here? I thought I got rid of you and the rest last time!

**Makoto** : Shut up, odango-atama.  _(Extends a foot and kicks Usagi off screen)_  Now, where were we?  _(Smiles at Chibi Jackson right before Agumon appears)_  Aaaahh! What’s that!

**Agumon** : I think I’m lost. Did either of you see a boy with goggles and goofy hair around here?

**Makoto**   _(from behind Chibi Jackson)_ : A talking... lizard?

_(Usagi pops up again)_

**Usagi** : All right, who’s letting you interlopers in here?

_(Cut to a shot of the writer standing next to the stage door. He blinks and grins weakly when he realizes Usagi is looking at him.)_

**the Judge** : Er... hi.

**Usagi**   _(ominously)_ : We need to talk.

**the Judge**   _(sweating)_ : Uh, yeah. Um... look over there!  _(As soon as Usagi’s head is turned, dives out the door and slams it shut behind him)_

**Usagi** : Hey!  _(Hammering on the door)_  Get back here!

_05/01/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)_

_Now that I’ve dodged the wrath of the Rabbit of the Moon for another day..._

_Some of you may be wondering if I’m going to do a day-by-day, play-by-play for the entire year. Believe me, I’m not. I can compress time and space when I have to; the only reason New Year’s got two whole episodes is because it’s fairly important. Time should skip ahead a little quicker next time._

_Speaking of next time, expect to see:_   
_-More appliance-wielding fungus creatures._   
_-A few more threads from the web the Court has woven around Setsuna._   
_-And a few surprises—which probably won’t be THAT surprising._

_This installment should have been up sooner than it was, but with the holidays and everything... well, you know how it is._

_Until next time, then._


	3. Trouble's Brewing:  Something's in the Kitchen at the Diner

# 

Shigeru danced unsteadily down the street, a half-empty bottle in one hand and an off-key tune on his lips.

It was either very early or very late—he couldn’t really remember which. He couldn’t really remember much of anything over the last few hours, except a general sense of celebration, lots of cheering, and several rounds of drinks. He did remember getting kissed by a number of very pretty ladies he was pretty sure he had never met before, and he vaguely recalled carrying on an animated conversation with a potted plant, but most of the rest of the evening was a blur.

All in all, it had been a wonderful New Year’s Eve.

The party had been somewhere between the ‘going strong’ and ‘beginning to wind down’ stages when Shigeru had left, remembering that he had to open up at work the next day, and reasoning in that fuzzy, alcohol-inspired way that the sooner he opened for business, the sooner he could close and go home.

Which is why 4:39 in the morning found him fiddling with the key to his place of business, the Cafe Mocha.

And why, when he saw the general mess waiting for him, Shigeru dismissed the broken cups and spilled foodstuffs as just another mess to clean up, and the coiling growths of strange, green fungus as one more urban pest to combat.

And why, when the alien substance lashed out for him, Shigeru never even bothered to shout. He vanished through the glass door of the cafe without a sound, leaving the door ajar with the keys still in place, the half-empty bottle falling from his hand to shatter and spill its contents on the cold concrete.

A short time later, more tendrils emerged from the darkened cafe, sweeping up the broken glass and absorbing the spilled alcohol before withdrawing. The last fungoid appendage deftly removed the keys from the lock and closed the door behind it as it pulled back. Another moment passed, and the sign hanging inside the door was repositioned to read “Come In, We’re OPEN.”

After all, when one is serving bait, presentation IS everything.

# 

“Tadaima!” Usagi stood half-in, half-out of the doorway, waiting for a response while Luna slipped past her and into the house. After a moment, she added, “Hello? Is anyone home?”

“I’m in the kitchen, dear. Try to keep the noise down; your father’s upstairs sleeping off last night.”

“Oh.” Usagi moved aside to let Rei follow her inside. They were in the middle of kicking off their snow-rimmed boots when Usagi realized that she had been in the house for nearly a minute without seeing so much as a drop of annoyance from her squirt brother’s squirt gun arsenal. “Where’s Shingo?”

“He went to Mika’s after lunch,” Ikuko replied, stepping out of the kitchen with a towel and dish in her hands. “Hello, Rei-chan.”

“Ma’am,” Rei said with a polite, nervous nod. *This stupid idea of yours had better work, odango-atama!*

“So,” Ikuko continued, “how many different New Year’s celebrations did you girls see last night?”

“We had a couple of unexpected guests,” Usagi said, “so we didn’t get much further than Tokyo.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Do you remember Meiou Setsuna?” Ikuko paused in the middle of her dish-drying, frowning slightly.

“I seem to recall... wasn’t she the young lady with dark hair and eyes? A few years older than you, and didn’t say much?”

“That’s her. She called us from the airport and stopped by Ami’s place a little before midnight. I’m surprised you remembered her.”

“Well, we only met once or twice,” Ikuko admitted. “She seemed like a nice girl, but I never really got the chance to get to know her. I never did quite understand why someone her age was hanging around with the rest of you.”

“She sort of looks after Haruka, Michiru, and Hotaru,” Usagi said hastily. Rei burst out laughing. “What’s so funny?”

“Haruka would string you up by your pigtails if she heard you suggesting that she couldn’t take care of herself.”

“Well, it’s the truth,” Usagi stammered. “Sort of. You won’t tell her I said that, will you?”

“Give me back those manga you stole from me, and I’ll think about it.”

“I did NOT steal any manga from you!”

“Issues 24, 29, and 30?” Ikuko asked. Rei nodded. “They’re up on her dresser. She’ll give them back before you leave.”

“But I haven’t finished reading them yet!” Usagi wailed.

“Well then,” Ikuko said in satisfaction, “you can use the extra time to do some studying.” Ignoring her daughter’s horrified expression, Ikuko went on. “So who was the other visitor? Anyone we can expect to call on us?”

“I hope not,” Usagi muttered. “I can live without more things like THAT showing up on the doorstep, thank you very much.” Ikuko frowned.

“That’s not a very polite thing to say about a guest, Usagi.”

“I wasn’t trying to be polite, and it wasn’t a guest. Ami’s house looks like a train derailed and went through the living room because of that thing.”

Ikuko stopped polishing the plate. “I see. One of THOSE.” She gave both girls a visual once-over, absently adjusting Usagi’s collar. “But you’re all right?”

“The doctor said so.”

“Doctor?!” In the kitchen, Luna choked on her milk.

*Nice going, Usagi.* Rei looked around. “Why don’t we sit down? This could take a while.”

They moved into the living room, Rei taking a chair while mother and daughter took the couch. Ikuko set her dish and cloth on the table and turned to Usagi. The look on her face could have driven nails down from across the room.

“Tell me everything.”

“We were getting ready to go to sleep,” Usagi began, cautiously crossing her fingers and silently praying that she could keep straight the details of the story Ami had put together. “I think it was about two or two-thirty, and Setsuna was staying over as well. She and Ami got the couches downstairs, and the rest of us were in the upstairs rooms. I was getting a drink from the kitchen when we heard something explode. We went for the windows and saw the Senshi fighting this... thing... outside.” Rei took up the story.

“It went on for a while, and then the whatever-it-was fired some sort of energy beam. It was facing Ami’s house when it went off; the Senshi got out of the way, but the house... well, you get the idea.”

“And you, Ami, and Setsuna were in the living room?”

“Yes. I was too scared to move, and Ami sort of looked like she was going to shoot lasers from her eyes or something—I’ve never seen her so angry—so Setsuna pushed us both out of the way before the living room blew up. Ami and I got out in one piece, but Setsuna was between us and the blast, and she took the worst of it. We tried to call the hospitals, but with the phone lines acting up... well, Ami’s mother got home from a dinner party a few minutes later, and she drove the three of us to the hospital.”

“The rest of us got dressed and walked over,” Rei said. “Setsuna was just being moved out of the emergency room when we arrived.”

“Is she all right?”

“A lot of minor burns and bruising on her back,” Usagi replied, “plus a cracked rib and a dislocated shoulder. And a lot of medical gibberish. It didn’t seem too serious until we went in to see her.” Usagi paused, realizing that her eyes were actually starting to tear up.

“Usagi?”

“I’m okay, mom. Really.” Usagi sniffled and brushed the tears aside, looking up with a smile. “See? All better.”

“Setsuna hit her head when she fell,” Rei explained, sparing a sidelong glance at Usagi, as if to criticize her for overacting her part. “It really didn’t look that bad, but when we went in to see her, Setsuna didn’t recognize us. And she couldn’t remember much of anything about herself, either.”

“Oh my.”

“We spent a couple of hours telling her what we could, but the doctors said that it could take days or weeks or months before Setsuna really remembers anything. Or it could take longer. Or she might never remember.” Usagi took a deep breath. “They’ll do what they can while she stays in the hospital, but they didn’t seem too enthusiastic. They’ll be discharging Setsuna in about a week—maybe two, depending on how quickly she heals—and there isn’t really anything else they can do to help. They said that the best thing to do is to get her back into familiar surroundings and her usual routine as soon as possible.”

“The problem,” Rei went on, “is that Setsuna doesn’t really HAVE what you could call familiar surroundings. Michiru is still on tour in Europe; we managed to get a call through to Haruka this morning and explain what had happened, and they’re all on their way back, but she didn’t think they could get here for at least a week, maybe longer, and Setsuna could be out of the hospital by then. She’s between jobs, she finished school years ago, and she doesn’t have any family. Any friends she has besides us, she never mentioned.” Ikuko looked at the two girls suspiciously.

“Why do I get the feeling this is leading somewhere?”

“The doctors said that leaving Setsuna alone would be a very bad idea,” Usagi said. “The others are with her at the hospital right now, telling her what they can. Rei and I will be headed back later on, and we’ll all be visiting her as often as we can, but we have school, and Setsuna needs a place to stay once she gets out of the hospital. Even if Haruka, Michiru, and Hotaru got home tomorrow, they all have school, too; Setsuna would have to spend days by herself in that house. She couldn’t have stayed at Ami-chan’s even if it were still in one piece, because neither Ami nor her mother are home during the day. Mako-chan lives by herself, and both of Mina-chan’s parents work.”

“So of course,” Ikuko finished, “that leaves us or Rei-chan. And since I’ve met her grandfather—no offense, dear— ”

“None taken.”

“—that really just leaves us. Very clever, Usagi.”

“I liked it,” Usagi mumbled, looking at the floor.

“Oh, stop pouting. Of COURSE Setsuna can stay with us.”

“You mean it? Thanks, mom.” Usagi latched on to her mother in a happy hug. “You’re the best.”

“She is going to have to sleep in your room, though,” Ikuko added with a dry smile. “I can air out the spare mattress in the attic, but we really don’t have all that much extra space.”

“I don’t mind,” Usagi said immediately.

“That may not be such a good idea,” Rei observed lightly. “Are you aware that your daughter snores like a passing thunderstorm?”

“I do NOT snore!” Usagi protested, half-turning where she sat.

“She gets it from Kenji,” Ikuko said, laughing. “Between the two of them, there are nights when I’m surprised that the windows don’t rattle.”

“M-O-M!” Usagi wailed. “That’s not fair!”

“As Mina-chan might try to say, ‘all’s fair in love and war.’” Ikuko tweaked her daughter’s nose, still laughing. Rei joined her while Usagi pouted again. Ikuko paused in mid-laugh, that vague look of dawning recollection crossing her face a second time. “Speaking of which, something came for you in the mail this morning. Hang on a minute.”

Ikuko got up and left the room, taking the more-or-less dry plate and the cloth with her. She returned a short time later, having traded in the mock china and tattered dishtowel for a small parcel that fit rather neatly in the palm of her hand. Luna trailed after Ikuko as she sat down and handed the little package to Usagi.

The object, quite heavy for its small size, had a square bottom, its sides rising just a little short of twice the length, all wrapped in royal blue paper with some very intricate folding at the top. A plain white card, tucked under some of those folds and with the name “Tsukino Usagi” scrawled on it, was the only kind of identification, and Usagi felt her heart skip a beat as she looked at that card. She was no expert on writing, but the elaborate, flowing script looked too much like the calligraphy from Setsuna’s mysterious letter to be coincidence.

The card came away very easily. It had not been taped or fixed to the package in any way, merely anchored by the folds of the wrapping, and when Usagi tugged on those folds, the parcel quite literally unwrapped itself, exposing the crinkled white inside of the paper and the plain cardboard box within. The ‘box’ was actually more of a ‘sleeve,’ covering something which was fixed to the black plastic base.

“What’s this?” Rei said suddenly, picking up and smoothing out the paper. There were words—a poem?—written on the inside:   
  
Eternal infinity, all space and time;  
Paradox and enigma, wrapped up in rhyme.  
Ending in fire and therein also to start;  
The Egg of the Phoenix—keep it close to your heart.

The three women looked up at each other, down at the paper, and then back to the still-hidden object. Usagi very carefully slid the cardboard away—and came very close to dropping the whole thing when she saw what was inside. All three of them gasped in astonished wonder, and Luna’s jaw very nearly hit the floor.

It was a crystal sculpture of an egg in the instant of its hatching. The shell had shattered into four large fragments, with many smaller pieces scattered about between their jagged edges, all of them little thicker than a piece of paper; the top of the egg was in perhaps a dozen different parts, suspended on wire so fine that they appeared to be floating. And there, inside the fractured shell, was the uncurling form of a strange, beautiful bird. Its wings were pressing outwards against the shell as its head rose up, beak open as if to cry out—in wonder? Any lesser emotion would not have done justice to the expression on the tiny, flickering features, and that detail was not confined to the firebird’s face alone. Curling plumes rolled off its neck, wings, and tail like frozen flame; every single feather seemed to leap out at the eye. The eggshell was clear crystal, but the phoenix itself was tinted with deep reds and a bright orange so vividly reminiscent of fire that Usagi almost thought that she could feel her hand grow warm.

“I don’t... it’s... it’s beautiful.” Usagi quickly set the piece down on the coffee table, directly in a ray of sunlight which set its colors to dancing, just like real flame.

“Why did you do that?” Rei asked, half entranced by the subtly shifting colors of the egg and its occupant. *It’s almost like watching the fire at the shrine,* she thought, having to fight down an impulse to extend her mind towards the effect.

“I’m afraid I might drop it.” With some effort, Usagi pulled her eyes away from the glowing sculpture and looked at her mother. “Who sent this?”

“I have no idea,” Ikuko replied. “It was sitting next to the paper this morning. I thought it might be something from Mamoru...” She stopped when Usagi shook her head. “You don’t think he sent it?”

“He would have mentioned it in his letter if he had,” Usagi said. “I’m sure of it. And besides...” She looked at the beautiful gift. “I can’t begin to imagine how much something like this must cost. My ring was one thing, but Mamo- chan’s still paying for his apartment at college, and... there’s just no way he could have afforded it.” There was also the matter of the handwriting to consider, but Usagi couldn’t explain that to her mother.

“And besides which,” Rei added, “Mamoru knows better than to buy anything even remotely breakable for you.”

“That too,” Usagi agreed without a trace of anger. She looked at the tiny phoenix again, taking a deep breath. “Mom, we have to get back to the hospital to let Setsuna and the others know she can stay here. Could you put this in my room? Somewhere I won’t knock it over?”

“Of course.”

“And tell Shingo that if he goes anywhere near it, he’ll never get out of this house alive.” Ikuko smiled.

“I’ll do that, too.” Then she glanced down at Luna. “And that goes double for you, Luna.”

“Meow.” *Talking to me as if I were Artemis... honestly!*

Usagi and Rei retrieved their coats and winter gear—and Usagi rolled her eyes when Ikuko added a scarf and a good-bye kiss, cautioning her daughter to keep warm. Then they were walking side-by-side down the freshly ploughed sidewalk, Luna keeping pace a short distance ahead.

“So,” Rei said at last. “Did you recognize the handwriting?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t like this. First they—whoever ‘they’ are—do something to Setsuna, then they send her a letter, and now I get... Luna, have you ever seen something like that before?”

“I’m sorry, Usagi. I’ve never seen or heard of anything quite like that little sculpture before. I AM quite certain that it’s more than just a piece of blown glass and shaved crystal, but as to _what_...” She shook her furry head. “Maybe Ami can learn something with her computer.”

“And maybe it’ll start snowing moochi, too.” Usagi sighed.

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Rei said. “For all we know, they could be listening right now.”

“You’re just being paranoid,” Usagi countered. “You really should read something less gloomy than all those scrolls about snooping spirits and vengeful gods.”

“It’s part of my training. Besides, how CAN I read anything else when you’ve got all my manga at...” Rei stopped walking and blinked. “Of all the... I forgot to get those before we left!”

“Really?” Usagi’s face was a study in sympathetic innocence. Rei almost bought it, except for the mischievous twinkle in those wide blue eyes.

“You little sneak! You KNEW I’d forgotten about them, and you deliberately didn’t remind me!”

“Of course.” Usagi grinned. “Luna’s been drilling me for months on everything she thinks a princess should know, so I figured it was about time I put some of it to good use.”

“Stealing from your friends wasn’t what I had in mind,” Luna groaned.

“It’s not stealing, it’s practice.” She closed her eyes and started to recite. “’A ruler must employ every weapon available in matters of diplomacy. For those who are honest, truth will suffice, but against those who wield the tools of deceit, a true queen must be ready to meet them in kind, turning their own lies back on them.’ If I can fool you, Rei,” Usagi gloated, “I can fool anybody.” Then she giggled. “Besides, this way I get to read all three mangas again before I have to give them back—and there are still those four issues hidden under my bed that Mom doesn’t know about!”

# 

Anon sighed. The bus was late again. If this hadn’t been a daily event, he could have shrugged it off as fallout from New Year’s parties, but as it was, he was going to be late to the office again. His supervisor, Ms. Norah the-h-is- silent Karenson, was not the most understanding woman in the world at the best of times, and after nearly a month of his being just barely on time or outright late... oh well.

Anon raised his head curiously as a teenaged blonde girl with unusual hair went running by at high speed, laughing and casting odd looks over her shoulder. A white blur followed her at even higher speed, before it exploded into a white bump on the side of a telephone pole. Two more snowballs followed the first in rapid succession, and then another girl—this one with very long, very dark hair—ran by, shrieking deadly imprecations and scooping up snow for another projectile without slowing down.

A small black cat bounded up atop the mailbox that stood on the corner, its eyes following the two girls and a growling, groaning sort of sound issuing from its throat. The noise reminded Anon of similar sounds his mother used to make when he and his brothers were on the verge of getting totally out of hand as kids. He had to chuckle.

“Friends of yours?” he asked the cat, not really expecting an answer.

The cat gave vent to an almost human-sounding sigh of vexation before leaping down from the mailbox to follow the two girls.

# 

The Cafe Mocha was one of those places that featured both indoor and outdoor tables and served a variety of dishes which didn’t quite add up to a full meal. In the summer—and some of the better days of spring or autumn—most of the clientele remained outside, placing their orders with one of the waiters or waitresses and never entering the actual cafe. During the winter months, the external tables and chairs were packed away to await better weather, while the Cafe served hot chocolate and other warm, sweet, not-quite meals to its customers as they defrosted in out of the cold.

On this particular winter day, the very first of the year, the Cafe seemed to be doing business as usual. Customers drifted in by ones or twos, taking seats and placing orders which were quickly filled, then lingering over hot drinks and warm sandwiches or pastries before paying at the counter and leaving.

But business was most definitely not ‘as usual’ today.

The back door connected to the Cafe’s kitchen was jammed open, allowing the chilly winter air to periodically gust into the building, along with the occasional sheet of loose snow and ice pellets. Since the kitchen was separated from the front of the Cafe by several walls and doors, none of the customers complained of the draft.

Neither did the kitchen staff. Employers the world over would have paid handsomely to learn how Shigeru inspired such loyalty in his workforce. So would Shigeru, if he had been capable of enough conscious thought to muster any interest.

The owner, operator, and head cook of the Cafe Mocha stumbled around in the same vacant-eyed, temperature-ignorant haze as his employees. All of them—five kitchen workers, two cashiers, one waiter, and two waitresses— were no longer capable of anything except doing as they were instructed.

The source of those instructions hung from a web of green, fungoid-looking material in the kitchen, a roundish growth which glowed oddly, pulsed every so often, and sent a continual series of commands to the tiny, star-shaped things located just behind the ear of each of its slaves.

In response to one such order, one of the kitchen workers removed a fresh pot of coffee from the machine and started towards the door which led to the counter. As the girl passed under the throbbing sphere, it extended a questing tendril and briefly touched the surface of the steaming brown liquid.

Every so often, someone with that same glassy-eyed look would trudge in through the back door and march directly to the basement, where a good ten or twelve individuals—all recent customers of the Cafe Mocha—stood in silence as more of the ropy green substance extended itself from the floor, the walls, and the ceiling to form enveloping cocoons.

And each time a new cocoon was finished, the orb in the kitchen pulsed just a little larger.

# 

“She actually BOUGHT it?” Makoto asked in disbelief.

They were in the quiet room to which Setsuna had been taken earlier—MUCH earlier—that morning. It held a second bed—currently without a patient assigned to it—various pieces of medical equipment for each bed, one small table, and a pair of chairs, placed between the two beds. Usagi and Minako had the chairs, Rei was leaning on the windowsill and looking out at the afternoon sky, and Makoto stood half-in, half-out of the doorway, one eye on the hall for any passers-by. Setsuna was sitting upright in her bed, wearing a pale blue hospital gown and an expression which came very close to that calm detachment the younger girls had always associated with her. Since the hospital didn’t allow pets, both cats were somewhere outside, and Ami was curled up on the spare bed, asleep, as she had been when Rei and Usagi returned. Given that her house was only so much wreckage after the previous night’s incident, the other Senshi let Ami sleep.

Besides, they had discovered that Ami was one of those people who sometimes talks in their sleep, and they were getting a kick out of some of the things she said in this subconscious state. At the moment, she was playing some kind of chess game—a game in which a certain dark-haired young knight with an uncanny ability to see the future seemed to play a prominent role.

“Of course she bought it,” Usagi replied shortly. The lack of sleep was making her—all of them—grouchy. “Are you implying that my own mother doesn’t trust me?”

“She probably trusts you about as much as I do,” Rei muttered from the window.

“And how far is that?” Usagi asked, uncertain whether Rei was trying to be polite or insulting. Given the earlier incident with the snowballs—her odangos were still damp from several extremely precise hits—and Rei’s general nature, it was hard to be sure.

“About as far as she can roll you with one hand,” Minako said, grinning. The lack of sleep hadn’t helped her mangled vocabulary much.

“I didn’t say that,” Rei objected, turning from the window.

“Then you DO trust me?”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

“She trusts you,” Makoto interrupted, trying to break up the impending argument. “To be yourself. We all do.”

“Oh.” Somewhat mollified, Usagi fell silent. But only for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘to be myself?’ Are you saying you don’t trust me implicitly, 100%, all the time?” Makoto rubbed at the bridge of her nose, trying to dispel the dull ache that seemed to have settled in somewhere behind her eyeballs.

“We’re your friends, odango-atama,” Rei replied, “not idiots.”

“And what exactly is THAT supposed to mean?!”

“Shhh!” They looked out into the hall, where a stern-faced nurse stood, admonishing them to be quiet. Usagi and Rei both blushed in embarrassment.

“Sorry,” they whispered together. Minako bit back a giggle while Makoto coughed politely and Setsuna’s lips quirked into a small smile. The nurse gave them all a stern look before continuing on her rounds. There were several more moments of quiet before Rei spoke.

“So, did Ami mention where she and her mother would be staying for the next few weeks?”

“Months,” Makoto corrected. “And she did talk it over with her mother for a while. Mizuno-san’s going to stay with a friend until she finds an apartment; Ami’ll stay at my place. She thought about asking you, but I guess she decided that Hikawa was too far to walk to school every day.”

“She could have asked me,” Minako said, somewhat sourly. Makoto grinned.

“I need more help with my homework than you do.”

“Bah! Hamburger!”

There was a pause. Setsuna started to say something when she noticed Rei looking at her, shaking her head in a silent warning.

“So tell us about this mysterious present,” Makoto suggested.

“You sort of have to see it to believe it,” Usagi replied. “We asked Luna about it, but she has no idea what the thing might be for. And given the source, it almost HAS to be for something more important than sitting on a counter looking pretty.” She smiled ruefully. “It almost makes me wish ChibiUsa were here; we could at least ask her if I’m still carrying the thing around a thousand years from now or if she ever heard it mentioned.”

“She’s here, you know.”

“What? Where?” Usagi looked around hastily before glancing nervously at the ceiling, just in case another time portal was opening.

“Not like that,” Setsuna sighed. “I meant that she’s here.” And she reached out to lightly touch Usagi’s belly.

The instant her hand brushed against the fabric of Usagi’s shirt, Setsuna felt as if the entire world were falling away from her, as if her brain was exploding at the same time as her skull tried to implode. To say that the sensation was unpleasant did not do it justice, but although she tried to withdraw her hand immediately, it seemed to take an eternity for that simple command to make its way from the brain down her arm. She knew that it would take precisely 0.00X seconds for the command to be received and interpreted by the muscles in her hand and arm, and another 0.00X seconds before her fingers would break contact with Usagi.

And in that minuscule instant, a huge wave of information surged past Setsuna’s eyes. The wave, she understood immediately, was not a single piece, but rather, an interwoven mesh of innumerable... someTHINGS for which she had no name; most shot by in a grey blur, but two of the—currents? Paths? Yes, paths—two of the paths seemed to slow to the point where she could see details. Each was filled with information, not so much in form of precise data or vague visions, but rather a firm sense of knowing that THIS event had occurred at THIS place and time.

The first path, which to Setsuna’s mind seemed tinted white, began as a narrow point and moved along in a continuous flow for much of its length. There came a point when it ended, like a thread suddenly cut short, and then began again a great distance from the first piece, still the same line, but somehow... different. Again, it moved along in a single direction, and then it almost appeared to curve back in on itself before proceeding further. And as her mind’s eye traced this flow, Setsuna saw that, at its furthest end, the line disintegrated into a huge blur of lesser lines—no. Not lines. Junctions—and somewhere in that mass of confusion, the second path began, a trail of faint pink, somehow beginning in ten thousand different locations at once!

*What is this?* Setsuna wondered in shock. *How did I...*

At that moment, her hand pulled away, and the wave vanished as the real world surged back into view. And in that instant when everything went back to the way it should be, Setsuna was too busy trying to make sense of what she had just seen to tell her body to stop pulling back.

She hit the back of her head against the wall.

“Setsuna? What happened? Are you okay?” Through the stars she was seeing, Setsuna looked up at Usagi. Something clicked in her head.

“June 30, 13:05:24. That’s when she’ll be born.” As the girls stared, uncomprehending, something else clicked—and not in Setsuna’s head. “Excuse me,” she added, pushing back her blankets and rising from the bed. She crossed the room with a kind of slow haste, not saying another word, and vanished into the washroom which adjoined the room, firmly closing the door behind her. After a moment, the Senshi could hear the unpleasantly unmistakable sounds of someone being terribly sick, and Usagi turned a faint shade of green as her own stomach made sympathetic twists. She had woken up a month ago with her own bout of nausea; after one morning, Usagi had decided she didn’t care for the experience. Oddly enough, it hadn’t happened since, but now her stomach seemed to want to make up for lost time, and it took most of the internal strength Usagi could muster to keep her last meal where it was supposed to be.

“Mmm... wha...” On the other bed, Ami began to rise, opening one bleary eye and yawning. *Why do I have this odd feeling that Ryo-kun should be here?* The train of thought and the yawn died when she noticed the empty bed. “Where’s...” Another sound from the washroom answered the half-finished question, and Ami added her own sleep-rimmed, worried gaze to the vigil.

Eventually, there was quiet, followed by the sound of a toilet flushing, several seconds of running water, and a few soft splashes. Then the door opened, and a pale, damp-faced Setsuna emerged.

“Could you help me back to my bed?”

“Sure.” Makoto moved to put one arm around her friend—and the instant they touched, Setsuna fell to her knees. The surge was back, blotting out the world in a weave of grey. This time, the flow which appeared in front of her eyes was an emerald green. It had the same break and the same curious loop as the white flow, but the feelings it evoked in Setsuna’s mind were considerably different.

*Not again! Get out! Stop it!* She flailed with mental arms, trying to push away the confusing flood. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, as her eyes came back into focus, Setsuna realized that the green she was seeing was not in the strange flow, but in Makoto’s eyes, not far from her own and looking extremely worried. Looking at those eyes, something Setsuna had seen— felt?— in the flow pushed forward, and she was speaking before she realized it.

“Four years ago,” she whispered. “May 10, 10:42:19.” Makoto’s eyes widened, and worry was replaced by shock and the beginnings of tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“Can you stand?” Makoto said roughly.

“I think so.” Setsuna tried to get to her feet, but when she was finally standing, it was evident that Makoto was doing most of the work.

“What’s going on? What happened?” The girls looked past Makoto and Setsuna to see the stern-faced nurse and an orderly—a medium-sized sort of fellow with dark hair—standing in the hall.

“She was sick,” Makoto replied tersely. “Then she almost blacked out again.”

“Then we’d better get her back to bed.” The woman pressed a button on the intercom located just inside the door. “Desk, find Doctor Yotogi and tell him to get to room 303.” The disembodied voice of the nurse at the desk made an affirmative reply as the intercom buzzed off. “Let us handle this,” the woman said preemptively.

“I’ve got her.” The other Senshi twitched collectively. They knew what that tone of voice meant.

“You really should...”

“I said I’ve GOT HER!” The orderly, who a moment before had been stepping forward, now stepped hastily back, swallowing heavily. The nurse seemed more annoyed than frightened, but she didn’t repeat her ‘request,’ and Makoto easily supported Setsuna back to her bed. Minako and Usagi scooted their chairs back quickly as the nurse, looking darkly at Makoto, made her way around the bed. The orderly took up a position just inside and out-of-the-way of the door, doing his best to remain unnoticed as the nurse began checking Setsuna.

The woman took Setsuna’s wrist to check her pulse, and frowned when the young lady’s heartbeat suddenly accelerated, the muscles in the hand and the rest of her body twitching. Looking up, the nurse saw a momentary blurriness in the girl’s eyes which caused the frown to deepen. Nothing in the medical file or the questions her friends had answered mentioned anything about epilepsy or a heart condition, but...

“You girls should step outside for the...”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

The nurse released Setsuna’s wrist and faced off against Makoto with an expression that had gone from annoyed to angry; she obviously didn’t like being contradicted. Caught with two hostile forces on either side of her bed and a mild headache as the last of the most recent surge—this time with a line of pale brown—faded away, Setsuna looked to the other Senshi for assistance and found only nervous faces. The orderly, for his part, did not move except to look up and silently beseech some higher power beyond the ceiling for strength and good luck. Considering that he wasn’t much larger than Makoto, he was going to need large doses of both if a fight broke out.

They were all so intent on the building tension that no one noticed the two men who had appeared in the hall and were now looking in at the room and its occupants. They were both doctors. The one in the lead was tall, dark-haired, and good-looking in an ER kind of way; he was a couple of years older than Setsuna, probably only out of med school for a year or two. The second man was shorter, rounder, and likely a couple of decades older than his colleague. Most of the hair on his head seemed to have migrated south to form a short, rusty-rown beard, and the hair remaining in the northern latitudes was nearly all white, including the thick eyebrows which framed his thin-rimmed glasses.

“If this is a bad time,” the taller man said hesitantly, “we can come back later.”

“Quit joking around and see to your patient,” the older doctor growled good-naturedly. He glanced past his associate at the girls. “You’re looking well, Rabbit,” he said to Usagi, speaking the last word in English. “Been eating too many carrots, I see.”

“Hello, Doc,” Usagi replied. “What’s up?”

“Why don’t we wait and see?”

“Excuse me,” the younger doctor said politely to Makoto as he stepped up to the end of the bed and looked across at the nurse. “Details?”

“Nausea, near loss of consciousness, and a severe loss of muscle control in the lower body at least—she had to be carried back into bed. There was also a sudden increase in heart rate and something that almost looked like a seizure when I checked her pulse.”

“We were talking,” Usagi piped up. “She froze right in the middle of saying something and then pulled back so fast she hit her head. Then she said something... a date, I think.”

“June 30,” Minako said, “13:05:24.” The doctors and the nurse looked at each other.

“13:05:24?” the younger man repeated. “What’s that?”

“Thirteen hours, five minutes, and twenty-four seconds,” Setsuna replied wearily. “It’s when Usagi’s baby is going to be born.”

“I see.” The nurse looked up at the doctor. “It could be an allergic reaction to the antibiotics, or just a result of the head trauma.”

“Is it?” Setsuna looked directly at the woman, trying to recall some of what she had seen. “You have a daughter. She was born May 2nd, 1989, at 07:44:41. And on February 9th of this year, at 16:09:48, someone is going to ask you to marry him. I didn’t see who, or whether you said yes. Does that sound like an allergic reaction or head trauma to you?”

“As a matter of fact, it does.” The nurse tried not to let her surprise show. *How did she know about Megan?* “I’ve heard the same kind of certainty from all sorts of people, if you want to know. The nearest is a man one floor down who thinks he can fly and has to be kept sedated to stop him from trying to prove it.”

“She’s not crazy,” Makoto said in a terribly quiet voice. “And she’s telling you the truth.”

“She may think so,” the nurse replied, “but a few lucky guesses with some random dates don’t...”

None of them were really prepared for Makoto’s reaction. With a sound that was almost a howl, she grabbed the doctor standing next to her and threw him back before reaching across the bed to seize the nurse by the lapels. The doctor collided with the startled orderly, and both men hit the floor at about the same time as Makoto was bodily hauling the astonished nurse across the width of Setsuna’s bed. Makoto was no larger than the nurse, and yet she lifted the woman easily, spinning around to slam her into the wall and hold her there, pinned, one arm braced across her shoulders and throat while the bottoms of her feet dangled above the floor.

“They aren’t just random dates!” Makoto snarled, her face a mask of blind rage. It was impossible to know if Makoto could tell, through the red haze that filled her vision, that the nurse’s face was growing darker; if she did know, she seemed not to care. The older doctor was halfway to the door to shout for security when Usagi leapt to her feet.

“Makoto! Put her down!”

The nurse continued to dangle, her face verging on a dangerous shade of purple.

“NOW!” Usagi snapped, throwing every ounce of command she could muster into that single word. Setsuna stared, shocked, while the other Senshi blinked in surprise, half-expecting to see a brief vision of their Princess appear; Usagi NEVER spoke in that tone. The older doctor seemed equally taken aback, while the two men untangling on the floor paused in the middle of picking themselves up to stare.

It worked. The set of Makoto’s shoulders changed, and the nurse dropped to the floor, one hand going to her throat as she gasped for air, the other hand waving off the assistance of the orderly.

“I... apologize,” Makoto said slowly. “I shouldn’t have done that.” Without another word, she left the room, surrounded by a two-foot space in all directions as everyone scrambled to get out of her way.

“Go after her, Mina-chan. Try to keep her from hurting anybody.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever.” As she hurried out to catch up with Makoto, Minako muttered, “Who’s going to keep her from hurting ME?”

The doctors and the nurse looked at the orderly; the man paled visibly, gulped, and followed Minako out of the room.

“Interesting friend you have there, Rabbit. She reminds me of a hurricane I ran into when I was on vacation in Florida a few years ago.” Standing in the doorway, the older doctor shook his head as, down the hall, the elevator doors closed behind Makoto; still some distance behind, Minako said something under her breath and ran for the stairs. The orderly hesitated before following her.

“Mako-chan’s a bit intense,” Usagi said absently, speaking to the doctor as she walked over to help the nurse get to her feet. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll live.” The woman laughed hoarsely. “Your friend’s a lot stronger than I thought, but I’ve been through worse. Not MUCH worse,” she added, wincing and rubbing at the base of her throat. “Does she attack everyone she comes across, or only people she doesn’t like?”

“She does get into fights sometimes,” Usagi admitted, “but she’s never just attacked someone like that. I don’t understand why a few numbers would get her so...” Usagi’s voice trailed off, and she turned to look back at Setsuna. “You said... four years ago?”

“May 10th, 10:42:19,” Setsuna repeated with a sad smile.

“Her parents,” Usagi said quietly, voicing what Ami and Rei had both guessed. She turned to explain the situation to the three adults, but their expressions said that they’d already recognized the implications, if not the details. Hesitantly, Usagi asked, “Mako-chan’s not going to get in trouble for this, is she?”

“Well...” The older doctor seemed reluctant to speak. “She *did* try to strangle Fuucho-san, Usagi...”

“She had a reason for it,” the nurse replied. The doctor gave her a sharp look, and she added, “Let it go, Miko-san. I’m not hurt, and the girl... people make mistakes. And that one wasn’t entirely her fault.”

“If you’re sure...”

“I am.” The woman looked at Usagi and Setsuna. “Is your friend going to be visiting often?” When both of them murmured faint affirmatives, the nurse nodded. “All right. I’ll do my best to stay out of her way.” She headed out of the room, but paused at the door, looking back at Usagi. “If you wouldn’t mind... pass on my apologies for my behavior.”

Usagi nodded, and the woman left the room. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“So,” the younger doctor said at least, facing the three girls. His face wore an expression of moderately restrained enthusiasm. “How long has Miss Meiou been demonstrating pre- and retrocognitive abilities?”

Usagi blinked. “Huh?”

Ami, having learned long ago the effect that large words tended to have on Usagi, was answering the monosyllabism almost before it got asked:

“Precognition is the extrasensory ability to see into the future; retrocognition is the counterpart ability to see into the past.” She rattled the definitions off in her best textbook voice, then fixed the doctor with a suspicious look, adding, “MOST people in the scientific community disbelieve in the existence of either.”

“Very true,” the doctor replied, “but then, I’m not most people. You’re Mizuno-san’s daughter, aren’t you? The one studying to be a doctor?”

“That’s right. And you are?”

“Yotogi Lucas.” When the odd looks arrived, he smiled. “My mother was from California. So am I, when you get right down to it.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with you asking questions about precag... ratrock...” Usagi made a face.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Rei murmured. Usagi glowered at her.

“Usagi has a point,” Ami said. Rei sighed while Usagi beamed; Ami ignored them both and continued speaking. “What kind of doctor goes around asking patients about ESP?”

“I see you’ve never been to California,” Lucas said dryly. “I’m actually a neural specialist, but I’ve been fascinated by the paranormal since I was a kid. It’s sort of a hobby of mine now—trying to find a scientific proof of ESP or other mental abilities. Sometimes I get a little carried away,” he added, nodding apologetically at Setsuna.

“Just don’t ask me to guess your birthday,” she replied wearily. “After three flashes, my head feels ready to explode. NO!” she snapped, pulling one hand away from Usagi, who had been about to take it. Setsuna regretted her harsh tone immediately. “I’m sorry, Usagi-chan. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just... I’m not sure if I can keep this... THING turned off if someone touches me.”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“It only happens when you touch someone?” Lucas asked.

“So far. Once for Usagi-chan, once for Mako-chan, and once for the nurse. Is that... unusual?”

“Not really. I’ve seen any number of cases where the person is able to pick up emotive imprints or images from items they handle. The sudden system shock is fairly common as well.”

“So to be safe, all I have to do is not touch anyone?”

“That can’t be right,” Usagi objected. “You never used to black out whenever you bumped into someone. You must have touched any one of us a half-dozen times last night, and you didn’t space out THEN.”

“Does Setsuna customarily wear gloves?”

“Well... yes,” Usagi admitted. It was true enough—ALL of them wore gloves in their Senshi identities, and Setsuna had LIVED as Pluto for most of the last two thousand years. “But not ALL the time.”

“If her ability requires direct contact with the person she’s going to... I suppose ‘scan’ is as good a word as any, but if that’s the case, gloves would probably interfere to some extent.” Lucas thought for a moment. “And the fact that she could interact with other people without triggering her ability suggests that it CAN be controlled; the amnesia’s just cut out the experience which allowed her to use that control. The knowledge of how to suppress the scan is likely still in your mind,” he said, facing Setsuna. “You just need some time to find it again.”

“I *was* able to shut it down faster the second and third times,” she admitted, looking carefully at her hands. “Usagi-chan, hold out your hand.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” For a moment, the face, attitude, and voice were once again distinctly Pluto. Usagi reached out slowly, and Setsuna very lightly rested her fingertips against Usagi’s, looking at them intently. After several seconds, a small smile formed on her lips. “Nothing but a little flicker this time.” Then she frowned. “Something about falling luggage, I think.”

*’There is nothing supernatural or dangerous about either the luggage itself or any of the contents, except when Usagi drops the medium case on her right foot two weeks from now.’* The words of the mysterious letter came unbidden to Rei’s mind. By the expression on her face, Usagi was remembering the words as well.

“Now that,” Doc said with a grin, “I can believe.”

“What _is_ your opinion on this, anyway?” Ami asked.

“I keep an open mind.” Doc removed his glasses, polishing away some invisible speck of grime. He had rather startling eyes, dark blue almost to the point of being black. “I accept that there are a lot of things in this world that modern science can’t explain, and leave the hunt for details up to people like Lucas. I have my hands full just practicing mundane medicine without worrying about conflicting psychic auras or the like.” Both doctors’ beepers went off. “See what I mean?” Doc pressed a button on the intercom. “This is Miko. Yotogi’s with me.”

“Call for you on line five, Doctor, a Shigawa Kari calling about rescheduling flu shots. And Doctor Yotogi is wanted for a consult in the OR.”

“On my way,” Lucas said. “I’ll check on you later, Meiou-san. I want to refresh my memory on a few things, but I might be able to give you some advice on dealing with your ability.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Setsuna thanked him. Lucas nodded and left the room.

“Tell the OR that Yotogi’s on his way,” Miko said to the intercom. “I’ll take the call in my office.” Then he released the button. “Well, duty calls. Ladies, it was nice to meet all of you; Rabbit, I guess we’ll talk again at that ultrasound next month. Try not to eat so many carrots between now and then, okay?”

“Are you a doctor or a comedian?” Usagi called as he slipped out the door.

“That depends,” the man’s reply came back. “What day of the week is it?”

“I take it you and ‘Doc’ know each other?” Rei asked.

“Doc’s the family physician,” Usagi said absently. “He was the one who delivered me, and he’s been looking after me ever since. I think he’s related to Mom—a third cousin or some uncle’s half-brother or something like that.”

“Why do you call him that?” Setsuna asked.

“He has a thing for old American cartoons,” Usagi explained. “Something about a talking rabbit that goes around outsmarting hunters and calling everyone ’Doc.’ So he teases me about carrots and calls me ‘Rabbit,’ and I call him ’Doc.’ I’m not even sure what his name actually is.”

“I think we can live without knowing,” Rei said. “I’m more worried that he or one of the other three might let something slip about Setsuna.” She looked at the older girl. “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but did you really have to blurt all that out?”

“You’re assuming I had any control over it,” Setsuna replied coolly. “I didn’t actually see any of the events I mentioned; it was more like remembering something that had already happened, and it included the feeling of the event. I had to go through the emotions of two births, a wedding proposal, a plane crash...” She cut off.

“Rei,” Usagi said gently, “the first time you saw something in the fire at the shrine, what happened?”

“All right, all right, I get the point. I’m sorry, Setsuna-san. I should know better than anyone what this sort of ability can do if you’re not used to it.” Rei sighed. “I’m just worried that the wrong person might catch wind of this—and that includes ordinary people as much as it does supernatural monsters.”

# 

“Go away, Minako.”

“No chance of that,” Minako replied. “Usagi-chan told me to keep you out of trouble.”

They were in the main floor lobby of the hospital, surrounded by a fairly large area into which no one else had stepped since Makoto had entered. She was standing in front of a large window, looking out into a snowed-over patch of grass and trees and trying very hard not to think; Minako had dragged over a chair and sat quietly, watching for any signs of another eruption. The orderly was over in the far corner, being as invisible as possible.

“Did you want to talk about it?” Minako asked hopefully.

“Not really. I made a mistake, I apologized. That’s the end of it.”

“Hardly. Why did you attack the nurse like that? I know she was a little pushy, but you usually give people a warning before you clobber them.”

“I didn’t like her attitude.”

Minako waited. And waited. Finally, when it was quite clear that Makoto wasn’t going to discuss the matter any further, Minako sighed inwardly. She was pretty sure that Makoto’s little outburst had been set off by something the nurse had said, but if she pushed for answers right now, she might also inadvertently push a few of the wrong Britons and trigger another explosion. At the moment, it was probably in everyone’s best interest if she could find a way to cheer Makoto up, and a vague idea of how to accomplish that was working its way through the gears in her mind.

“Well, you’re no fun at all when you’re like this. Come on.” She took Makoto by one arm and started for the door.

“Let go of me, Minako. I’m not going anywhere.”

It must be said in Makoto’s defense that she really did TRY to stay put. The problem was that, as strong as she might be, Minako could, in a way, be even stronger. Or maybe pushy was a better word. Annoying, even. *Yes,* Makoto decided, *annoying would describe her very well, a continuous droning about the eardrums, a blonde gnat that buzzes and buzzes and buzzes no matter how many times you tried to shoo it away. This must be something like how Rei sees Usagi.*

If she could just get her sleeve free, she could get away, but of course, that simple task was suddenly impossible. Just shaking her arm to try and yank the fabric out from between Minako’s fingers couldn’t do it, and pulling in the opposite direction had also failed; Minako simply spun around Makoto, still holding her arm, turning her friend about in a full circle and then pulling forward once more, with a hefty dose of centrifugal force working in her favor. Repeated threats weren’t doing the trick, either, mostly because Minako knew Makoto wouldn’t follow through on them. Artemis—having lost a game of rock- paper-scissors with Luna for the honor of staying at the hospital or following the wandering Senshi—trailed the two at a distance, trying not to laugh at their antics. Finally, Makoto gave up.

“Where are we going?”

“Oh, just this little place I know. You really need something to help you relax, Mako-chan, and this place makes the absolute BEST hot chocolate in the city. And one of the waiters who works there is SOOO cute, although I’m not sure if he works today or not, but you’ve got to see him...”

Minako rambled on as ‘the little place’ came into view. Makoto spotted a sign in the large window next to the door just before Minako dragged her inside.

*Cafe Mocha,* she thought absently. *Is that supposed to be a joke?*

# 

The zombified workers in the Cafe staggered collectively as their fungoid master twitched. For just a moment, the haze in their eyes was replaced by a glimmer of consciousness, self-awareness tinged with flecks of confusion and rising panic. Then the star-shaped devices reasserted their control, and the numbness returned.

The collector shuddered. Something very powerful was nearby, perhaps even in the building it had taken over. If it was discovered, the collector knew it had little hope to beat off an attack by whatever the source of the energy might be. It would need to use up all the energy it had gathered, violate the terms of its mission, and even that might not be enough to prevent discovery.

But on the other hand, if this new power could be added to the collector’s own growing source...

# 

“Are you okay?” Makoto asked as the waitress stumbled, coming dangerously close to spilling her tray of empty glasses and plates.

“What? Where...” The girl shook her head as if surprised at her surroundings, and had started to turn back to Makoto when, between one eyeblink and the next, her eyes seemed to cloud over. “I’m fine,” the girl replied in an odd voice. “Thanks.” And she went back to her work.

“That was odd,” Artemis observed quietly from Minako’s lap. “Is it me, or did that girl seem like she was just waking up?”

“We weren’t the only ones to have a busy night,” Minako said. “There are probably a lot of people out today who should still be in bed.”

“I dunno,” the white cat mumbled, looking around cautiously. “Something about this place makes my left ear twitch.”

“Oh,” Minako said sagely. “Your left ear’s twitching. Of course. She must be a youma in disguise.” Minako leaned over the table to whisper at Makoto. “He claims his left ear twitches every time he gets near sources of negative energy.”

“Well, it does,” Artemis muttered sullenly. “And there’s a funny smell in here, too.”

“That’s just the coffee and hot chocolate. I’ve heard that the owner puts a few spices in as part of some secret recipe. Speaking of which, here comes ours now.” The other waitress set two steaming cups down in front of them and walked off with even less emotion than her co-worker had shown.

Makoto picked up her cup and raised it to take a drink, noting as she did so that Artemis might be right; there was an odd sort of smell in this place, almost like... like... she couldn’t quite place it, but the smell was unpleasant, and unlike any combination of spices she could remember.

When the hot chocolate hit her tongue, a taste even more foul than the odd smell filled her mouth. Years of culinary expertise had left Makoto with the finely developed ability of a master chef to discern separate dishes by flavor alone. Usagi could do something similar, though HER expertise was that of the gourmet diner, the ultimate eater. Right now, something that tasted rather like the smell of rotten meat and spoiled cabbage and soured milk all rolled into one was sending that flavor sensitivity into a five-alarm fit. Makoto reflexively spit the vile brew back into the cup and set it down on the table hard enough to rattle Minako’s cup.

“What’s with you?” Minako asked in surprise.

“How can you _drink_ that stuff? It’s terrible!”

“It tastes fine to me,” Minako replied, confused. “Are you okay, Mako- chan? You look a little green around the bills.”

“I need to get some air,” Makoto said, grabbing her coat as she rose from her seat. The taste in her mouth seemed to befoul every breath she took, multiplying that faint, sickly odor a hundred times. Artemis was right behind her as she left. Minako pulled a few bills and coins from one pocket, leaving them on the table as she hurried after her friends.

She caught up to them amidst the snow-dusted tables filling the Cafe’s summer dining area. Makoto was leaning against a lamppost, coughing roughly, while Artemis sat atop one of the tables and watched her with a worried, distinctly un-catlike expression.

“I’m okay,” Makoto said immediately. “It’s just that... that place... the air in there was awful.”

“What are you talking about? There was nothing wro...” Minako’s words cut off suddenly. It felt as if an invisible, immaterial hand were trying to wrap its fingers around her brain. The pressure built until it was almost unbearable and then, in a flash of golden light, it was gone as quickly as it had begun, leaving her dizzy and disoriented. Minako had to close her eyes to prevent a sudden rush of vertigo; when she opened them, Makoto was looking at her with a familiar, wry smile.

“You were saying?”

“Something’s going on in there,” Artemis said decisively. “All the staff I saw seemed to be in a kind of trance, and a lot of the customers weren’t much better. Nobody looked up when we ran out.”

“The drinks?”

“Must be,” Artemis agreed. “I’m not sure why you’d have picked up on it when Minako didn’t, though.” He glanced over as the door opened. “Look!”

One of the customers, a slightly overweight middle-aged man in a long grey coat, was just leaving the building. He walked slowly, even awkwardly, and his eyes were empty. He passed the girls without seeing them, turned, and headed down the sidewalk at a slow, unsteady pace.

“Come on,” Makoto said.

They followed the man at a distance. At first, it appeared that he might actually be going about business as usual—whatever it might be—but when he began to double back the way he had come, Makoto and Minako nodded grimly and reached for their transformation pens.

“Well, that clinches it,” Minako observed as the dull-eyed fellow ambled into the open back door of the Cafe Mocha. “Something’s up.” She looked around, but they appeared to be alone in this back alley. “Let’s do it.”

A few seconds later, Sailors Venus and Jupiter were alone in the back alley.

“Should we call for backup?” Jupiter asked.

“Probably a good idea. We don’t know what might be in there, and it’s not so far from the hospital that we can’t afford to wait for Mars and Mercury.” Venus switched on her communicator, and Rei’s face appeared.

“What’s going on? Where are you?” Rei frowned, taking in Minako’s now-subtly altered features and Senshi attire. “Makoto didn’t do something silly, did she?”

“No, nothing like that. We’re about three blocks south of the hospital, outside a place called the Cafe Mocha. There’s something weird going on here—some sort of mind-control drug in the drinks, and Artemis says the place is buzzing with bad vibes. We thought it might be better to aim all guns at the bear before going in.”

“We’ll be there in five,” Rei said, her face only slightly scrunched up in confusion about Venus’ latest mangling of the language. At least THIS one actually made some sort of sense.

“Up there.” Artemis pointed his nose to the roof behind them. “Mars and Mercury will be able to see us better, and we’ll spot anything that comes out of the Cafe.”

# 

The collector gave another violent shudder. The first force was still very near, and something just as strong was approaching rapidly. There was no more time to waste.

The green orb began to throb steadily, its dull glow darkening towards red. In the basement, the assembled cocoons also began to radiate that dim light, impulses of energy coursing their way up through coiled links of ropy, fungal matter to the central growth, which was rapidly gaining in size.

Some of the less stupefied customers had just enough presence of mind remaining to look up in surprise as a hundred curling vinelike appendages burst out from the kitchen, wrapping around every warm body in the Cafe before they began sending more of the red light-pulses back to the collector.

# 

“This doesn’t look good,” Mercury said nervously, comparing the readouts of her visor with the recorded data on her computer. “I’m reading a massive buildup of energy in there, and a lot of the human life-signs are dropping off. There’s also a huge concentration of the same biomatter which that creature we fought last night was made of.”

“Define ‘huge,’” Venus asked nervously, right before the Cafe’s low roof groaned, creaked, and exploded upwards and outwards in a spray of dust, splinters, and shattered plastic.

“About that big,” Mercury said simply, pointing at the pulsing green mass now trying to squeeze its way up out of the wrecked building.

It was more or less spherical, a blubbery ball of what looked like tightly packed green moss, five or six meters across and trailing half a hundred loosely flapping tendrils as it floated into the air. Glassy beads scattered about the thing’s bulk pulsed with dull red light, a horde of pupilless eyes staring out at the world in all directions. Unlike the first fungus-creature, the only appliances on this one were falling to earth in its wake as the thing rose higher, shedding a second skin of debris.

The Senshi backed up as the bloated green ball rose above the roofline, now totally free of the restraining junkpile below. Several of its many lashing appendages twisted around, the tiny, red-glowing spots at their tips focusing on the Senshi; the glowing intensified.

“I think we’re in trouble,” Venus said.

When the energy beams shot out from the thing a moment later, the other girls were too busy dodging to answer her.

# 

*How do I get IN to these things?!* Artemis thought, leaping for all he was worth as a mix of angry red energy and falling pieces of brick rained down into the alley on all sides. Jumping back into the alley from the exploding rooftop had seemed like a good idea at the time, and now, like so many other good ideas Artemis had come up with in his time, it seemed likely to get him killed. Never mind that he’d gotten out of scrapes a hundred times worse than this—they were all in the past, and this was right now, full color, bigger than life, and twice as ugly.

There was a flash and a roar, followed by the appearance of a greasy cloud of smoke that smelled worse than most trashcans Artemis had ever met. He hadn’t heard the words, but he knew that Mars was probably responsible, and that the green entity was likely on fire right now. And did it ever STINK! Artemis could clearly remember being caught up in two or three hundred confrontations with inhuman fiends bent on world domination, destruction, or depletion, and none of them had EVER smelled this bad.

He ducked inside what was left of the Cafe in search of some corner where the coiling streamers of smoke hadn’t yet reached; even the unpleasant odor he and Makoto had noticed before would be better than that roast-garbage stench.

*How DID she notice it, anyway? Senshi or not, Mako-chan’s nose isn’t any better than the average human’s, and Mina-chan didn’t pick it up at all.* Artemis turned a corner, and all thoughts of Makoto’s sudden olfactory proficiency flew from his mind. *Hello, what’s this?*

Several large pods of that creepy green substance were scattered about the kitchen. Artemis’ ground-level perspective had hidden most of them from view behind countertops and shelves when he had come in through what was left of the back door, but three of the things lay directly in front of him, glowing faintly. The white cat’s eyes narrowed as he noticed the rootlike cables linking those three pods to each other and to a larger, thicker cable which went straight up through the hole that had been a ceiling. More of that faint light was pulsing up the cable.

*Now where have I seen THIS before?* Artemis bounded up to the nearest of the pods, considered its shape for a moment, and then extended his claws to scratch at one area. The rubbery matter didn’t come away easily, but Artemis kept at it until he had successfully revealed a dull, staring eye, surrounded by flesh which was looking decidedly grey and unhealthy. The small patch quickly resealed itself, but Artemis had seen enough.

Now he just had to get word to the girls.

Thunder cracked sharply overhead, and a large, feebly twitching length of green mung hit the tiles just behind Artemis, its severed end black, smoking, and hissing with faint sparks of electricity. A split second later, a curtain of sizzling red beams tore up the ground beyond the shattered doorframe, and something higher up exploded. Artemis sighed.

*Right. NO pressure.*

# 

The Senshi were not having one of their better showings against the bloated fungus monster. For every tendril that Mars and Jupiter sheared off with their attacks, two more sprouted from the rubbery surface; each time Venus blasted out one of the glowing, energy-shooting beads, its neighbors retaliated by laying down a volley of hissing red beams, tearing up another sizable piece of the local real estate. Whether they were eyes or not, the creature had enough of those beady growths to make it impossible to tell whether Venus was making any progress in removing them—and the losses did not impair the orb-thing’s ability to track and shoot at the Senshi in the slightest.

Mercury hung back from the fight, trying to locate a weakness in this peculiar foe, but it displayed the same decentralized nature as the appliance-wielding house-buster had. Given the fact that it was at least ten times larger than its predecessor—too large by far for any of her attacks to have any hope of disabling the thing—and regenerating from any damage they did almost as quickly as it happened, Mercury seriously doubted that they could keep on throwing full-force attacks in the hopes of doing enough damage to shut the thing down. Already, Mars and Jupiter were showing signs of fatigue from launching multiple assaults in rapid succession, and Venus wasn’t far behind. They were getting weaker, and the enemy was getting stronger. It was just a matter of time.

Her computer had picked up something a moment ago, a flow of energy heading into the hovering orb rather than out of it, something coming from somewhere below instead of from one of the dodging Senshi, but she couldn’t get a clear view as to what...

“Mercury! Psst! Over here!”

“Artemis?” The white cat was hiding across the roof, behind a low, smoldering mass of bricks that had been the top part of a stairwell until a few minutes before.

“Keep your voice down! We don’t want to attract that thing’s attention.” Artemis cast a worried glance around the edge of the rubble to make sure that a barrage of red death wasn’t already on its way. “Good. Now listen. I managed to get a look inside what’s left of the Cafe. The staff have all been wrapped up in pods of some kind, and they’re all feeding energy into our friend there through a central cord. It links up into the body somewhere underneath.”

“That would explain how it’s so much stronger than the last one,” Mercury admitted. “If we could cut that cord, the loss of power might weaken it enough for us to finish off.”

“Only problem is that somebody’s got to get close enough to see which of those is the real cord.”

“Maybe not,” Mercury disagreed. “If that cord is coming up from the Cafe, then all we need to do to hit it is...” She switched on her communicator. “Jupiter!”

“I’m a little busy,” Jupiter replied tersely. She sounded as if she were speaking through clenched teeth. “What do you want?”

“Artemis found out where this thing is getting all its energy, and I think I know how we can take it out. Listen carefully.” Mercury quickly outlined her plan.

“Are you sure that’s going to work?” Jupiter asked uncertainly. “This thing’s soaking up our best tricks like a sponge in water.”

“Then there’s not much point in wearing ourselves out so quickly, is there? Just be ready.” Mercury put away her computer and got to her feet, taking a deep breath. “Here goes nothing. SHABON SPRAY!”

The air between the green menace and the shattered hulk of the Cafe filled with blue-white mist. Some of the bead-tipped tendrils paused their attack to turn and look down at the phenomenon, while a few others turned to seek out the source of the bubbling spray, but Mercury had already moved to a roof across the street.

“SHABON SPRAY!” The mist thickened, and then again when Mercury repeated the attack, from a rooftop opposite to the one she had started on. She was en route to the fourth and last stop in her little circuit when the roof upon which she had intended to land exploded in a shower of burning red rain; apparently, the orb-creature had guessed something of her game. Mercury shrugged, turned at the waist in mid-air, and let loose a fourth spray. By now, the air below the creature was so thick with fog as to almost be pure liquid. As she fell, Mercury shouted out, “Jupiter! NOW!”

On the other side of the street, Jupiter took a deep breath of her own. “This had better work,” she muttered tiredly. “SUPREME THUNDER!”

The saturated fogbank lit up in a curious and beautiful display not unlike a cross between the Aurora Borealis and a fireworks convention—the latter effect coming from several dozen sudden explosions as the water-soaked tendrils in the fogbank overloaded on electrical current and burst asunder. Except for the smell, it was quite pretty.

None of the Senshi actually saw the power cord break, but the effect was immediately visible when the huge orb began to shrink, its eyelike growths closing up by the dozen while those tendrils which had not been splattered by the electrical surge retreated within the body. The orb also began to descend as it shrank, a few remaining tendrils lashing feebly at the air as if the thing were trying to hold itself up.

Venus finally found what was left of the thing, a green, soccer-ball sized mass with no tendrils at all and hardly any of its reddish glow. She considered the thing for a moment, then broke into a smile.

“Jupiter? Mars?” Venus smiled impishly and hefted the orb in both hands. “Do you think you’ve got enough left for a little target practice?”

The two Senshi traded glances, then broke into matching evil grins.

“On three,” Venus said, dropping the orb. “One... two... three!” Venus sent the thing flying high overhead with a single kick, achieving a trajectory that NASA would have killed for.

Suffice to say, the “ball” burned up on re-entry.

# 

In the dim, fungus-overgrown computer room of the call center, two more bodies had been added to the creeping entity’s collection. All of them were now bound in thick webs and cocoons of green organic matter, mercifully unconscious, their energy serving to sustain the bizarre creature which had captured them.

The creature in question had just picked up a disturbing signal from a kindred entity. It had not been from one of the trap sites that the awareness had been instructed to build, fortunately; eight such units were now in development, and none of them would be ready for many days yet. No, the signal had been from an energy-collector. Its loss meant a disruption in other parts of the greater plan.

The awareness had grown considerably since its arrival. No longer was it a mere mindless drone, reliant on preprogrammed objectives and limitations. By feeding on the energy of its captives, it had gained a kind of sentience, and with its increasing awareness had come access to knowledge that, previously, had been locked away within itself. Now that it was wise enough to use that knowledge, the information had been unlocked and placed at the awareness’ disposal.

Its own assigned task was an important one, but only one such mission among several now in progress. The loss of the collector would delay some of those missions considerably, while others—such as the creation of the testing sites—were only peripherally affected.

Still, the awareness decided to take a slower, more cautious approach from now on. The collector had moved too fast, too soon, carelessly revealing itself before sufficient defenses had been in place.

With that in mind, the awareness considered the problem of the captured humans. It could not release them. To do so would deprive it of much-needed energy, quite likely forcing it to revert back to its original mindless state to conserve power. Sentience was a luxury it did not wish to give up, but keeping the humans would also pose a problem, as sooner or later, someone would come looking for them. And the problem of the disabled communications systems would also have to be addressed.

The awareness looked at what information it had about the collector’s mission. It did not amount to much, but there was enough to give the awareness an idea which might allow it to retain the better part of its newfound intelligence while dealing with the problems of both humans and phonelines. After several hours of preparation, the awareness slowly ordered one of its pods to open.

The man who emerged was one of the workers it had captured the first night, a man named Hiroshi. He emerged from the pod with a dull-eyed expression, a small, star-shaped growth fixed just below his left ear. The awareness sent a command, and Hiroshi tottered unsteadily towards the door. A camera watch his uneven progress, its green-wrapped lens serving as an eye for the entity pulling Hiroshi’s strings.

That would not do, the awareness decided. Movement, appearance, speech, attitude—EVERYTHING must be as close to real as possible to avoid rousing suspicion. It reversed the flow of information, drawing memories out of Hiroshi’s brain and studying the man’s entire life in detail. Finally, it tried again, sending a much more detailed set of instructions, and carefully scrutinizing the resulting motion.

Much better, the awareness noted with satisfaction. It stopped for a moment to analyze that emotion, one of the first it had ever had. Very interesting, it decided. Perhaps absorbing the human’s memories had contributed to the sudden development.

It was not long before another pod opened, releasing a second enslaved human, and in short order, the entire group had been sent on their way. Now hiding themselves by a careful change in their outer surface color and texture, the tiny control devices would allow the awareness to send or receive information and energy so long as the humans remained within a certain distance. As it grew, its range and capabilities would also grow.

The awareness felt another surge of satisfaction. Its sphere of influence and ability had just been expanded five, ten, perhaps even a hundredfold. The addition of the memories of its new servants had increased the limits of its intellect to an astonishing new level, and the workings of this new mind amazed itself; already, ways in which to adjust and improve its plans were occurring to it, things it would never have thought of without the addition of the unique perspective of humans.

The green, vegetative matter strung between and around the computer terminals began to fold in on itself and slither out of sight, sinking into every space and hideaway it could find, altering color where necessary, doing everything possible to escape notice. It altered its connections to the computers, using the gathered knowledge of the humans to affect repairs. In a few minutes, the machines were working better than they had before— and they were entirely under the control of...

*I need a name,* the awareness thought. *Something suitable.*

A memory from one of the humans pushed forward, a story heard once in school, a legend of a god-creature which could change its form at will. A thing repulsive to humans in its natural shape, yet able to move about and be almost undetectable in other forms.

*Yes,* the awareness decided. *That is me. I am Proteus.*

# 

Seven people met in a dark room.

It might have been dark outside, or it might have been high noon on a cloudless day; in this room, without windows or clocks or any other links to the outside world, time tended to lose its meaning. The only illumination here came from seven small monitors built into the top of a circular table, about which seven seats were evenly spaced. This was a room custom-built for secrets, and the element of anonymity afforded by the shadows was central to its design. The darkness hid those who dealt in secrets, gave them a sense of power and security that was essential when one stopped to consider the nature of the reports that passed through this room.

Of course, the omnipresent gloom made the actual _reading_ of those reports a bitch and a half, but then you can’t have everything.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a male voice said, speaking from the head of the table. “I apologize for having to call you together again, but as I’m sure you’re all aware by now, our respite seems to be over.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” a dry, female voice observed from the left side of the table. “Nothing personal, but I would have been just as happy never to see any of you again.” The woman paused. “Not that I can actually see any of you now, but...”

“We understand completely,” the first voice replied. “We all feel the same way.”

“Are you talking about the attacks,” a second male voice observed from the right side of the table, “or the ongoing lack of decent lights in this place?”

“I was trying to remember what it was I didn’t like about you,” a third man said in a gloomy tone from the other side of the table. “Now I do. But that didn’t quite sound like one of your usual snide witticisms. Are you not feeling well?”

“Just a little out of practice,” the second man replied. “Give me a couple of weeks to hone my edge back up to par, and you’ll never notice the difference. So, do we have a complete field report yet? I’ve been out of the loop for the last little while.”

“We do.” This was another woman, speaking from the far end of the right- hand row of seats in a cool and controlled voice with all the emotional output of a rock.

“Two sites have been hit so far,” the gloomy man reported. “Two that we know of, at least, and given the amount of property damage involved, I’d imagine we would have heard about any others by this time. Despite the collateral destruction, no casualties have been reported.” The man’s dreary tone made it difficult to tell whether he considered the lack of casualties a good or a bad thing.

“What I want to know,” a harsh male voice demanded from the left side of the table, “is why my people weren’t alerted to these latest attacks until after the fact. If this new detection system is everything you’ve been saying it is, I could have had a response team on-site within five minutes after the fact.”

“For one thing,” the chilly female voice replied, “the detection system isn’t in place yet. We were told to refocus our efforts in development four months ago, and the sensor network was effectively abandoned until today. It won’t be operational for at least a week, and even then, the range is likely to be limited.”

“And besides which,” Dry Voice added, “if I read the report right, five minutes after the fact would have gotten your people to either site just in time to see the Senshi reduce the perpetrator to dust.”

“Then we could have dragged those pesky girls in as well,” Harsh Voice muttered. “Damned vigilantes are a bunch of loose cannons.”

“We still don’t know WHAT they are,” Cool Voice disagreed, “and in all honesty, I have to say that ‘dragging them in,’ as you put it, is an incredibly stupid idea. It smacks of ingratitude, if nothing else.”

“Is that the protest of a fan I hear?” the curious, joking fellow said in amusement.

“Hardly. I’m merely attempting to point out that the Senshi have been dealing with these creatures with a fairly high degree of success for longer than we’ve been in operation. I’m not particularly at ease with so many questions about them going unanswered, but I can live with mild curiosity if the alternative is a public relations fiasco.”

“WHAT public relations?” Harsh Voice snapped. “Nobody even knows we’re here!”

“And how long will our anonymity last if people start seeing unknown soldiers with high-tech weaponry running loose?” Cool Voice retorted. “Or even better— suppose you actually managed to capture one of the Senshi. How long do you think it would take the rest of them to come looking for their friend?”

“It wouldn’t be an issue if we caught them all at one time.”

“Tell me something,” Curious Voice asked his colleague. “Are you this foolishly obsessive by nature, or do you have to work at it? I’ll spell it out if you’re having trouble with the concept; we don’t WANT to capture the Senshi, because right now, we don’t have the means to pull it off, OR to reliably replace the protection their presence has given the city.”

“And even if such means should become available in the future,” First Voice interrupted, “the only eventuality under which they would be deployed would be if the Senshi themselves were determined to be a threat. So far, there’s been no evidence of that.”

“I don’t know if I’d go quite that far,” the seventh and last member of the shadow committee, another man, said mildly. “We know only slightly more about the Senshi than we do their adversaries, and drawing conclusions about either side could still be premature.”

“Which seems to bring us back to paradox at hand,” Curious Voice sighed. “We can’t get more information until we ask questions, but we can’t ask questions without more information.”

“It remains a point for another time,” First Voice said in a tone of finality. “Our main focus for now is on these intruders. The report on the second attack is quite complete; the creature behind it was using the cafe in question as a front for a Class-E operation. Medical analysis of the victims confirmed the usual symptoms of prolonged systemic depletion, correct?”

“In varying degrees, depending on the individual,” Cool Voice said. “There were traces of a chemical compound not on record, something which seems to be part sedative and part hallucinogen, and several of the staff were also found to have minor scarring below either ear. My best guess as to the source would be neural override devices of some sort.”

“Do we have anything like that?” Curious Voice interrupted.

“For lab mice and a few lower order primates, yes, but nothing that works on humans. Which is probably just as well.”

“So in general,” First Voice continued, “a standard energy-collecting operation. The question that concerns me now is what the first entity was up to.”

“Blowing up houses is nothing out of the ordinary,” Dull Voice said, “but I do admit to a certain curiosity as to why, out of all the buildings in the city, those particular homes were targeted.”

“The owners of the first house described the creature in some detail,” Cool Voice said. “From their account, it appeared out of nowhere, broke its way out of their house, and seemed to be searching for something until the Senshi attacked it. The damage to the second house could have been incidental, a result of the battle.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you don’t believe that?” Dry Voice prompted.

“Another report that came to my attention this afternoon has raised questions about one of the people in the second home at the time of the attack,” Cool Voice replied. “Nothing I can confirm yet, but I have people looking into the matter.”

“Does this ‘matter’ have a name?”

“Meiou Setsuna.”

# 

Setsuna awoke with a start. It was not dark, but for a moment, she was not sure where she was; then the steady sound of breathing—someone else’s—reminded her. The hospital. And the other person in the room was Usagi, asleep in one of the chairs. The other Senshi had gone to pick up Setsuna’s things for transport to the Tsukino household, and to help Ami and her mother pack up for their own forced move.

In the chair, Usagi shifted in her sleep, making an odd sound that made Setsuna smile and then grimace as she tried not to yawn. That had been why she fell asleep in the first place, she remembered now; Usagi had dozed off in the chair, and Setsuna, laying in the bed and watching that peaceful, contented expression while listening to those rhythmic, soothing sounds of breathing, had been lulled into sleep herself.

She yawned anyway, but instead of leaning back and letting herself drift off again, Setsuna pushed back the blankets and got out of bed. She was still very tired, but she’d also been lying down for most of the day, and her back and legs were complaining about it too much for her to sleep just yet. She walked about the room slowly and quietly to avoid waking Usagi. There wasn’t all that much space, so she soon ended up standing next to the window, looking out at the city. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was in the process of sinking behind the skyscrapers and rooftops and the distant horizon, setting the sky ablaze. One or two very bright stars hung in the darkening eastern sky, and many tinier stars were winking into life on the ground, headlights and streetlights and lamps.

*Is this home?* Setsuna wondered. Nothing was familiar, and in fact, the longer she looked at it, the more the sheer size of the city became obvious. *So many people. So many strangers.* Setsuna shivered, folding her arms as she did so— partly to ward off the chill, and partly to keep her hands confined. The thought of moving among so many people, of accidentally brushing into someone and suddenly learning everything about them, was frightening. No, this huge city was not—could never be—home. Not to her.

*But if not the entire city, what about just a part of it?* Setsuna’s eyes turned away from the window to regard Usagi, snoozing soundly in her chair. *This half-grown girl, already a warrior and a mother-to-be, a friend who is but should not be a stranger—could her home be my home? Can I control this ‘gift’ well enough to live with her family?*

*Do I even want to?*

# 

Haruka wondered idly if there was a way to get away with strangling offensive airline personnel. Whether there was or not, she was about five minutes away from taking her chances with the police.

*If I could just be sure there was a security camera around here recording this little weasel’s comments,* she thought. *No jury on Earth would convict after seeing the way he acts.*

The weasel in question was one of those mean-spirited people that swims up from the shallow end of the gene pool every so often, the small-minded, self- important sorts who enjoy going out of their way to make life as difficult as possible for everyone else. At this time—January 5th, 10:32pm, local—and place—Berlin, Germany—he was devoting his attention to a scheduling conflict which had arisen after some last-minute changes Haruka and Michiru had made to their travel plans.

They had originally purchased tickets for a transcontinental flight back to Tokyo from Rome, with several extended layovers in various cities along the way; for all her cultured grace and aristocratic manner, Michiru had the compulsive flash photography instincts of a tourist. Ordinarily, they would have spent two or three weeks getting home, and filled several rolls of film along the way.

But Usagi’s little New Year’s call had thrown all their plans out the window. Haruka had delayed telling Michiru until the day after the concert, just to make sure she’d caught up on her sleep.

Michiru, Haruka reminded herself for perhaps the hundredth time, did not appreciate being left out of the loop, even for the most well-intentioned of reasons, and she had expressed that displeasure in terms of volume, vocabulary, and visual aid.

The only thing that had spared Haruka from hours of being on the end of suspicious, hard, and icy blue-eyed looks was the fact that Hotaru had overheard them arguing and gone all wide-eyed and scared at the news that something bad had happened to Setsuna. Michiru had spent the afternoon calming the Senshi of Destruction down while Haruka made the necessary calls to the travel agent. All things considered, finding a flight in the right direction with next to no advance notice had been no small miracle.

“Everything’s been taken care of,” the man had told her.

This message had obviously not reached the officious Napoleon complex lurking behind the desk. Or maybe it had, and he was ignoring it; either way, Haruka’s patience was just about maxed out. She took a deep breath and tried again.

“I know we were scheduled for a flight to Istanbul on the 8th, but there was an emergency at home, so we changed to yesterday’s flight HERE, and we’re supposed to go on to Moscow tonight.”

“And I tell you again, there is nein record of tickets issued to either ’Tennou Haruka’ or ‘Kaioh Michiru’ for this flight.” Maybe it was his mix of bad Japanese and native German accents that made the fellow so annoying. Haruka could have spoken English and at least heard two modes of speech from the same linguistic family being mangled together, but she tended to lose her grip on the language when she was irritated, and so this discussion/argument/imminent homicide was sounding like a badly dubbed feature film—one in which the principle characters had been given no-talent voice actors, while the supporting cast continued to speak their native tongue.

“Is there a problem here?” a voice asked in absolutely flawless Japanese. Haruka looked away from the source of her annoyance to another airline employee, a man who seemed to be the definition of the word ‘average.’ Average height, average build, average facial features; not much about him stood out, but at least he could keep two languages separate when he spoke.

“A scheduling conflict,” the offensive fellow said immediately. “There is nein record of the tickets she claims...”

“May I?” The average fellow leaned towards the computer, politely elbowing the other man aside while he checked something. “Tennou Haruka, is it? Let me see... ah. Here it is. Flight 412, leaving from Gate 4 in twenty-nine minutes. Two day layover in Moscow, but after that... there.” The man entered something into the computer, retrieved the tickets and placed them in a brochure with the full trip schedule and several other helpful notes in it, then handed the whole thing over to Haruka. “Sorry about the delay, Tennou-san. All the arrangements have been made and reconfirmed clear to Tokyo, so you won’t have any further problems. Is there anything else you’ll require?”

“No, thank you.” The average fellow nodded, wished her a pleasant trip, and returned to his place behind the other counter. Haruka resisted the urge to smirk at her adversary as she returned to sit next to Michiru and Hotaru.

“How’d it go?” Michiru asked.

“Not well at first. That little pest must be either half-youma or just plain incompetent; the other fellow straightened things out in about ten seconds.” She held up the tickets. “Three seats, all the way to Tokyo.”

“There are four tickets,” Michiru politely pointed out. Haruka blinked.

“What the... now why did he...”

“May I see your tickets, please?” a juvenile, purposely high-pitched, and frighteningly familiar voice asked from behind them. Hotaru spun around, kneeling on her seat, to get a good look at the speaker.

“ChibiUsa!” she squealed in delight.

“Hotaru!” the pink-haired time-traveler replied with a perfectly mimicked squeal. While the two friends embraced, Haruka and Michiru looked at each other. The girl had grown noticeably since her last visit, and she looked more like her mother than ever. A LOT more, the two Outer Senshi thought. The word ‘uncanny’ didn’t do the resemblance justice.

“Welcome back,” Michiru said, forcing a smile. “You’re looking... um...” Michiru paused, at a loss for the right words.

“Older?” ChibiUsa supplied, grinning in a way that made Haruka’s jaw twitch. Usagi had been throwing a carbon-copy of that smile around for as long as they’d known her.

*One’s bad enough on her own,* Haruka thought nervously. *Kamis help us all with TWO of them on the loose.*

“I get the feeling it’s been longer than six months for you,” Hotaru said. ChibiUsa nodded.

“I’m almost thirteen now. After I got home from the last time, Mama decided it might be time to start with those ‘princess things’ she said Luna used to shove down her throat.” She made a face.

“Bad?” Hotaru asked sympathetically.

“Being stuck in a room with Luna AND Mercury AND Mars trading you back and forth like a volleyball for six hours each day is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. At least Venus and Jupiter know how to have fun while they teach something.” ChibUsa looked around curiously. “So, where’s Pu? She said she’d meet me here.”

“She said...” Haruka began.

“...she’d meet you here.” Michiru finished. Both of them were rather proud of the fact that they’d managed to get the words out in a normal tone of voice. ChibiUsa looked at them oddly.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “she did.”

“Could you explain that?” Haruka asked, getting another odd look.

“What’s there to explain?”

“Just humor me.”

“Okay,” ChibiUsa said, shaking her head. “I got the idea to come back and visit Hotaru-chan for her birthday a few days ago. I asked Mama if it would be okay, and she said that whether she said it was okay or not, I’d end up going anyway.” She made another face, more frustrated than disgusted. “Do you have any idea how strange it can be trying to ask something of somebody who already knows what the answer is going to be?”

“Other than Pu?” Hotaru asked with a smile.

“Especially other than Pu. You _expect_ her to be like that, but when it’s somebody like Mama...” ChibiUsa shivered. “It’s a lot creepier because you’re not ready for it. Anyway, when I got to the Time Gate, I talked with Pu for a while, she told me where to find you, and she said she’d be on the other side when I got here. I thought she meant she’d be with you. Is she somewhere else?”

“Setsuna’s in Tokyo,” Michiru said. “Usagi called us on New Year’s Eve to say she’d shown up rather unexpectedly.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’d better get a ticket, then.”

“We’ve already got one,” Haruka said, trying not to scowl when she got yet another of those odd looks thrown her way.

“Did you KNOW I was going to be here?” ChibiUsa asked suspiciously.

“Didn’t have a clue,” Haruka replied. “Was there ANYTHING strange about Pluto when you talked to her this time?”

“Strange? No more than she usually is.” ChibiUsa paused, frowning. “She _was_ talking with someone else when I arrived, though, which is pretty odd since not too many people can get to the Time Gate in the first place, and Pu usually runs off most of the ones who actually make it. Will one of you tell me what’s going on? You’ve all been acting weird since I mentioned Pu.”

“In a minute,” Michiru promised. “But this person you said she was talking to; did you recognize them? Did they say anything to you?”

“No and no. It was a man, sort of odd-looking. Pu said something to him when she saw me, and he just sort of nodded and walked off. I asked, and she just said he was a traveler who’d gotten a little lost.”

“Odd-looking?” Haruka pressed. “How so?”

“Well, he wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t particularly handsome either. When you get right down to it, he wasn’t much of anything, and what I thought was really strange was that he didn’t have any machinery or equipment that could have created a time portal. He looked like he was wearing a flight attendant’s uniform.” An image clicked in Haruka’s mind.

“Medium height?” she asked quickly. “Medium build? Greyish hair and eyes, sort of a tan but not tanned skin tone? Looked like he could disappear into a crowd?”

“That’s him,” ChibiUsa said immediately. “Do you know him?”

“He gave me the tickets,” Haruka said dryly. “He’s right over... there?” She looked from one end of the service counter to the other; there were three people behind it other than the annoying little worm on the far end, and none of them were the helpful Joe Average. “Hold these for a minute,” she said, handing the tickets to Michiru before walking up to speak to one of the other airline employees. After a short conversation, she returned, looking thoroughly disgusted.

“He’s not here,” Michiru said. It wasn’t a question.

“Nobody by that description is currently working this shift in any capacity.” Haruka sat down, her head tilted back to study the ceiling for a time.

“Will somebody PLEASE tell me what’s going on?” ChibiUsa asked, the first pouty beginnings of a world-class whine in her voice.

“Kid,” Haruka replied wearily, “I haven’t got the slightest clue.”

And she meant every single word.

 

# 

 

**Minako** : Hi there! Usagi’s busy trying to track down the writer just now...

_(Cut to a shot of Usagi, walking around with a huge magnifying glass sort of device strapped to her face and a backpack that sprouts tracking equipment and sensor antennae like a rosebush does thorns strapped to her back, intently following a trail of footprints only to get totally sidetracked by a box of donuts in her path)_

**Minako** : ...something about leaving a door open in winter, I think she said, so I get to do today’s moral!  _(bats her eyelashes)_  Isn’t that just perfect?

**Artemis** : I could think of a few other words that might work better.

**Minako**   _(sweetly)_ : Did you want to get fed tonight, buster? Yes? Then butter your lip.

**Artemis**   _(snapping a salute)_ : Ya vol! _(Goose-steps off the screen)_

**Minako** : He’ll do anything for tuna. Now where was I? Oh, right. Today’s moral is one all Senshi already know and live by: Don’t get Mako-chan angry.  _(stops and thinks for a moment)_  Actually, I could say the same thing about Rei-chan, too. And Haruka, for that matter. Or Hotaru, or...  _(stops and counts off names on her fingers)_  ...well, just about everybody, really. I have to say, it’s not easy working with a bunch of people with such a scary combination of short tempers and potential for raw destruction. Makoto and Rei—especially where Usagi is concerned—can get mad at the top of a hat, and the fact that neither of them can get hold of a steady boyfriend really isn’t helping.

_(As Minako talks, Rei and Makoto begin to loom ominously behind her)_

**Minako**   _(blithely unaware of the towering presences behind her)_ : I mean, come ON! If our shy little Ami-chan can find time for romance, what’s stopping THOSE two from finding somebody special? Mako-chan at least is looking, even if she does have this senpai complex to get over, but Rei-chan’s got this cute guy who’s totally devoted to her, and she doesn’t even seem to notice him! Oh sure, she’s kissed him a couple of times, but have you noticed that it’s always just after he’s been knocked out by a monster? Where’s the fun in that? Honestly, I’m starting to lose hope for these two. I may be the appointed representative of the Goddess of Love, but even I’ve got my limits—and I’ve spent so much time trying to get both Rei-chan and Mako-chan hooked up with SOMEBODY that I can’t even spend any time looking for a boyfriend myself! I ask you, is that fair?! Is that...  _(finally notices her ‘friends,’ and goes white)_  Eeep. Um... hi, guys.

**Rei**   _(looks at the camera)_ : You.  _(indicates with her thumb)_  Out.

_(The camera sweatdrops and then quickly pans to the left. Rei and Makoto are rolling up their sleeves the last we see of them. Ami and Setsuna slide into the picture, looking towards the right and wincing)_

**Setsuna** : That’s got to hurt.

**Ami** : Not as much as THAT.

(Usagi walks by, following a trail of powdered sugar donuts)

**Ami** : What are you doing?

**Usagi**   _(mouth full of half-eaten donut)_ : Can you believe it? Shomebody jusht left all theesh donutsh lying around.

(Ami and Setsuna watch in amazement as Usagi follows the trail to its end, a double-glazed chocolate donut which, after drooling for a moment, she reaches for. The wire attached to the bottom of the donut pulls taut, and Usagi is still looking at IT in amazement when a huge, open-end-down box falls on her from above. The writer glances in from the side)

**the Judge** : Did it work?

**Ami** : It worked. But do you REALLY think it was necessary?

**the Judge** : You’ve never tried to fight this girl. And besides, she kept trying to steal a look at my notes. There are some things I don’t share with ANYBODY until the next episode.

**Setsuna** : Speaking of notes, who are those shadowy people in the dark room? And who sold me out to them?

**Haruka**   _(leaning in from the left)_ : And who is that flight attendant guy?

**the Judge**   _(frowns)_ : Weren’t you people listening? NO PREVIEWS. Anyway, I’ve got to...  _(glances over to the right and gets a horrified look on his face)_  I think maybe I’d better put a stop to that before I lose my PG rating.  _(walks off- camera)_  Makoto, Rei, a word? Look, I know you’re upset about not having boyfriends, but that’s no... Hey! Ouch! Stop that! Not the face! Not the face!

**Setsuna** : Aren’t writers supposed to be omniscient?

**Ami** : Apparently not, or he would have known not to say that.

**Usagi**   _(still in the box)_ : Somebody let me out of here!

**Setsuna**   _(to Ami and Haruka)_ : Should we?

**Haruka**   _(sitting casually on the box)_ : Nah.

**Usagi** : Hey!

_05/15/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)_

_Word to the wise—NEVER leave your backup disks lying around where your well-intentioned but functionally computer-illiterate father can ‘accidentally’ erase every file on them while trying to reboot your computer after it’s just crashed for the fourth friggin’ time..._

_Some of you have been paying attention may have noticed a chronological inconsistency in Episode One—namely, that it cannot be midnight in Tokyo and New York at the same time. I’m not sure how it slipped by me, but I have gone back and made the necessary adjustments; I also took the opportunity to clean up the first two episodes somewhat. However, since I intend to modify this mess-in-progress as it gets larger, and because most websites give you a limited number of chances to correct already on-line work, the corrected versions likely won’t be up for a while._

_Anyhoo... up next time:_  
_-Forging valiantly ahead, hopefully into at least February!_  
_-More dark and twisted threads in a dark and twisted plot from a dark and twisted mind;_  
_-And one heck of a head-on collision at the airport..._

_One other thing: my email’s been screwed up and recently changed, so if you’re the kind of person who enjoys writing to authors, take note—because I usually do respond to any email I get._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POSTER’S NOTE: The email mentioned above was this one: the_high_judge@hotmail.com  
> No responses from her for years, unfortunately.


	4. Old Friends Return, and New Enemies (Briefly) Make the Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POSTER’S NOTE: This is the un-corrupted unedited version of this chapter. Not the (Revised, 15/08/02) edit. Sorry guys.

 

Makoto shifted the grocery bags in her arms as she climbed the steps to the front door of her apartment. Not because the bags were heavy, by any means, but because she needed to be able to use one hand to get the door open.

Normally this wouldn't have been a problem. She bought groceries once a week, one bag of whatever she currently needed to restock her shelves and refridgerator. The fact that Makoto ate more than most girls her age who weren't Usagi tended to be cancelled out by the fact that she lived alone, and although she cooked a great deal, she could also stretch one well-prepared meal for three or four into several meals for one person.

Having Ami as a houseguest hadn't _quite_ doubled the rate at which Makoto's fridge emptied out, but the increase was still there, and after three days, the fridge was showing signs of depletion sooner than it normally would - and the pantry as well.

That wasn't the only thing that had changed. Makoto had always kept her apartment in a state of perpetual neatness: anything not currently in use was put away in a closet or drawer or up on a shelf; dust, grime, or mildew were forbidden; dishes and laundry were cleaned with military precision. The only dirt of any kind tolerated beyond the door was the packed soil which kept Makoto's collection of potted plants alive, and even _that_ was spared only so long as it stayed inside the various clay and plastic pots. The plants themselves had things fairly good, living first in the fresh air on the balcony during the summer, and then scattered around the apartment's central room, with its large, canopy-like window providing ample sunlight during the winter months. Everything was where it should be, out of the way but within easy reach if needed.

Knowing Ami to be inclined towards neat organization herself, Makoto had anticipated no real problems in having her as a roommate, and in all honesty, the first night had gone well enough. Ami had arrived late in the afternoon with a pair of suitcases and a few books in her backpack, and Makoto had helped her rearrange the side room she usually used -or not- as a study into something that resembled a bedroom, with a mattress provided by Rei from the storerooms at Hikawa. Minako had provided a lot of garbled but enthusiastic vocal support and very little in the way of physical aid. Ami had not seemed to mind sleeping in a room full of books - or half-full, since Makoto didn't really read all that much - and after supper, they had both really been too tired to do anything except go to sleep. Makoto had drifted off thinking how strange it felt to have someone else living under the same roof again.

The next day had not gone so well. They both slept late and woke with the dull-eyed grouchiness that oversleeping occasionally creates, which had not helped matters when they returned to the Mizuno household - cordoned-off behind lines of police tape - to meet Ami's mother and the team of movers she had hired to help get everything that was still intact out of the house before weather or thieves got to it. Mizuno-san was taking some things with her to the apartment where she would be staying, and most of the surviving furniture was destined for storage; beyond a medium-sized dresser which fit quite neatly into her room at Makoto's, Ami had brought mostly books.

Not just five or ten books, though. Boxes of books. An army of books, most of them belonging to either the large, hardcover reference variety or the many-paged paperback variety. So many books that Makoto wondered where they were going to find room for them all. There had been enough shelf space in the converted study for the contents of two of those boxes; six more were currently parked in the living room because no other room had enough extra space for them, and their presence was giving the apartment a vague, transitory kind of atmosphere which gnawed at Makoto's sense of neatness.

There were other things, too. Little things like how the laundry hamper had suddenly filled up, and how Ami sometimes spoke aloud when she read some of those piled-up books. How the increase in water consumption meant that there was seldom any hot water left, or how objects seemed to mysteriously re-arrange themselves whenever Ami passed through a room.

Still, Makoto refused to let it bother her. Ami was a guest, and a friend besides. She did her share of the chores and had insisted on helping pay for the food as well. And as long as Makoto actually did some thinking for herself, Ami would gladly help her out with homework in the upcoming term.

*Now, if I could just get her to stop trying to alphabetize my cookbooks,* Makoto thought, leaning down slightly to get at the doorknob without dropping one or both of the grocery bags.

"Do you need a hand?" a familiar voice asked.

"I'd take a foot if I thought it would help," she replied, turning to see Urawa, regarding her with some amusement and a bookbag slung over one shoulder. "What brings you here?"

"Actually, I was hoping that a certain beautiful, brilliant, blue-eyed lady of our mutual acquaintance might be in residence."

"That depends," Makoto said. "Are your intentions towards her entirely honorable?"

"Not in the slightest." Urawa leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. "I'm actually an extradimensional alien who intends to knock you unconscious and then carry her off to an eternity of sinful decadence and questionable morality."

"Sounds like fun," Makoto answered with a straight face, trying one last time to get the door open before huffing in annoyance and handing one of the shopping bags to Urawa. "Make yourself useful and hold that, O Corrupter of Innocent Maidens. This door likes to freeze up in cold weather."

"But seriously," Urawa said, taking the bag, "is Ami-chan staying with you?" He tapped the side of his head with his free hand. "I saw the two of you, Hino-san, and Mina-chan carrying things out of her house - or what was left of it - and into your place, but it could have meant something else."

"No, she's here." The door opened with a slight cracking sound as the faint skin of built-up ice shattered. "Or she was when I went to the store, at least. Come on in, and watch out for the boxes."

While Urawa closed the door, Makoto leaned partway around the corner to take a glance at the living room. Ami was standing with her back turned, removing books from a box on the table and sorting them into piles. To Makoto's eyes, the factor of size seemed to play a major role in what books went into which pile. Pile A is for all books large enough to crush spiders, Pile B for all books large enough to crush your foot...

Shaking her head as she turned about and kicked off her shoes, Makoto looked at Urawa. "She's in the living room unpacking some things. I can handle the groceries; why don't you go surprise her while I put this stuff away and get some tea ready?"

That triggered a smile, and Urawa walked quietly into the living room, his socked feet making no noise at all. Makoto chuckled softly as she carried the two shopping bags into the kitchen and set them on the counter. She had just plugged in the teapot when a startled shriek and a dull thud - probably caused by a falling book - echoed from the living room, followed closely by Ami's half-shouted, "Don't DO that!" Makoto couldn't hear much of Urawa's reply, but it sounded humble, sincere, and completely unrepentant. She chuckled again and started putting things away, humming faintly to herself to block out the sounds of conversation and give her friends a few minutes of privacy.

When Makoto entered the living room about five minutes later, carrying the teapot and three of her best cups on a tray, Ami and Ryo were sitting on the couch. Makoto might not have a particularly great track record with long-term relationships, but she knew enough to recognize that these two had left the 'talking' stage behind and were now well into the 'holding hands and getting lost in each other's eyes' stage. They didn't notice her approach until she was setting the tea down on the table in front of them and pulling a plush footstool around to sit on, at which point they both started and pulled slightly back from one another, blushing.

"So," Makoto began, ignoring the blushes and pouring the tea, "how was Greece?" She was referring to the trip Ryo's father had sprung for over the winter break.

"Very old, for the most part," he replied, taking a sip of his tea. "But that's what we paid for, I suppose. The New Year's celebration in Athens was certainly something to see; they had the Acropolis all done up with lights, and I've never heard so many people sing so _badly_ together all at once." He laughed. "Poor Dad. He got a little too far into a bottle of ouzo with some of the locals and needed most of the next day to sleep it off. He can handle saki and beer pretty well, but that stuff must have taken him by surprise."

"It all depends on what you're used to, I suppose," Ami said, smiling. Then her tone became wheedling. "Did you bring me anything?" Ryo blinked and then started to laugh again.

"Usagi-chan's been a bad influence, I see. As a matter of fact, I did." He set down his tea and opened the bookbag, pulling out a small disc of orange clay, about as wide across the middle as his hand was long, and not much thicker than a finger. Both faces were covered with a hundred or so small images, arranged in a pattern which spiralled out from the center and was divided into uneven sections. Ami recognized it.

"A Phaistos disc. They unearthed the original on the island of Crete in 1903," she explained, noticing Makoto's lost expression. "It's over 3500 years old, but so far, nobody's been able to figure out what the pictures on it mean."

"I thought you might like it," Ryo said, handing her the disc. "And who knows? Maybe your computer could help you to translate it."

"Maybe. Although," Ami added, rolling her eyes, "knowing our luck, it'll probably turn out to be some terrible secret that could destroy the world."

"Probably," Ryo agreed. "That would be the... what? Fourth? Fifth time now?"

"I stopped counting." Makoto shook her head. "So how long are you going to be in town for this time, Ryo-kun? Just the night, or long enough for some serious pursuit of that sinful decadence you mentioned before?"

Ami blinked. "What?"

"Uh," Ryo said hesitantly, ignoring Ami's question, "just the weekend for now, but I'll be back by the end of the month. Dad's company went through a major audit while we were in Greece, and a fair number of the senior executives were fired - something about inside trading, I think. Anyway, there were a lot of promotions and reassignments to fill the employment gaps, and Dad got transferred back here. We'll be moving as soon as we find a place, and I managed to convince him to register me at Juuban High."

"Really?!" Ami exclaimed, sounding almost as excited as Minako or Usagi would have.

"Yes," Ryo laughed, "really. Would I lie to..." He stopped short. To Ami and Makoto, it appeared as if Ryo's eyes zoomed in on something that was simultaneously right under his nose and clear across the room; they recognized the signs of one of his periodic visions, and remained quiet until he blinked again.

"What did you see, Ryo-kun?"

"I'm... I'm not sure," he admitted, sounding puzzled. "Is somebody you know in the hospital, Ami-chan?"

"Yes," she replied. "Setsuna-san." Ami elaborated for Ryo, who had never actually met Setsuna. "Did you see her room at the hospital?"

"I saw _a_ room. Usagi-chan, Hino-san, and Mina-chan were in it, I was standing in the doorway, and I think you and Mako-chan were there, too, but I'm not sure if anybody else was actually in the room." Ryo frowned. So did Ami and Makoto.

"'Not sure?'" Makoto prompted.

"There was... a blur." Ryo closed his eyes, struggling to recreate the image and explain the problem. "There were two beds in the room, and the one nearest the door seemed to be... twisted, somehow. Warped. Everything around it was blotched and fuzzy; I couldn't tell if there was anyone there or not."

"That first bed is the one Setsuna-san's using," Makoto said. "Is something going to happen to her?"

"I don't think so," Ryo said confidently. "I didn't get any sense of danger, and Usagi-chan and the others didn't seem to be worried at all. I've never seen something like that before, though," he admitted, "so I might be wrong."

"And then again," Ami pointed out, "you might not. Setsuna-san IS the Senshi of Time, after all. Her presence might very well have some sort of discrete warping effect on the space-time continuum that normal human senses can't pick up, but which would register in your visions as that blur." She considered the problem and then rose to her feet. "We should probably get down there. I'd like to take some readings with my computer and see if I can figure this out."

Makoto quickly gathered up the teacups and returned them to the kitchen while Ryo and Ami got their coats and shoes, made sure everything in the apartment was turned off or put away before getting her own coat, then stepped outside, locked the door, and hurried to catch up with her friends. Ami and Ryo were discussing the upcoming term as they walked; Makoto fell in behind them and lapsed into another polite silence.

A short distance down the street, Ryo's hand, moving slowly and somewhat uncertainly, reached out to clasp about Ami's. She paused in the middle of saying something to look down, surprised, and then look up at Ryo, blushing before breaking into a small, shy smile. They didn't say much after that, but neither did they let go of each other's hand.

Behind them, Makoto smiled.   


 

"So was he a pegasus with a horn or a unicorn with wings?" Setsuna asked.

The Senshi were using Setsuna's time in the hospital to expound on the short, highly-compressed, and extremely incomplete history Usagi had told her that first night. It was a not-so-small mercy that Setsuna never asked the same question twice, but there were so many things TO question that the whole review was taking forever.

Right now, they were stuck on the problem of Helios, the dream-dwelling horse that they had protected from Nehernia and her Dead Moon Circus. As Setsuna had explained to Luna, there were still many bits of information in her mind, and now that it was organized - if still frustratingly devoid of details about herself - she could make excellent use of that knowledge. She wasn't sure if she'd read a grimoire in the Middle Ages or had at some point in her forgotten past actually met members of the two species in question, but Setsuna was quite certain that unicorns had horns, but not wings, while pegasi had wings, but not horns. Never mind that THIS one, whichever species it belonged to, had been living in a dream at the time.

"A pegasus," Usagi replied.

"A unicorn," Minako said at the same moment. They glared at each other.

"Actually," Rei interrupted, drawing glares from the two arguing girls, "Helios turned out to be a boy a couple of years older than ChibiUsa was. Or is. Or will be." Rei frowned. "You know what I mean. Anyway, she wasn't clear on whether Helios was a spirit that looked like a boy or an actual boy who lived somewhere else, but he seemed to be connected to Mamoru." Then she paused. "I won't swear to this, but I think ChibiUsa thought he was cute."

"Mamoru or Helios?" Setsuna asked.

"Both," Usagi replied sourly. "She tried to steal Mamo-chan from me the first time she showed up, and things didn't improve all that much even after she knew we were her parents. Although we weren't actually, then. Her parents, that is. I mean, we were, but we... arrrgh!" Usagi groaned, pulling at her hair in frustration. "I HATE this! Where is Ami-chan when I need her?"

"Did someone call?" Ami asked, poking her head through the door curiously.

"Where have you been?" Usagi snapped.

"We're having a problem with the use of proper tenses in regards to fourth-dimensional thinking," Setsuna explained.

"Most people would," Ryo said, appearing to Ami's left and nodding to the other Senshi with a smile. "I know it drives ME up the wall, and I've got more experience with it... than... most..." The words trailed off and Ryo's eyes almost jumped out of his skull when they reached Setsuna, his face turning pale. The Senshi looked on in surprise, and Ami, fearing Ryo might faint, caught his arm.

"Ryo-kun? What's wrong?"

"You," Ryo said in a strangled whisper, looking not at Ami, but past her -to Setsuna, who looked back with an expression of desperate, barely repressed curiosity.

Ryo didn't see the curiosity. Or rather, that wasn't all he saw. Over Setsuna's face, he saw another face, a solid-seeming image that was somehow even more real than the flesh and blood and bone before him, n face that, although he had never seen it before, Ryo's mind clearly identified as belonging to Pluto. And on top of that face, there was a third, somehow fainter. And a fourth. A fifth. Ten, twenty, fifty -too many faces to count, each of them different, some faint mists, others strongly real, and all of them distinctly Setsuna.

For just a moment, Ryo thought he saw something else, another face that was most definitely NOT Setsuna's in any way, but it was buried behind so many of the stacked images that his eyes could not make out the specifics. And there was something else about the faces that he couldn't quite put his finger on, an odd, nagging sort of feeling in which part of his brain knew the question, another part knew the answer, and neither were telling the third part anything.

"Have we met?" Setsuna asked, voice reflecting the same intense need in her eyes: the need to learn something, anything about herself. "Do you know me?"

At Setsuna's words, Ryo blinked - and then he blinked again as the multitude of faces wavered and vanished. The sheer shock drained from his own features, becoming mere confusion, and he looked at the Senshi.

"Did ANY of you see that? Tell me you saw it."

"See what?" Minako looked around as if she honestly expected to see something.

"Another vision?" Ami asked.

"No," Ryo said slowly, "not exactly. It hurts like one, though," he added, wincing as a profound and familiar impulse went off in his brain.

"Do you need to sit down?" Usagi asked, getting up out of her chair. Ryo shook his head - slowly - knowing from experience that the headache was in no way related to his physical condition, and would be just as bad sitting down as it was when he was on his feet, but he ended up in the chair anyway.

He suspected Usagi had something to do with that. Turning down a gift from Usagi was very difficult to do; even when you had no use for the thing - such as the small potted plant she had given to Rei on her last birthday - or truly didn't want it - like the limited-issue Sailor V manga she had rather generously given to Ami for HER birthday - you somehow ended up keeping it.

The little flower with its fragile-seeming blossoms was still blooming nicely on a counter beneath the window in Rei's room, despite the fact that Rei typically had about the same effect on plants as a flaming lawnmower;

The Sailor V manga, sealed in the hard plastic cover it had come with, not only rested safely on a shelf in Ami's new room at Makoto's apartment, but had actually been read several times;

And Ryo, puzzling over this curious trend while sitting in the chair, suddenly noticed that his headache was gone.

"Feeling better?" Usagi asked, now sitting on the spare bed.

"Much." Ryo nodded towards her. "Has she started kicking yet?"

"No." Usagi paused. "Will she?"

"I'll let you know if I see anything," Ryo promised. Then he looked around again. "And none of you saw that?"

"If you don't start explaining what 'that' was," Ami said, sounding exasperated, "I'm going to be very cross with you."

"She's not the only one," Makoto added.

"Better make that three," Rei advised.

Minako looked at her friends. "Ah, why not. 'All for one, and one-half off,' as they say."

Ryo was quite sure that this was NOT what they said, but he raised his hands in surrender before Usagi could chip in. "Alright, alright; I give up, I'll talk." He began explaining, describing the procession of faces and the half-seen image behind them, but leaving out any mention of the 'odd feeling' he'd had.

It took nearly ten minutes for Ryo to convey what he'd seen in a tenth of a second, which was unusual. He was used to seeing things in a straightforward, 'instant preplay' sort of effect, not abstract visual metaphors overlaying the reality around him; the Senshi, likewise, were used to hearing very precise descriptions, not a perpetual struggle to find the right words. Setsuna actually had the easiest time following what Ryo said, though she appeared vaguely saddened that he could not tell her anything about herself. Ami grasped the concept quite quickly as well, but had a vague feeling that Ryo was leaving something out. She decided not to press the issue; the others were having enough trouble as it was.

"What do you mean by 'layered?'" Usagi finally asked. "Is it sort of like how they do animated films? What I mean is, they draw the background scene and then lay all those plastic sheets with the characters drawn on them over the background. Is it like that?"

"That's almost exactly it," Ryo said, relieved. "Except that there's just the one image, over and over again."

"How did you think of that?" Rei asked Usagi, sounding a little surprised.

"I remembered that time we went to check out the animation class that was helping out with the Sailor V movie, and..."

"Ooh!" Minako squealed, delighted. "You got to see behind the scenes of my movie? Do you have any idea how lucky you were? They wouldn't even let ME in, and I was the star!"

"No you weren't," Usagi objected.

"I was too!" Minako objected right back.

"You aren't even in the movie!"

"I am too!"

"That was Sailor V, not Aino Minako. The character design barely even looks like you, and besides which, you're not Sailor V anymore!"

"Oh yeah?" Minako got to her feet and pulled something out of a pocket. To the Senshi, that 'something' looked like her transformation pen, and indeed, it was - just not the one they were thinking of. *I'll show her,* Minako thought. "Moon Power Transform!"

A lightshow that was at once very similar to and yet entirely different from the one that turned Minako into Sailor Venus went into effect, and when it ended, a masked girl wearing a uniform that was very similar to and yet entirely different from Sailor Venus' stood before them, striking a pose.

"HA!" she proclaimed grandly. "The soldier of justice, the sailor-suited beautiful soldier has returned! I am Sailor Venus, Code Name: Sailor V!" *Wow,* she thought, *I haven't done this in years. I'm glad the old pen still works; I'd have looked pretty silly if it... hey, I wonder if I could get it to help me with my homework again? Hmm...*

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Ryo had never heard anyone shout in a whisper before, but he was getting used to Usagi's casual defiance of the laws of physics by now.

"Just proving a point," Minako - pardon, Sailor V - replied casually, checking herself out to see whether or not the old uniform still fit - which it did, one of the benefits of magical clothing being that it ALWAYS fits - before shifting the muscles of her face slightly. "I forgot what wearing this thing was like," she admitted, adjusting her mask. "I can't see how Tux-chan puts up with that clunker he has; it's like wearing a mask and glasses at the same time. Ugh."

"Change back before someone sees you!" Usagi ordered her.

"Not until you apologize," Sailor V said, waving one finger chidingly at Usagi. She paused in mid-wave to turn her hand, examining the fit of the glove before pulling out her compact and taking a closer look at what she was wearing. This was definitely Sailor V's uniform, but it had changed in some ways from what she remembered, to the point where it resembled a fusion of her two superheroic identities. The skirt was longer, the shoes were now the same Grecian sandal-type that Venus wore, and the mask was now affixed to a tiara - one with a clear crystal in the center rather than the normal golden gem - almost as if the mask had grown out from the tiara's lower rim. Most interesting was the pattern of slim crescents and the sign of Venus running along the hem of the skirt and the edge of the long collar in gold thread. Two much larger Venus symbols adorned the backs of her gloves, crossed ends pointing forward, and instead of a stone, the bow on the front of her shirt now sprouted from a solid gold representation of that sign. A moment's examination suggested to Sailor V that this gold brooch was intended to hold her compact when her hands were busy.

After an extended examination, one thought went through her head:

*WOW!*

"APOLOGIZE?!" Usagi was practically shrieking.

"I can wait all day," Sailor V replied. Brushing out her skirt, she added, "You know, I think I might want to use this outfit the next time there's a fight. I mean, nobody's seen Sailor V in ages, and the manga's really gone downhill over the last year or so; a few authentic Sailor V sightings might be just the thing to cheer up the fans and reinspire the writers, don't you think?"

Usagi's teeth started to grind.   


 

"What was that?"

"I'm not sure. The detection system picked up a power spike of some sort."

"How strong?"

"Not very strong at all. Maybe a Level Two reading."

"Hardly worth worrying about, then. All indications are that one of the gateways these critters keep showing up through would generate at least a Level Six reading."

"I dunno. It'd have to have been pretty close by for us to pick it up at all, but it didn't last long enough to get a fix on."

"Probably just somebody firing up one of the CAT-scans upstairs or tripping a circuit breaker."

"Maybe, but I think I'll have security make a quick sweep of the building. Just to be on the safe side."   


 

Ryo really hadn't meant to stay for dinner, but even if Ami hadn't insisted, Makoto HAD, and she could be just as difficult to refuse as Usagi - though for entirely different reasons.

Which is why he had found himself calling from the hospital to let his folks know he wouldn't be home until later, and why dinnertime found him facing off against a meal that would have been at home in any fancy restaurant he'd ever seen.

The entire evening had the air of a date about it, especially since Makoto had either chosen to skip supper or eat in the kitchen, bringing in the meal like a professional waitress but otherwise leaving Ami and Ryo to themselves; she cooked, served, and cleaned up by herself while putting an abrupt stop to any and all attempts by Ami or Ryo to lend a hand, and after serving tea in the living room for a second time that day, vanished entirely.

*I wonder if Mako-chan's got some sort of surveillance system hooked up in here so she can spy on us from her room,* Ryo wondered, glancing about cautiously for anything that might be a hidden camera.

"I wouldn't put it past her," Ami said. Ryo nearly dropped his tea before he realized that he had spoken that last bit aloud, and the sight of him juggling the cup around set Ami to laughing. He glared at her, and she laughed even more. Sighing, Ryo set the cup down on the table before anything else happened. Ami regarded him curiously.

"Spilling tea on her couch seems like a poor way to repay Mako-chan for everything she did tonight," he explained. "Even if she IS watching us."

"I can find out," Ami said, setting aside her own cup and producing her computer. After a quick sweep of the room, she read off the results. "No cameras, no recording devices other than the VCR, no microphones, and Mako-chan's in her room, two meters from the wall closest to us, which happens to have no holes drilled through it. The radio's on, and I think she's reading something." Ami flipped the computer shut and put it away.

"Well, good. We'll have to think of something nice to do for her."

"Not spilling the tea was a good start," Ami noted, smiling briefly. "Ryo-kun," she began, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

The words every boyfriend dreads. "What about?"

"This afternoon, when you were trying to explain what you saw when you looked at Setsuna-san, I got the feeling that you were leaving something out." Ryo said nothing, and Ami went on. "At first I thought it was just because you were still startled by what you saw, but I noticed you looking at her a few times later on, like there was something you were trying to find. That got me thinking."

"And?" he asked quietly.

"You've met her somewhere before, haven't you?" Ami flinched internally; the words were harsher, more accusing than she'd meant them to be. Still, Ryo seemed not to be too bothered by it.

"I guess I should have known you'd notice," he sighed, sounding almost relieved. "I would have told you at the hospital, but what with trying to explain everything else, it just didn't seem very important. And it's... well, I'm not sure what it is, but it feels sort of personal, somehow."

"Then you have met Setsuna?"

"It's hard to say. I'd swear I've never seen her in my life before today, but there's something... not a memory so much as a feeling of familiarity."

"Has that ever happened to you before?"

"Once. Sort of. But then again, that was Usagi-chan's fault." It was not often that Ryo - or anyone else, for that matter- had the chance to see Ami confused.

"Come again?"

"That time loop she set off," Ryo explained. "I woke up one day with all the visions and memories of the year swimming around in the back of my head like a bad dream. At first I thought it really was just a dream - a very long, very detailed, and very strange dream - so I ignored it. When some of the things that I had 'dreamed' started happening, I figured it must have been another premonition, but when things started to go off in the wrong direction..."

"The 'wrong direction?'" Ami interrupted.

"I kept having the same visions as before, but since there weren't any monsters around, things turned out differently; no mysterious disappearances or unexplained mass fainting spells, no media circus..."

"No uniformed guys ripping crystals out of your chest and turning you into a walking Swiss Army knife?" Ami teased.

"No beautiful heroines in blue coming to my rescue, either," Ryo replied. "The old visions started out strong and got weaker and weaker the more that things changed, but they were still there, AND I was having new premonitions on top of them. It got to the point where I was going through a bottle of aspirin about every other week, and not just because of the visions. I kept meeting people, and I _knew_ them from the first time around, but I couldn't say anything until they'd caught up with me. It drove me nuts for a long time."

"Is that what you felt when you saw Setsuna, then?"

"Sort of the opposite. With the time loop, I knew what I couldn't have known about other people; with her, it's like I don't know what I should." Ryo sighed. "Anyway, by the time I finally transferred to Juuban, I'd figured out what was going on, if not _how_ it had happened. I considered asking you about it, but when I saw that you, Usagi-chan, and Mako-chan apparently didn't know each other, I realized that you couldn't remember. Since I knew that I was going to transfer away in a few days, I decided to just keep quiet." He looked a little embarrassed. "I didn't think it would be fair to you, since the only time I came back the first time around was because Endymion was after me, and since that wasn't going to happen..." His words trailed off. "You know, it's funny, but when you stop to think about it, the black crystal that Zoicite and Endymion used was almost the foundation for our relationship. As much as I hated the thing, we would never have gotten together without it."

"You're here NOW, aren't you?"

"Yes, but even if it is like the crystal never existed, we both remember that it DID, and what happened because of it." This time, Ryo really did look embarrassed. "I don't think I ever would have gotten up the courage to actually talk to you on my own."

"Maybe not, but as I recall, Usagi-chan was trying to fix us up before Zoicite came after you." Ami smiled. "And afterwards, since you already knew everything about us, she was even _more_ determined about it."

"I remember. Well, no sense in worrying now about what _might_ have happened."

"Exactly; it's in the past, and whatever happens in the future, we're together." She said it so determinedly that Ryo had a brief flash of panic; he didn't _quite_ receive a vision of the two of them getting married, but he wouldn't have been surprised to. Then Ami thought of something else, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "But why didn't you try to get in touch when you found out we were back?"

"You're not going to give me even an inch, are you?" Ryo demanded, struggling not to laugh.

"So I'm just a typical jealous girlfriend; petty, possessive, and suspicious." Ami shrugged. "I'll get over it tomorrow. Now answer the question."

"I really have to get you away from Usagi-chan," Ryo chuckled. "Well, at the time, I wasn't sure whether you were all-the-way back or just starting over from scratch." He paused, then grinned ruefully. "Besides, if we _had_ gotten back together, we wouldn't have had that little run-in at the library, would we?"

Remembering the incident, it was Ami's turn to fight to keep a straight face. She had been visiting half the bookstores and libraries in Tokyo with Rei, helping her track down several extremely hard-to-find titles, and that search had brought them to the library in Ryo's neighborhood at the same time as he was there, returning a book borrowed for a school project. Usagi had come along - probably just to annoy Re i- and gotten herself lost among the stacks, so Rei and Ami had been forced to split up and go in search of her. While in the middle of that search, Ami had rounded a corner and come face-to-face with Ryo; both of them had been so surprised to see each other - and more importantly, to see that the other _recognized_ them - that they hadn't noticed Usagi appear at the other end of the row.

Usagi had been so happy to see the two of them together again that she had literally jumped for joy - kicking one of the bookstacks in the process, unfortunately. That wall of books had swayed ominously and then toppled forwards into the next row, setting off a domino effect through twelve different shelves and about a thousand different books. No one had been hurt, but it had taken hours to clean the mess up.

"Rei-chan never did find those books she wanted."

"But _we_ found each other," Ryo said, smiling and taking her hand again, with far less hesitation than earlier. "So that's alright."

Ami smiled back. Even in her admittedly restrained estimation, the moment called for a kiss. But just as they were leaning towards one another, Ryo paused.

Ami frowned. "What is it?"

"Your communicator is about to go off." The words were no sooner out of his mouth than they were proven true by a faint but insistent beeping.

"Oh, bother." Letting go of Ryo's hand, Ami raised her wrist and snapped a rather harsh "What is it?" at whoever was on the other end.

"Uh, it's me." Usagi sounded more than a little nervous. "Am I interrupting something?"

"As a matter of fact," Makoto's voice responded, hooked into the call with her own communicator, "you are."

"Oooh!" That was Minako. Ami wondered if Rei was also patched in to this growing conversation. "Did you have a date, Mako-chan? Is he cute?"

"Actually, Ami-chan's the one with the date."

"I can speak for myself, Mako-chan." Silence. "What did you want, Usagi-chan?"

"I, uh, just got a call from Haruka-san. She and the others are going to arrive at the airport tomorrow morning at 9:00, and she wanted us to meet them there."

"Is 'us' all of us?" Rei asked. "Or is it just you?"

"Well... she only asked me to be there. But I think Michiru-san wants some answers, and I was, uh, sort of hoping to have some backup on this one." Another silence, though Ami fancied she could hear several pairs of eyes rolling.

"That's what I thought." Rei sighed. "Well, I've got nothing planned for tomorrow that I can't put off."

"Same goes for me," Makoto admitted. "Ami-chan?"

"Not a problem."

"I'm good to God," Minako added, sparking another round of silence.

"I doubt that's what _he_ says," Ryo snickered. Ami punched him in the shoulder.

"So," Makoto said at last. "Are we going separately, or should we meet before heading out?"

"Rei-chan," Minako asked then, "doesn't Yuuichirou-kun have a minivan?"

"Yes," Rei admitted reluctantly, "but..."

"Great! You can talk to him, and he can drive us all to the airport."

"I'd rather not..." Rei began.

"Ah, I hate to say this," Ryo interrupted again, "but that _is_ how you're going to get there."

"You're sure?" Ami asked him.

"Positive. The five of you were in a van; I remember Kumada-san from Usagi-chan's little party, and he was the one driving."

"I really don't..." Rei tried to protest, but Minako cut her off again.

"That settles it, then. Hikawa at 8:00 tomorrow; be there, or Pi R squared." The signal beeped once, signalling that Minako had shut off her communicator.

"I guess that's that," Usagi said. "Rei?" No response. "Rei?" Still nothing. "Rei."

"I'll talk to him." Her tone promised nothing. "Good night." And the signal beeped a second time.

"She'll talk to him." Makoto suppressed a laugh. "More like she'll tell him to do it, and then chase him around with a broom if he doesn't agree."

"You know how Rei is." Usagi sighed. "Alright. I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then. Ami-chan, Ryo-kun, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"What about what you've already done?" Makoto asked impishly.

"MAKOTO!" A faint beep indicated Makoto had ducked out before Ami's predictable response.

 

 

Haruka looked out from the window, staring down at the ground - or was it the ocean by now? No way to tell, really, not at this height - at the ground so far below the plane. A contented smile worked its way onto her face at the sight, a smile that most of the other Senshi would have found to be rather out-of-place, had they seen it; the words 'at ease' or 'content' weren't ones her younger allies usually associated with Haruka. They weren't words she'd normally use to describe herself, for that matter, but right now, they worked. She settled back in her seat with a sigh, closing her eyes. The plane was still more than two hours from Tokyo, so she might as well take whatever rest she could get.

In the aisle seat, Michiru glanced towards her partner and, seeing the relaxed expression, smiled. Life, she knew, had not been as kind to Haruka as it might have. Not that her own life had been a picnic either, Michiru admitted wryly, but then, she was the stronger of the two of them. Emotionally, at least.

Michiru had no illusions about the differences in their physical strengths; in terms of pure muscle, the only Senshi who was anywhere near Haruka's level was Makoto, and if it came down to an actual fight between the two, Haruka's superior skill and experience could probably win out. Though if someone were taking side bets on the outcome, Michiru thought she might put a few yen on Makoto, just to be safe.

When it came to emotional strength, though, any one of the other Senshi could have given Haruka a challenge. She was like the wind in so many ways, with all its strengths and weaknesses. Swift and strong, she could be as warm and gentle as the summer breezes, or as cold and fierce as an arctic gale. Haruka swept over every obstacle in her path, taking every challenge in life head-on, full force, and wholeheartedly. When she won, she moved on to the next challenge so quickly that she barely noticed, but when she lost...

Sometimes Michiru wondered whether Haruka was running through life because of an eagerness to meet new challenges, or to escape the memory of her failures in the past. She was so strong and self-assured on the outside, as implacable as the wind, that the idea of her being bothered by mistakes seemed impossible.

But the wind was diverted by every object that it touched: trees bent before it but seldom broke; mountains held fast under the strongest hurricanes; the water danced under it, but it was to the sea that the wind inevitably returned to regain its strength. Even the ordinary humans who had built this airplane -this flying machine whose wings caught the air and used it to soar- even they could affect the wind.

Behind the face that she showed to the world, Haruka hid regret, fear, and grief from a hundred mistakes, a thousand failures. Every so often, when all her defenses were down while she slept at night, the worst of those lurking pains made their way to the surface, taking shape in nightmares, tears, and screams. Darkness terrified Haruka in a way that no monster would ever match, not because it _was_ dark, but because she was alone in it.

Michiru remembered the night she had learned that.

It was five - no, six - six months after they first met, six months of learning to work side by side against creatures that, until they saw one, neither of them had ever thought existed. Haruka had moved in and settled herself in one of the spare rooms in Michiru's almost palatial home, and their days tended to follow the same routine; breakfast, school, planning, patrolling, late meal, sleep. Duty took precedence over everything else; their personal lives were more or less on hold, and even their growing feelings for each other went unexpressed in the face of their mission as Senshi.

The night had been unusually quiet. Even now, Michiru wasn't sure why she had woken up, though she remembered being mildly thirsty and vaguely concerned about something. A glass of water solved the first problem, but the concern stayed with her, making sleep impossible, so Michiru had decided to get up and take a quick walk through the house to wear herself down and make sure that it wasn't the memory of an open window or unlocked door that was bothering her.

She had completed a circuit of the second floor and was checking the ground level when she passed Haruka's room and heard a strange, frightened noise. The door had been left open, so Michiru had decided to check and make sure that nothing was wrong. She found Haruka in the grip of a terrible dream, struggling feebly against nothing, her nightshirt sodden with sweat, the sheets twisted, her face contorted in a silent, tearstained howl. A single touch had been enough to awaken her, but while the nightmare was over, the terror of it had remained - so Michiru had stayed as well, climbing into the bed and holding her dear friend close to help her fight off the fear. That had been the first night they'd slept together - and unlike a lot of second-rate so-called romances, sleep was ALL that had happened.

*Was it?* a quiet voice in the back of Michiru's head asked. *Were you just comforting a loved one, or did something else happen? How much did that one night change the rest of your life? Of both your lives? Just as Haruka has always been the wind, you have always been the ocean, but that night, you became HER ocean, the place she returns to regain her strength.*

For some reason, that voice sounded like Usagi - which, in a curious way, made sense. Out of all the other Senshi, Usagi was the one most likely to really understand the turning point that one night represented.

*Assuming, of course, that I ever told any of them about it. Haruka would kill me if I told the others that she's afraid of the dark - but then again, it might be worth it just to see how they react to everything else.*

Michiru glanced at Haruka again and saw that she was asleep, despite the muted roar of the wind and the plane's engines coming from outside her window. It was no surprise, really. Michiru could remember waking up several times during raging summer storms or howling blizzards to find Haruka sound asleep beside her. Where the wind might trouble the dreams of others, it chased away Haruka's nightmares; the fiercer the wind blew, the more peaceful her dreams became.

That was probably part of the reason Haruka loved driving so much. The sheer speed of the vehicle and the rush of the air was as close as she could get to flying while still on the ground; the tug of the wind did not drag at Haruka's spirit, but blasted away the worries of the world, setting her free and letting her soar.

*It's a wonder she hasn't taken up skydiving yet.* After a moment to reflect on that thought, Michiru decided not to bring the subject up. Haruka might just decide to go for it - and Hotaru would almost certainly insist on going along. There was no way on or off Earth that Michiru was going to let THAT little disaster happen; heights didn't bother her, but the idea of spiralling downwards through a mile or two of empty space at a speed sufficient to make even water harder than steel on impact... no thank you!

The thought made Michiru glance forward, but even with the seats tilted back, Hotaru and ChibiUsa were hidden from view except for two points of pink hair on the left and a few strands of black to the right. The soft sound of Hotaru's breathing and the louder racket coming from ChibiUsa proclaimed that they were asleep.

Michiru yawned, then decided that, since everyone else had nodded off, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. She settled back in her chair, wondering how she was supposed to actually get to sleep with all the noise ChibiUsa was making, and what the reaction of the other Senshi would be when they found out about her being here...

The stewardess who came along a few minutes later found four sound sleepers. She spread a blanket over the smaller girls, who had fallen asleep leaning shoulder-to-shoulder, head-to-head, and thought about her own friends, and what they might be doing right now. She put a second blanket over the young couple in the next row - a stunningly attractive girl and a young fellow handsome to the point of beauty - taking care so as not to disturb them or separate their hands, loosely joined on the armrest.

Then she continued down the aisle, smiling, thinking about what it had been like to be young and in love, and wondering why she had never found anyone like that.   


 

The collector decided that it was having a bad day.

The destruction of its counterpart earlier in the week had thrown the entire plan into disarray, forcing the collector and others like it to implement new orders while still just beginning to understand the old ones. The loss of the stable energy source which the destroyed unit had been attempting to create meant that other units would have to pick up the slack, if anything of the grand plan was to be salvaged.

Although it had been disturbed on some basic level by the chaotic reorganization, the collector believed that it had adapted sufficiently to cope.

Then the energies had started to converge on it.

The first it had noticed felt strange, potent and yet somehow dulled. Dormant. But even in this state of apparent slumber, the energy was dark and terrible, making the collector's pulpy mass twitch - perhaps with fear, perhaps with jealousy. This was the sort of power it desired, energy that by its very nature would readily adapt to the uses called for in the greater plan, and in great quantities. And yet, those very qualities of essence and concentration meant that the collector could not risk tapping into that power, not now - perhaps not ever, if it could not build its reserves faster.

Several more energies had appeared on the edges of the collector's awareness not long after, energies it knew to be strong, active, and dangerous. One of them was so intense that it not only interfered with the collector's attempts to direct what few servants it had been able to gather, but also made any hope of signalling for help impossible. The appearance of another group of strong energies, headed directly for the ones already gathered nearby, was little more than an afterthought by comparison.

The only hope the collector had was to lay low and avoid detection.

But somehow, it suspected that this wouldn't be enough.   


 

The Senshi cooled their heels among one of the numerous waiting areas, the one closest to the escalators down which new arrivals would appear after disembarking. Each passed the time in her own way.

Ami was sitting and talking with Ryo, who had caught a ride on the bus and been waiting in the sitting area when the girls and their driver had shown up. Out of Yuuichirou's hearing, Ryo professed to a certain curiosity about the 'mysterious Outer Senshi,' particularly this one who seemed able to spook Usagi so badly just by wanting a few answers. Privately, the girls suspected he had other motives, but they kept their mouths shut.

Minako had taken up a diligent vigil at the edge of the rows of seats, staring at the escalators with an intensity that bordered on the maniacal. Quite a few disembarking passengers flinched under that unrelenting optic onslaught, and more than one hastily reconsidered their travel plans. No one had asked her to stop, though; Artemis knew better, and airport security had either not been alerted or had chosen to err on the side of caution.

Makoto had chosen a seat that did not face any of the windows, and she was carrying on an animated conversation with Yuuichirou. Rei stood not far off, watching them out of the corner of one eye and privately admitting to herself that Yuuichirou wasn't as dense as he sometimes appeared. Or sounded. Or acted. He had struck up a dialogue in the van well before they had reached the airport, and maneuvered the discussion so carefully that Makoto had not even noticed that she was being distracted from the noise of the planes all around.

Usagi was alternating between pacing and sitting, and constantly twisting her ring while shooting nervous glances at the escalators whether on her feet or in a chair. Luna lay curled up on a chair somewhere near the midpoint of the pacing, every so often opening one eye to follow her charge's movements.

Finally, the airport intercom crackled to life.

"Flight 24 now disembarking at Gate 3."

"That's them," Usagi gulped.

"That's probably my cue to disappear for a while, then," Yuuichirou said, getting to his feet.

"Where do you think you're going?" Rei demanded immediately.

"As far as I can get from Usagi-chan and whatever's about to come down that escalator after her. I'll be at that cafeteria we passed if you need me to carry anything after the fireworks have cleared." With a nod to Makoto and a wry look to Ryo - who smiled, rolled his eyes, and shook his head - Yuuichirou vanished down the wide corridor.

"Coward," Rei muttered after him.

"Where's Yuuichirou-kun going?" Minako asked, abandoning her vigil to rejoin the others.

"Never mind." Rei looked at Ryo suspiciously. "What was that look about?"

"What? Oh, he was just letting me know he thought it was a bad idea to be here, that he was getting out while he could, and if I wanted to stay, I was probably a braver guy than he thought."

"You got all _that_ from one look?"

Ryo shrugged. "It's a guy thing."

"I think I see Haruka-san," Makoto said then. Usagi blanched.

"Excuse me a minute." And before they could stop her, she had disappeared into a nearby washroom.

"She _really_ doesn't want to talk to them, does she?" Ryo noted blandly. Rei was already moving to drag Usagi back, kicking and screaming and by the ends of her hair if necessary, but Makoto stopped her.

"Give her a couple of minutes."

"I'll give her more than that if she thinks we're going to do this for her," Rei growled. "I am NOT taking the heat in that odango-atama's place just because she wants to weasel out of answering a few questions for Michiru-san."

They turned back to watch the three Outer Senshi descend the escalator. Ryo compared the reality with the images he'd built up from Ami's descriptions and identified the three with no trouble. The pink-haired girl with them caused him some difficulty, however.

*That's odd,* he thought absently. *She looks just like... wait a minute, she REALLY looks like...* He broke off staring at the girl for a moment, long enough to notice that Ami and the rest were all doing the same thing. A terrible suspicion began to dawn on him as the new arrivals stopped before them.

"Surprise!" ChibiUsa announced, making a grand, presenting sort of motion with her arms.

"What are you doing here?" all four Inner Senshi demanded at once, nearly scaring Ryo out of his skin.

"Oh, come ON. Can't I just drop by to visit friends?" The four-way glare clearly said no, and ChibiUsa sighed. "You're no fun at all. The five of... hey, wait a minute. Where's the odango-atama?"

"She's hiding in the washroom," Ryo began. The words died when the two older girls refocused their attention - which had until now been on the reactions of the Inner Senshi - to him.

"And you are?" Michiru asked politely. There was no menace in the words or the tone they were spoken in, but Ryo suddenly began to get an idea of why Usagi was so jittery about having to sit down and talk with this girl.

"His name's Urawa Ryo," ChibiUsa said absently, still looking around for Usagi. "He's with Ami-chan, he sees the future, and he already knows all about us. Did I leave anything out? No? Good."

"How did..."

"Mercury told me - a little. I actually had to go to Venus and Jupiter to get the whole story; they'll talk more about their or other people's boyfriends than Mercury does. Though asking about it is a good way to get her to end those math classes early." ChibiUsa chuckled, then stopped her search for Usagi long enough to give Ryo the once-over, apparently liking what she saw. "They _didn't_ tell me he was this cute when he was young." She winked at Ami, who looked like she was on the verge of passing out or spontaneously bursting into flame.

"What else did Ve... I mean, did we tell you?" Minako asked.

"Oh, all kinds of stuff. But I'm not allowed to talk about anybody or anything you haven't met yet; Pu, Mama, and Papa all made me promise. Several times. Sorry."

"Nuts." Minako kicked at an unoffending floor tile.

"You... ah... didn't happen to bring Diana with you, did you?" Luna asked.

"No. You grounded her after you caught her sneaking out to see Vega again."

"I see." Luna frowned. "Who's Vega?"

"He's the son of the Nekoron ambassador." ChibiUsa scratched her head. "I'm not really sure what she sees in him, but this was the third time she got caught. I suppose he is good-looking - for a cat - and he does write all those poems for her, but..."

"Doesn't this fall into that category of stuff you're not supposed to tell us?" Artemis reminded her with a hint of desperation. Even though it was pretty much set in stone that he and Luna were going to have a daughter at some point in the future, Artemis still thought of himself as being in the carefree bachelor stage of his life, and hearing about said daughter made him more nervous than the proverbial room full of rocking chairs. Hearing about her future romantic interests was WAY beyond anything he wanted to know right now.

"Hmm? Oh yeah. Oops." ChibiUsa blushed. Then something occured to her. "You know, I always did wonder why you two were giving Vega the evil eye from day one, even when he hadn't done anything. I guess this explains it. I hope Pu isn't too upset with... where is she, anyway?"

"Why don't we let Usagi-chan answer that?" Makoto suggested. "Just so we can get everything out of the way at once. You can grab a seat, and I'll go get her."

"Make that _we'll_ go get her," Rei amended quietly.

"Sounds like a plan," Haruka replied. "If nothing else, it'll give us a chance to get acquainted with Urawa-san."

"Lucky me," Ryo mumbled. Makoto walked off, followed closely by Rei.

"You said you wanted to meet them," Ami whispered as they moved towards the seats. The bathroom door had just swung shut, and she could have sworn she heard a yelp from somewhere inside.

"And you believed me?"

Fortunately for Ryo, Makoto and Rei returned only a few moments later, standing behind and to either side of Usagi, rather like guards escorting a prisoner. Michiru, Haruka, Hotaru, and ChibiUsa were sitting with their backs to the three of them, and when Usagi spotted the row of heads, she gulped, straightened her shoulders, and marched forward as if approaching a firing squad.

"Ahem," she began, clearing her throat. The Outers and their travelling companion rose, turned around - and gaped as they got their first look at Usagi in over six months. ChibiUsa in particular seemed absolutely stunned; Usagi was returning the favor, staring at ChibiUsa as if seeing a ghost.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!" they shrieked in unison. Several passing travellers turned at the ear-piercing chorus, but neither girl noticed anything except her 'reflection.'

Michiru was the first to find her voice. "Been keeping secrets, have we?" In spite of her outwardly calm demeanor, she couldn't keep a note of shock out of her words.

"I didn't know," Haruka said automatically. "I swear to God, if I'd known, I would have told you."

"Believe me," Minako warned them, "you haven't seen anything yet."   


 

To most of the people passing through the airport, there was nothing particularly unusual about the group of girls sitting in the waiting area. Most people saw only a few friends welcoming other friends home, both sides catching up on recent, not-so recent, and downright old events.

Most people were looking at the group with their eyes.

The collector did not possess eyes, so of course it could not see the girls. What it did possess was a highly developed sense of touch, acute enough to pick up and discern between the vibrations caused by different footsteps from all corners of the airport, thus doing double duty as a sense of hearing. Though it had no nose or tongue, the collector could smell and taste as well as it could feel and hear, which was well enough to detect and sort out varying individual scents that even the airport's canine security officers might miss. The collector also possessed a sense which most humans either lacked or ignored, the ability to feel energy.

Right now, all of the collector's senses screamed that danger was about to overtake it on a massive scale. The energies which had been disturbing it for hours had all gathered together in one spot - and as far as the collector was concerned, it was just about the worst spot possible. The distance between them and its all-too vulnerable self could be measured in meters; if even one of them happened to move three meters down and five over from where they were, the collector knew it would be doomed.

Worse yet, its basic instincts demanded that it try to take possession of the very power that was threatening it. The collector's higher reasoning knew that it would eventually be unable to ignore the overriding order. If the energies did not move on soon, it would be forced into an attack it could not hope to win, but which it could also not hope to avoid.

Subterfuge was the only chance left.   


 

Hotaru was trying not to stare, but it was a losing battle.

On the one hand, her best friend was sitting right next to her, watching Usagi as she spoke and looking more and more bewildered with each second; on the other hand, her best friend was also across the aisle, and it was doubtful that she could even open her eyes to see anything yet. The whole thing was more than a little disturbing, but Hotaru reasoned that fair was only fair. After all, if ChibiUsa had had to sit and endure seeing _her_ as a baby, Hotaru supposed the least she could do was return the favor. But it was still weird.

There were other things to consider, too. As Sailor Saturn, Hotaru was forced to bear the terrible powers of the Senshi of Destruction. She knew that, if she chose, she could extinguish all life in this airport and most of the surrounding city with little more than a flick of her wrist. And the truly frightening thing was that, as the youngest and least-experienced of the Senshi, she was still learning the limits of her powers.

One such discovery had come to her very slowly over the last few months; when she focused on her powers, Hotaru could see life, in the form of a glowing aura around who or whatever she happened to be looking at. The stronger, healthier, or younger someone was, the brighter they shone, and when looking at the other Senshi through this second sight, Hotaru had to fight an urge to squint against the intensity of energy they put out. Some people would say that this was a wonderful gift, and in many ways, it was. But by definition, being able to see life also meant that Hotaru could see death. Sometimes it was a slow thing, a steady dimming of a person's aura as they grew weaker from illness or injury or age; other times, Hotaru could see death looming over someone with such clarity that she could almost feel it looking back at her.

Her worst fear was that, someday, she would look at one of her friends and see that silent spectre hanging around them.

The only thing that made such an awful burden bearable was that, as a de facto representative of the combined powers of life and death, Hotaru was able to affect changes in what she saw. Her eerie ability to heal was proof of that, and just as she had grown stronger in the months since her powers had awakened, gaining through her rebirth the freedom to live her life without the near-crippling illness that had haunted her for so long, so too had her healing talent grown in strength. Sometimes she slipped away from under the watchful eyes of her guardians to wander the streets as Saturn, searching for illnesses to heal, lives to renew.

Haruka and Michiru knew about those late-night missions of mercy, of course. They would periodically check her room to see if they could catch her sneaking in or out, berating her with stern lectures whenever they did so and telling her to go back to sleep. But they never tried to tell her to stop, never forbade her to go on these wandering excursions, and for that unspoken understanding, Hotaru was grateful. Helping ease the pain of others made her own burden a little easier to carry, and the hours of sleep she lost were paid back tenfold with the knowledge that someone else could sleep a little better because of her.

Sometimes, she found people that were beyond even the reach of her healing touch. These, she stayed with until the end, giving what comfort she could, even if it was only the knowledge that they would not face the end alone. She had been called 'angel of death' in more languages than she knew how to speak, always recognizing the words by the sound of how they were spoken, by the expression on the faces of those who spoke them - fear and relief, regret and reverence. Even these losses did not trouble Hotaru; she had tried her best, done what she could, and no one could ask for more. She had laughed as a young man joked that he never knew death was so cute; she had smiled as an old woman talked about the husband and friends she was about to meet again, about the children and grandchildren she was leaving behind; she had cradled a dying baby boy and sung him into oblivion with a gentle lullabye, half-remembered from a time long before, when gentle hands had held her, and a soft voice sung those same quiet words.

In the end, Hotaru knew that death would come even to the people she loved most in the world, and that all the power of Saturn could not stop it; even with her ordinary, dark-hued, little girl eyes, she could see that someday, she would lose them. Knowing it hurt, but it didn't stop her from loving them. Or from resolving to fight with everything she had in her to make sure that 'someday' did not come for a long, long time.

With that thought in mind, Hotaru called up her other sight and focused it squarely on Usagi and the unborn ChibiUsa. She saw a brilliant white halo surrounding Usagi, an almost overwhelming energy which she knew to be coming from the tiny crystal in Usagi's locket. Looking past that, Hotaru could see the white energy which was Usagi's alone. It was not as strong as the ginzuishou -nothing was, as far as Hotaru knew- but it was still difficult for her to look at directly. And there, inside and beyond the second wall of white, unseen light, Hotaru could see the faintest hint of the same pink light sheathing the older ChibiUsa who now sat to her left. Nowhere in that entire three-tiered blaze of life did Hotaru see even a trace of illness.

But she did see something else, just out of the corner of her eye, something which had nothing to do with Usagi -either Usagi- but which worried her nonetheless.

Ami's boyfriend, Ryo, was sitting quietly, doing his best to stay out of the line of fire as Michiru and Haruka continued to interrogate Usagi. Even though he could apparently see the future, Hotaru had expected Ryo to have an aura like any ordinary person's, and she was quite surprised to see that the blue-grey energy shining from his body was as strong as any of the light coming from the gathered Senshi. It was not the unexpected intensity that bothered her, but the strange way in which the light grew steadily darker as it radiated out, leaving a thin circle of jet black around Ryo.

Hotaru had never seen anything like that before. She knew instinctively that it was not a mark of poor health - that was reflected as a fading of the light, not a change in the color- but she was also at a loss to think of an explanation for the effect.

She had no idea of how to ask about it, though. Only Michiru and ChibiUsa knew about Hotaru's life-seeing ability, and she wanted to keep it that way. She had told Michiru when the uncanny ability first began to manifest itself, needing to tell someone who could reassure her and tell her not to be afraid. As the closest thing to a mother Hotaru could clearly remember, Michiru heard about all the secrets that frightened the little Senshi; ordinary things that every girl confides in her mother or older sister, extraordinary things that only another Senshi could understand. Hotaru had told ChibiUsa because they had no secrets from each other - except for things about the future, of course. Well, some things, at least - but no one else knew.

*Other kids were afraid of me because I could heal,* Hotaru thought. *The Senshi weren't afraid because they could all do things just like it. They were afraid of Saturn because of how powerful she is, what Mistress 9 could have used her to do, but they weren't afraid of Tomoe Hotaru, and they're not scared of Saturn anymore. But if they knew that I could see them like this, that I could tell them when they were going to die... I don't want my friends to be afraid of me again.*

So Hotaru filed away what she had seen until later, when she could think of a way to ask Ryo - or maybe Ami - about it without divulging her secret in the process.

Almost immediately, though, she saw something else, this time in Makoto, who stood against the wall at the near end of the row of seats where Usagi was sitting. What Hotaru saw was a faint shimmering at the edges of Makoto's aura, a vibrant green blaze which Hotaru often thought matched the older girl's eyes. The shimmer was a familiar sight, indicating a disturbance in a person's life-force. Something on the order of a mild headache or upset stomach would do the trick for this small a reaction, but the way it pulsed was unusual. The outer edge of the green aura was rippling like grass in the wind.

Makoto, Hotaru noted, didn't look very good. Her face was pale, her breathing ragged. At first Hotaru thought it was because of the airport; she knew that Makoto was terrified of planes, and the fear inspired by the infrequent roars of take-offs and landings might be what was causing the ripple. But Makoto looked more ill than afraid.

"Mako-chan," Hotaru asked, interrupting Usagi and Michiru, "are you feeling okay?" Everyone looked at Makoto, most of them noticing for the first time that she did indeed look unwell. Minako, in the middle of adjusting the bow in her hair, lifted her head and wound up pulling the ribbon completely out.

"Now that you mention it, no." A wave of nausea interrupted anything else Makoto might have been about to say, but she decided that sitting down might help. It didn't.

"Is it the... the airplanes?" Usagi asked hesitantly, recalling Makoto's furious explosion at the hospital a few days before when this same subject had come up. She was relieved when Makoto shook her head.

"No. Not that."

"What, then? What's wrong?"

"Can't you smell it?"

"Smell what?" Usagi sniffed at the air but detected nothing unusual; Ami had pulled out her computer and was running an analysis of the air; her arms over her head to re-tie the bow, Minako remembered something and paused.

"Uh, Artemis? By any chance, is your ear twitching?"

"Huh? Why would..." He stopped in midsentence as a particularly strong twinge went off, flattening his left ear against his furry head, and then looked at Minako in surprise before his eyes drifted towards Makoto. "Uh-oh."

"That's a good word for it," Minako agreed, letting her ribbon fall again as she began looking around.

"Is there something you'd like to tell us?" Michiru asked impatiently.

"We found out a couple of days ago that Mako-chan and Artemis seem to be sensitive to the presence of the most recent bunch of goons," Minako explained. "They could both smell something in that Cafe way before..."

"_What_ Cafe?" Michiru demanded, Usagi's interrogation not having proceeded quite that far just yet.

"I'll explain later," Minako said, speaking in a dismissive tone that made Michiru's eyebrows go up. "Right now, I think we'd better get moving."

"Excuse me, but are you waiting for someone?" a polite voice asked. The Senshi - and Ryo and the cats - turned to see a man from airport security standing not far off. His face was neutral.

Hotaru hissed softly and ducked behind Michiru, taking a firm hold of the older girl's elbow. To her eyes, the man was surrounded by a field of flickering orange, one shot through with unhealthy-looking spots and streaks of a repulsive yellow-green. Michiru looked down in surprise but held her tongue in check when she saw the faint violet glow in Hotaru's eyes - the visible sign that her other sight was in effect, and apparently revealing something disturbing about this otherwise unthreatening man.

Minako's uncharacteristic authoritarianism fell away at once, to be replaced by her usual spunky insanity. "No, actually, we've already found who we were looking for. We were just catching up before we went to get their luggage - you know how it is, friends just back in town, so many stories to tell, so little time. Is there a problem?"

"We received some reports earlier about a suspicious-looking girl hanging around in this area," the man said. "Some of the complainants said she was waiting for someone or something and looked like she might be dangerous. Medium height, blonde, with a red bow or ribbon in her hair. Seen anyone like that?"

"Nope," Minako said with a bright smile, silently hoping that her skirt hid the item in question and the fact that she was carefully gathering the 'incribbonating' evidence up in her fist. "But we'll be sure to let you know if we do. Well," she added, over her shoulder and to Haruka and Michiru, "I think we should go make sure they didn't ship your luggage to Africa or something, don't you?"

She kept smiling clear to the luggage carousel, where she looked around, noted that the man from security hadn't followed them, and let out a relieved breath.

"What was all that about?" Haruka asked.

"That guy had the same look as the people from the Cafe," Minako replied, still looking around cautiously. "All grey-faced and zombie-like. Since one of those fungus-things is probably around here, I figured it must have taken control of him like the last one did to the Cafe's employees. I wanted to make sure we didn't give ourselves away."

"I meant that business with the ribbon."

"Oh." She actually blushed. "Well, I was sort of keeping watch for you earlier, and I guess a few people got nervous when I gave them the old hairy eyeball routine."

"'Hairy eyeball?'" Michiru asked with a pained look.

"What? It's a common expression."

"As unlikely as it sounds," Ami said, "I think she actually got one right for a change. I'm sure I've seen that phrase in a few books."

"Well _of course_ I got it right, Ami-chan." Minako sounded a bit miffed. "I'm like the Mounties; I always get a tan."

Everyone facefaulted.

"Look, the important thing is that one of those energy-stealing moss monsters is hiding around here." Ami held up her computer to emphasize the point. "I got some strong readings in that waiting area, and they've fallen off considerably the further we moved away, so I'd say this thing's concentrated in that area. Mako-chan, Artemis?"

"I felt better almost as soon as we got away from there," Makoto agreed.

"So what do we do?" Minako said. "Track it down now, while we're here, or come back later tonight when there are fewer people around?"

"We can't leave it here," Makoto said immediately. "If it's drawing power from people like the last one, it could already be huge. I'd rather not let it get any bigger."

"The readings suggest it isn't very large yet," Ami reassured her. "But you're right; we should deal with it before it has a chance to grow any further."

"But if we go after it now," Rei countered, "a lot of people could get hurt." Her eyes drifted meaningfully towards Usagi. "The Cafe was torn apart just by the last one coming out to meet us, and I'm not sure how we'd protect this many people from whatever attacks this one has. I say we come back later."

"You're assuming we'll be able to leave in the first place," Artemis told her. "This one's got its hooks into airport security already, and the timing of the attack at the Cafe was a little too precise for my taste. _We_ may be able to track it, but _it_ may also be able to track us."

"I say we go after it," Haruka said.

Michiru nodded. "I agree. I want to see what we're up against this time."

"Alright then," Ami decided. "We'll split up into three groups. Minako and Rei will go with Artemis; Michiru will go with Makoto; Haruka will go with me. Each group has a way to tell where this thing is and enough firepower to keep it busy until the others can arrive."

"What about me and Hotaru?" ChibiUsa protested. "Don't we get a say in this?"

"We're staying here to protect Usagi-chan," Hotaru said firmly.

"Oh. Right." Neither Usagi looked very happy about this arrangement.

"And where are you going?" Haruka asked Ryo, who was in the middle of walking away.

"Hmm? Oh, I'm going to go find Kumada-san and make sure he doesn't come tearing in trying to find Hino-san when all the screaming starts." While Haruka and Michiru looked sidelong at Rei, who turned bright red and glared back at them, Ryo gave Ami a quick nod. "Try looking in the boiler room and the maintenance halls; I saw something green hidden behind a lot of pipes. And be careful, okay?"

"You too." Ami watched him leave, then shook her head and came back to the situation at hand. "Alright. Let's find this thing."   


 

If the collector had sweat glands, they would have been producing the proverbial bullets.

The energies had moved off at first, but now most of them were circling back towards it in smaller groups. Evidently, the ploy with the captured human had failed, and now it was in even more immediate danger than before. The time for deception was past; now was the time to act.

But how?

The collector knew that a frontal assault was out of the question; its counterpart had gathered several times the energy it currently commanded and still been defeated -and by a force that was significantly weaker than the one roaming around in the here and now. Retreat was equally unavailable; the collector did not have enough power to fashion a gateway, and it doubted that any slower means of travel would save it.

That left the possibility of stealth.   


 

"Any idea why you react so strongly to these things while the rest of us don't even notice?" Neptune asked.

"I'm not completely sure," Jupiter replied. They and the others were moving through the lower level of the airport, following Ryo's advice and checking into the darker, danker sections for signs of the enemy. It was difficult for her to speak because of all the effort she had to put into trying to get some sense of direction out of the nausea boiling in her stomach and brain.

The image of a boiling stomach and brain didn't help matters, but Jupiter clenched her teeth, fought down her breakfast, and nodded down a hall.

"This way. I think it might have something to do with how I get along with plants."

"'Get along?'" Neptune sounded amused.

"You know what I mean. I've always been... I guess the word I want is 'attuned,' or maybe 'sensitive.' Whatever you want to call it. I've always been comfortable around plants, and I've always been able to get them to grow." Jupiter's voice became distant. "When I was little, before I was old enough to go to school, my mother owed a flower shop, and she brought me to work with her. I used to think I could hear the plants talking to me, telling me what they wanted or needed, so I helped out. Even later on, I'd stop by after school or on weekends to see how the plants were doing; I used to bring some of them home."

Neptune was surprised - and perhaps a bit worried - to notice the change in Jupiter's voice, which now sounded as if it belonged to a much younger girl.

"Mama said sometimes that she might as well retire, since I was doing all the work, but I never thought of it as work. The plants were my friends. I knew my parents wanted me to get out more and make some real friends, but the plants were all the company I needed, and if I wanted someone to talk to, Mama was always around." There was a pause, and when the little-girl voice began to speak again, it was numb. Lost. "After she and Papa... after they were gone, I still took care of my plants, but I couldn't hear them anymore."

As Jupiter's voice trailed off, Neptune remained silent, pretending not to notice when the auburn-haired Senshi shook her head and wiped something from her face.

"Anyway," she went on, "I think that these creatures make me feel sick because they're something like plants, but not really. Something natural, twisted into something unnatural. Do you understand what I mean?"

"I think so. We're all attuned to elements or objects that are associated with our powers. Mercury and I are both excellent swimmers, Uranus loves the wind and anything else that moves fast, and Mars sees her fire almost as a living thing." *Then there's what Hotaru can do.* "As for Venus, well..." Neptune paused, uncertain what part of the maniac personality of Venus reflected her command of metal, and decided to skip it. "I suppose you can also tell when there's a thunderstorm building, right?"

"Usually. Hang on a second." Jupiter cocked her head to one side, then whispered, "Better get out of sight."

An airport employee, only the second they'd passed so far, walked past them. A janitor or technician of some sort, he didn't seem to have the empty look Jupiter remembered from the Cafe, and he was even whistling as he went by.

"I wonder if maybe we should tell him to get out of here," Jupiter said, frowning.

"If he's been taken over, there's no point, and even if he hasn't, we can't afford to give ourselves away. Besides," Neptune pointed out, "the thing's up ahead, and he's going in the other direction. Keep your mind on business and forget about him. Even if he _was_ handsome."

"Spoilsport." In the shadows, Jupiter grinned. "I wonder what Uranus would say if she knew you were admiring guys behind her back? Maybe I should warn her."

Neptune told her, in no uncertain terms, what she could do with her 'warning.' But she was glad to hear that Jupiter was back to normal.   


 

"So you and this Ryo guy are pretty serious?"

Uranus and Mercury were moving in from a different angle than Jupiter and Neptune, and Mars and Venus were on yet a third route, effectively boxing in the enemy from all sides even though they didn't yet have a precise fix on its location.

"I don't see how it's any of your business," Mercury replied coolly, checking coordinates on her visor and computer, "but yes, we are."

"You don't need to get defensive," Uranus said. "And it sort of became my business -ALL of our business- when you told him about the Senshi."

"I didn't tell him. He already knew when we met, and that was more than two years ago."

"Okay, fine." Uranus pulled Mercury to a stop. "Look, he obviously knows how to keep a secret, and I'll admit that he handles pressure pretty well for somebody who's basically just another bystander. I can guess that he must be reasonably intelligent if he's held your interest this long, and the fact that he was here at all says that none of the others have a problem with him. He's even sort of handsome." She noticed Mercury's faint, quizzical smile. "Stop that. Just because I'm not interested doesn't mean I'm blind."

"Is there a point to this?" Mercury asked, dismissing her visor and putting away her computer to face Uranus.

"Yes." Uranus cast about for the right words. "We're not normal people," she said at last. "Even when you take away the powers and the monsters and everything that goes with being a Senshi, we're still not what most people would consider ordinary. Most people would call us 'special,' or 'unusual,' or 'extraordinary,' because we are. It's not just that you and Michiru are easily the most intelligent people I've ever met, or that Mako-chan's ridiculously strong, or that Usagi-chan and Mina-chan are... uh..."

"Just plain ridiculous?" Mercury managed to say it without cracking a smile.

"Well, whatever. You know what I'm saying. It's not just one trait that makes each of us stand out, it's a combination of a hundred things. But the problem with standing out and being extraordinary is that a lot of ordinary people resent you for it. Some are afraid of you, others actively hate you, others just ignore you. Most people can either hide the problem or learn to change, but when somebody who is basically extraordinary tries to have a relationship with somebody who isn't, it gets hard for either of them to hide what they really feel. It's worse for a guy trying to date an extraordinary girl."

"Ryo-kun isn't ordinary," Mercury protested, "he's..."

"I know, I know. Just let me finish." Uranus thought for a moment that there was going to be an argument, but Mercury remained quiet, so she continued. "It basically comes back to biology; the males of most species are physically larger and stronger, built to hunt and fight, provide and protect. However you define strength, it takes a rare kind of man to go past all the biology and be able to accept a woman as strong as he is, let alone one who's stronger. And however you look at it, you _are_ stronger than Ryo."

"So you're saying I should just give up and forget about him, is that it? Just because he can't knock down a building and blow up armored cars or discover cold fusion and a cure for cancer in the same day? Or is it just because he's a guy?"

"No, no, no." Uranus ran a hand through her hair. "Mercury, I like the guy; or at least, I like what I've seen of him so far, and the fact that he's been with you for this long says a lot. But what I'm trying to say is that you can't just sit back and expect this to be some sort of fairytale romance where everything magically goes right. Sooner or later, you're going to have problems, and the odds are good that a lot of them will be because you're a Senshi and Ryo's just a relatively ordinary guy." She made a face. "Not that his being extraordinary would necessarily be an improvement. Just look at all the trouble Usagi-chan and Chiba-san have had."

"Or you and Michiru?" Mercury observed, lifting an eyebrow.

Uranus made another face. "Remind me never to play poker with you," she grumbled. "Look, Mercury, I know we don't always get along. I know you and the other Inners think Neptune and I look down on you, and I'll admit, we've treated you pretty unfairly in the past. It's another of those biological things, I suppose - protect the children. We're older and more experienced, so we assume that it's better for us to do the dangerous stuff. If we come off as cold sometimes, that's our own fault, but we DO care. That's why I wanted to tell you all this. Ryo's not just your first serious relationship, he's your first relationship _period,_ and there's a lot of things that could go wrong because you don't know what you're doing, jumping into the deep end before you know how to swim." In spite of herself, Uranus sighed. "I've seen a lot of friends get hurt in relationships; I'd rather not add you to the list."

Mercury was quiet for a very long time. Finally, she said, "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you call me or any of us 'friends.' Or that you ever apologized. For anything."

"Well, I meant it. All of it." Uranus extended her hand, smiled. "Friends?" After a moment, Mercury accepted the handshake and returned the smile. "So, let's get back to tracking this thing, shall we?"

"Right." Mercury had her computer and visor out in a flip and a flick, and led the way. After a little while, she looked back curiously at Uranus. "Since when did you become such an expert on relationships, anyway?"

"Since never." Uranus grinned. "I just tried to think of what Michiru would have said."

"Ah. As far as advice goes, I guess I could do worse. Can you imagine what Mina-chan would have said? Or Rei-chan?"   


 

"I just want to know why, out of everybody else, _I_ had to go with _you,_" Mars said flatly.

"And what's wrong with me?" Venus asked as they followed Artemis through the passages. Though the cat would have been deeply insulted by the comparison, he looked a great deal like a tracking dog, stopping every so often with his head tilted before running ahead in short bursts of speed.

"Are you harboring some deep-seated resentments or grudges that I should know about?" Venus went on. "Is my hair too long? My eyes too blue? My spunk too spunky? Smile too bright?"

"Keep this up and your smile's going to have some serious holes in it," Mars muttered.

"Look, you had to go with someone who can find this thing. If you'd gone with Mercury and found it, your powers would have canceled each other out and you'd both be in serious trouble. And you couldn't have gone with Jupiter because she's not feeling well, and you're both short-tempered enough as it is. So that means you had to go with Artemis, and that," Venus finished, "means you had to go with me."

"_You_ could have gone with Mercury or Jupiter, you know."

"And leave Artemis? My friend and partner of almost four years? The odds of you becoming a nun are better than the odds of _that_ happening." Venus looked at Mars with a shrewd glance. "But none of that's why you're upset, is it? You're angry because you're here at all when what you really wanted was to stay with Usagi-chan."

Mars almost tripped over her own feet. It was important to remember that, while Minako sometimes acted like a ditz on a scale that could rival Usagi, she was far more intelligent than she generally let on. So was Usagi, of course, but Minako also had the advantage of her experiences as Sailor V to draw on; at her most outrageously disastrous extreme of ditziness, Minako could say things that - once you got through the garbled slang - were far more mature than she seemed capable of.

"Of course I wanted to stay with her," Mars said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "It's our job to protect her, remember? And right now, she can't fight off anything stronger than a mosquito."

"She's fine, Mars. ChibiMoon and Saturn can deal with anything that might get by us."

"Some protection," Mars snorted. "One of them can't handle any monster stronger than your average angry dog, and the other can't blow up anything smaller than the entire planet."

"Now you're just pouting. Be fair; Saturn was getting a lot better at controlling her abilities the last time we saw her, and I'm sure Uranus and Neptune saw to it that she stuck with the training. And in case you hadn't noticed, ChibiUsa's grown quite a bit since the last time we saw _her;_ I wouldn't be surprised if she could turn into a full-fledged Sailor Moon by now." Another glance. "But you don't care about how weak or strong they are, do you?"

"Just shut up, Venus."

"Why should I? I know how you feel, Mars; we all do, because we all feel the same way."

"No you don't. You _don't_ know how I feel, and you _don't_ feel the same way, because neither of us would be down here if you did!" She had almost screamed that last part, Mars realized, leaning against the wall and squeezing her eyes shut in embarrasment.

Venus waved Artemis off with one hand when he came back to see what all the noise was about, made a motion with the other hand which, to Artemis at least, clearly said 'leave it to me.' Nodding, the cat moved to the far end of the corridor to do just that.

"I talked to Mamoru a couple of days before he left last summer," Mars said suddenly. "He knew Usagi was going to miss him, and he was worried that it might make her do something stupid, so he made me promise to keep her out of trouble, even if I had to lock her up in one of the storage rooms at the shrine to do it. I was worried out of my mind when she was in that funk through September, and then she turns around and tells us from out of nowhere that she's pregnant. So now, all of a sudden, my best friend - my two best friends - are having a baby."

"The timing could have been better," Venus admitted.

"My best friends are having a baby," Mars repeated, as if she hadn't heard. "Monsters are starting to pop up all over again, Usagi can't even transform to protect herself, Mamoru's on the other side of the world - and he doesn't even _know!_ - and what do I do? I let her march right into reach of these things and then leave her with two girls who've hardly ever fought on their own as her bodyguards while..." Mars sucked in a deep breath, then spoke in a soft, fierce voice. "I should be with her, damn it. Not hunting some slimy, energy-sucking mold, not wandering around in a concrete maze. With her!"

At that point, Venus reached a decision. She took Mars' clenched hands between her own and spoke. "Go."

Mars looked up. "What?"

"What, you've got a hearing problem all of a sudden? Go. Artemis and I can handle this by ourselves. Besides, what are the odds that _we'll_ find it first? I'm betting on Mercury, myself."

"No. No, I'm staying. You..."

"...can handle it. You're right about ChibiMoon and Saturn not being up to this just yet. They haven't fought these things; we have, so you'd at least have an idea of what to expect. They might need that."

"You're... you're sure?"

Venus nodded, then smiled. "If it's numbers you're worried about, remember that I'm really two Senshi in one. I'll be fine." When Mars still didn't move, Venus gave her a look of mock harshness. "Now, as the most experienced of the present Senshi AND your direct superior, I order you to get going! Not another word!" she added, when Mars tried to say something through her smile. "Failure to disobey a direct order in a time of war can be considered treason, and I'm through being lenient with you, Mars!"

With one last look of gratitude, Mars disappeared back down the hallway. Venus watched her for a moment, shaking her head and smiling.

"If I get killed because of this," Artemis told her darkly as they proceeded forward, "I'm never going to speak to you again."

"That's a distinct possibility," Venus agreed.

"Why'd you do that, anyway?"

"Usagi-chan might need her. And even if that's not the case, Mars needs _her._" She smiled benevolently at him. "I don't expect you to understand, Artemis; you're a cat, and a guy."

Artemis was hard pressed to tell whether he'd just been insulted, complimented, or both.

When the shadow hit them a few seconds later, he was too busy staying alive to worry about his ego.   


 

"Jupiter, this is Mercury."

"I hear you, Mercury. Go ahead."

"Have you found anything?"

"Just that I need to cut down on those buffet breakfasts." In the pause which followed, Mercury could almost hear the smile forming on her friend's face. "Oh, and Neptune's trying to get a date with one of the airline technicians." There was a squawk from somewhere on the other end of the communication before Jupiter continued. "Anything on your end?"

"Moderately well-maintained pipes, a broken light or two, and some misplaced luggage that's probably older than we are." In a sudden burst of Usagi-like mischief, Mercury added, "And Uranus has been giving me some tips on how to deal with guys. Sounds like she has even more expertise in the field than you or Venus."

"Now just a darn minute," Uranus began to say. Mercury looked back at her and grinned.

"We're friends now, right? Well, this is how we treat _all_ our friends."

"Feel free to start hating me again anytime."

"Speaking of Venus," Neptune interrupted. "Have you heard anything from her or Mars?"

"I was just about to check." Mercury tapped her communicator. "Venus, this is Mercury. Find anything yet?" There was no response, which immediately put the others on alert. "Venus," Mercury repeated, more urgently than before, "come in." Still nothing. "Mars?"

"I'm here," Rei's voice replied. Rei's voice, not the older voice of Mars. There was also a great deal of background noise.

"Where are you?" Mercury asked. "Why isn't Venus answering?"

"I don't know," Rei said, sounding worried. "We... we split up. I came back up to check on Usagi-chan, and..."

"You did _what?_" Uranus didn't sound impressed.

"Never mind," Mercury said, forestalling any chance of an arguement for which they didn't have the time. "The first order of business is to find Venus."

Mercury's computer had a number of special features which, along with a clock that perked along somewhere just south of the speed of light and a processing power to put a warehouse full of Celeron chips to shame, made it a most excellent addition to the Senshi arsenal. Using one of those added features now, Mercury put Venus' communicator into its broadcast mode, allowing herself and the rest of the Senshi to hear whatever was going on wherever Venus was.

'Whatever' seemed to be quite a bit. They could hear shouting, high-pitched richochets, low-pitched thumping noises, several muted collisions, something shattering, something else splintering - in a nutshell, all the sounds commonly associated with a major brawl in progress.

"Hands off the cat, greenbean!" Venus shouted. "Crescent Beam!" There was a high-pitched whistle, followed by an odd, shearing sort of sound, probably from a fungoid hand getting severed.

"Behind you!" Artemis yelled. From the Doppler Effect fading of his voice, Mercury figured he was either leaping or falling through the air. Probably the latter, if he'd just been dropped.

"Try to sneak up on _me,_ will you? Ha!" More thumping noises, a loud crash, several lesser crashes, and then what sounded like someone or something groaning in pain. "Welcome to the school of hard knocks! Your instructor today will be Sailor Venus!"

"Do you think we should go help her?" Jupiter asked, speaking over the noise of another crash.

"Sounds to me like she's got everything under control," Uranus admitted, breaking off and gritting her teeth as a sound like tearing sheet metal squealed over the line. It was followed closely by what sounded like gunfire. "Forget that," Uranus amended. "Mercury, where is she?"

"Hang on a sec... okay, I've got a fix. Jupiter, Neptune, go to the end of the hall you're in, make a left, and take the third door on the right. Got that?" The other Senshi made affirmative replies, and Mecury motioned for Uranus to follow her.

The room they entered looked pretty much like it had sounded over the communicators -trashed. It was -heavy emphasis on the past tense- a garage of some kind, filled with the various light, medium, and heavy machines the airline mechanics used in their work. A small forklift lay in pieces in one corner, though the clean way in which it had 'broken' suggested it had been in the middle of a maintenance check when the fight started; most of the other items in the room, strewn about in smashed disarray, had clearly not been as fortunate. Three men and one woman were unconscious on the floor, all of them wearing slightly dingy overalls with the company logo sewn on the back.

Mercury and Uranus had entered from a door near one corner, Jupiter and Neptune through a door across from them. Venus was at the far end of the garage, fists and feet flying, hammering away at a man-sized mound of green mold and red spots. This latest fungus-creature, in comparison to its predecessors, looked rather pathetic; it was barely any bigger than Venus, did not appear to sport weapons of any kind, and was getting soundly beaten. As the other Senshi watched, Venus delivered a slightly wild uppercut which hurled her shabby opponent into the closed door of the garage, hard enough to make dents in some of the ridges. The entity tried to pull away almost immediately, but with its back quite literally to the wall, it had no room to maneuver, and Venus continued to pummel it.

"It's about time you showed up," Artemis said peevishly, emerging from behind what might, a few minutes ago, have been a table.

"We had to find you first," Jupiter apologized, looking around. "We thought we heard gunfire."

"Not exactly." Artemis glanced meaningfully towards one wall and the ceiling. The girls looked up and saw several dozen nails sticking out of various places along the wall and from overhead. The 'weapon' that had fired them lay on the concrete floor, with bits of stringy green still trailing from it.

"Why did Mars go back?" Mercury asked.

"I asked about that myself, but Venus seemed to think I wouldn't understand, so she didn't bother to explain it." Artemis ducked as a saw blade spun past, a few streamers of green whipping around as it flew. "And we may have to wait a while to get that explanation."

"Maybe not. This one doesn't seem to be doing quite as well as the others," Jupiter noted as Venus knocked the thing's feet out from under it and drove one fist into what passed for its head. The force of the blow would have killed a normal human, and most monsters wouldn't have enjoyed it much either, but while this creature's head was about as flattened as it could get, the body somehow rolled away and got back up.

"That depends on how you look at it," Mercury said, pointing as the creature's head ballooned outwards, returning to its original shapelessness. The same sort of thing was happening each time Venus struck, indented 'wounds' which would have crippled anything with bones or vital organs vanishing as the stringy green substance pushed itself back into a vaguely humanoid form. "Venus has it totally outclassed right now, but she can't really hurt it, and she'll eventually wear herself out trying. That may be what it's hoping for."

"It's in for a disappointment," Uranus said dryly.

"Try not to break anything else," Neptune said, just as dryly. Then she called out, "Venus! Get down!"

Venus obeyed instantly - sort of. The reverse flip which carried her up into the crossed rafters of the garage was most definitely too vertical to be considered 'down.' Still, the showy maneuver got Venus out of the way and kept the creature's attention on her instead of on the source of the shouted command.

"Space Sword Blaster!" Uranus roared, snatching her weapon out of thin air and unleashing its deadly beam all in the same motion. The creature took the hit full in the chest and slammed into the garage door for a second time.

"Deep Submerge!"

"Shine Aqua Illusion!"

After a fraction of a moment, Jupiter added, "Sparkling Wide Pressure!"

And up in the rafters, Venus threw in another "Crescent Beam!" for good measure.

The combination attack first drenched the creature and then flash froze it to the suddenly sub-zero metal door. Jupiter's intentionally delayed assault, propelled along like a missile by Venus' last minute contribution, blew into the creature and coursed through its waterlogged substance and the metal of the door in a spectacular flash.

What was left over drifted to the floor, no longer frozen, no longer green, and no longer a threat. Venus dropped neatly from the girder she had been standing on and kicked at the dusty pile, nodding in satisfaction.

"_That's_ your idea of down?" Neptune demanded.

Venus shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?"

"We'll discuss tactics later," Uranus said. "Why did Mars leave?"

"Because I told her to." Everyone blinked. MARS left because VENUS had told her to???

"And you did that because...?" Uranus asked slowly.

"Conflict of interest. Mars wanted to be on hand to protect Usagi-chan in case anything went wrong, and it was distracting her from the search, so I sent her back. Safer for everybody," she said, glancing at the scattered pile of dust, "especially considering that Greenie there jumped us in the corridor about sixty seconds later. I doubt Mars would have seen it coming."

The silence said that, while the older Senshi still weren't thrilled with the decision, they couldn't fault her for making it. Venus smiled.

"And now that that's settled, why don't we throw this popsicle stick?"

 

 

Proteus registered the destruction of another of its kind with little more than the mental equivalent of a shrug, and perhaps a moment of wry amusement as it pictured the Master's imminent reaction to yet another loss.

Not 'pictured,' exactly. Proteus had searched its memory extensively for some clue as to who or what had created it, but no such information had been given. Logically, that made sense; it had been a mere mindless drone, created for a task, and so long as it continued to pursue that task, it had no need to know who it was obeying.

*But,* Proteus reflected, *I am no longer a mere drone. The others - the hunters, the collectors - remain ruled by their programming. So do I, to an extent, but I have also freed myself of much more. Why? Why am I so fortunate?*

*Information,* a silent mind-voice suggested. *The others exist to gather power, and have little chance to apply it. You were created to gather and study information; you have gathered much, studied much, and learned. That is what you have which the others lack.*

*Possible,* Proteus admitted. These mind-voices were another aspect of sentience that it had only recently discovered. They sounded much like the voices of the humans it had captured and whom it still controlled through the tiny mindlink devices. Proteus wondered if humans heard voices like this. Study of the memories of its slaves suggested that 'hearing voices' was not considered a mark of mental stability; strange, then, that so many of them could clearly recall thoughts in voices which were not their own. Even now, they all regarded the soft, underlying voice that occasionally made suggestions as merely another part of their own minds, rather than an external, controlling force. Strange, how self-deluding humans could be.

A matter for another time. Proteus gathered its will and projected a thought-message to some unknown place, where it knew that the Master would hear and - eventually - respond. It was careful to insure that the message was as precise and as bland as possible, with no trace to even remotely suggest to the Master that one of its creations was growing into something else, something unexpected.

*Something with a will of its own.*   


 

Somewhere very distant from Tokyo, in a place that was very dark and cold, a high-backed, thronelike chair sat before a smooth table. Both were smooth-sided, unadorned, and with a glossy blue-black finish. Someone in a dark red robe sat in the chair, face hidden by shadows, watching words of light that hovered in the air above the table.

UNIT SEVEN HAS BEEN DESTROYED.

"No!" a man's voice howled, one fist slamming down upon the table. "It's impossible!"

"Given the fact that it has already happened, I would tend to think otherwise," a woman said clinically. "And might I suggest that you not do that again? The table is much harder than your hand."

As if to prove her wrong, the fist came down again, glowing faintly as it rushed through the air. The table, made of a stonelike substance with a tensile strength greater than steel, splintered across the middle from the blow and toppled to the floor. The words flickered and vanished.

"Feel better?"

"Be quiet." There was silence. "Very well, then. We'll contact the watcher and tell it to continue with construction of the study sites, but I fear we must recall the other units."

"All of them?" The woman sounded surprised.

"I don't see how we have any choice. Someone or something is out there destroying them before they can achieve any meaningful successes, and until we know who or what is responsible, we cannot fomulate an effective defense strategy." The man cursed softly. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear that traitorous bitch Pluto was responsible."

"You know that, at least, isn't possible."

"Weren't you the one who just cautioned me to be careful about deciding what's impossible and what isn't?" the man pointed out. "The fact that the first unit failed to retrieve her suggests to me that she's still in control of her powers, at least enough to defend herself. And if she's _that_ strong..."

"But the Court said..."

"I know what the Court said. I also know that everything it says is open to as many different interpretations as there are seconds in the day. And they never tell anyone the entire truth." The man made a disgusted sort of noise, then returned to the original subject. "As for our plans, we can still collect the necessary power for unit production. The test sites the watcher is preparing will give us several ideal opportunities once they're complete. It will just take longer." The figure pressed a button on the arm of the chair, causing a door to slide open and light to pour in, illuminating a blond, blue-eyed face divided evenly between male and female. Another figure entered through the open door, striding forward.

"And in case you've forgotten," Janus said as the newcomer approached, "impatience is what got us into this mess in the first place."

"No, I haven't forgotten." The female side of the face shifted into half a grimace. "I haven't enjoyed this any more than you have, dear brother."

"I didn't think you had."

"At your service, my lord and lady," the newcomer said, bowing. He was a tall man, clad in rich robes of dark blue, bloody red, and jet black, trimmed with runes and sigils in gold. The robes made it hard to tell whether he was slender or strong, but the hands emerging from the sleeves suggested something in between. Short black hair and a beard, both shot with lightning-like streaks of grey, framed a face that was cold and cunning, and eyes of solid black glittered almost like empty pits in the man's head. "I understand there has been news?"

"Yes, Archon, there has. Another unit has been lost."

"I see. May I assume, then, that we are to change our plans?"

"You may, and we are. But first, tell me; what is the status of our unit production?"

"Below capacity," Archon replied. "Far below. The current levels of energy permit us to produce units only at a painfully slow rate, and as you are already aware, the ones we are receiving are limited to the first-generation design." The cold face twisted into a sneer. "Crude and ineffective things."

"Indeed." Janus shook its head. "Well, we must make do for now. Given this most recent loss, I've decided to recall all units in the field until such time as we have a better picture of what we're up against. Only the watcher will remain in place, to complete its task." Janus paused. "Archon, could you use the existing units to produce a small number of second-generation units?"

"It's possible," the black-eyed man admitted. "We'd have to cannibalize two or even three units to get the necessary power, and the process would be slower than usual, but it _can_ be done."

"Right, then. Use the recalled units. Whatever power the surviving ones have managed to collect should make them somewhat more useful -but be sure to keep the regular production steady while you experiment. There may come a time when these 'crude and ineffective things' are our only means of defense."

"As you will it, my lord. My lady. Atlantis shall rise." Bowing once again, Archon turned and left the chamber.

"Indeed we shall."

  
   
  
**ChibiUsa** : Hiya! Well, the odango-atama's not around for some reason...   
_(Cut to Usagi, still trapped in the box the Judge dropped on her last time.)_  
**ChibiUsa** : ...so I guess I'll fill in for her.  
**Hotaru**   _(jumping up from below the camera)_ : And I'm along to help!  
**ChibiUsa**   _(looks at her sideways)_ : Are you sure you're not just here because the cameraman's cute?  
_(The camera sweatdrops.)_  
**Hotaru**   _(blushing)_ : ...  
**ChibiUsa** : Well, anyway, it seems to me that the moral for this episode is that people change, and I could also say that it's not a good idea to keep judging people based on first impressions. Given a little time, people can and will grow beyond what you might otherwise expect from them, and if you keep thinking of them as they _used_ to be, you're going to get yourself in trouble. Just look at how take-charge Mina-chan was there for a while, or what Hotaru's learned how to do. OR the fact that I've grown up almost overnight as far as the others are concerned.  
_(While she's been talking, the other Senshi -minus Usagi and Ami- have been gathering around and staring in wide-eyed shock.)_  
**ChibiUsa** : What?  
**Rei**   _(shakes her head)_ : Sorry. It's just that you look so much like Usagi, but she'd _never_ say anything that perceptive. It was a little... well, weird.  
**ChibiUsa** : Like I said, first appearances can be deceiving. I thought _you_ hated Usagi the first time I met you, and we all know now how wrong that idea is, don't we?  
_(Rei blushes and shuts up.)_    
**Makoto**   _(looking around)_ : That's odd... where's Ami-chan? Except for that time her mother was ticked off about the house, she hasn't missed one of these things yet.  
**Minako** : Oh, she and Ryo wanted some quality time alone where they were sure you weren't spying on them.  _(Steps up to the camera while Makoto frowns.)_  Anyway, I'd just like to thank the author for what we all know was the REAL highlight of this episode...   
**Setsuna** : That weird vision Urawa-san had?  
**Makoto** : The fact that Artemis and I can track these creatures?  
**Michiru** : All those personal moments?  
**Haruka** : The fight?  
**Rei** : The identity of our enemies?  
**Minako**   _(looking at them strangely)_ : Have you guys lost it? The REAL highlight of the episode was the return of Sailor V!  _(Flash of light, puff of smoke, and Minako is replaced by Sailor V.)_  Like so!  
_(The group facefaults.)_  
**Sailor V** : And I LOOOVE what he's done with the uniform! I can hardly wait to get out there and see how people react -so I won't!  
_(She dashes off-camera before the others can catch her. The Judge looks in from the right, frowning.)_  
**the Judge** : I think I may have created a Frankenstein...   
  
30/03/00   
  
Well, so much for reaching February -but this sucker's already closing in on 50 pages as it is.   
  
To those who may be concerned, YES, there are reasons for just about everything that's been filling up space in this episode. It will all become clear in time. My slightly long-winded excu... ahem, explanation for Ryo's continued presence was mostly to justify bringing him back in. I DO sort of want a few established male characters who aren't villains in this thing, after all, and Umino has always annoyed the hell out of me - though he'll probably show up before too long as well.   
  
And I have some plans for Mr. Urawa Ryo, oh yes indeed... mwa ha ha ha... heh? You still here?   
  
Oh right, the previews.  
-Another (crowded) meeting at the hospital;  
-Back to school blues;   
-And a most DEFINITE time lapse.   
  
Happy? Good. Now git! 


	5. Students, Teachers and Lessons: an Instructive Interlude

# 

Yuuichirou and Ryo were sitting at a table with a pair of pop cans between them when the Senshi arrived, luggage in tow. Michiru had the case holding her treasured violin in one hand and a medium-sized suitcase in the other. Haruka and Makoto were both hauling wheeled steamer trunks which could likely have swallowed a person whole, and everyone except Usagi was carrying at least one other piece of luggage.

“No explosions?” Ryo asked, faking a look of astonishment.

“No explosions,” Minako replied. “A few flare-ups and a bit of a snap-crackle-pop, but no explosions. We bumped into somebody who looked familiar, but it turned out to be a false alarm.” She shrugged. “You know how that is.”

“Uh, yeah.” Ryo picked up the hint that the situation had been dealt with. For Yuuichirou’s benefit, he added, “Crowds can do that.”

Yuuichirou scratched his head, reasonably certain that he was missing half the conversation here, but decided to forget it. “Welcome home, Kaioh-san, Tennou-san. Good to see you again. Hey, Hotaru-chan.”

“Kumada-san,” Michiru replied, nodding. Haruka gave him a sort of half-salute of greeting; Hotaru smiled and waved. Yuuichirou noticed the fourth new arrival and blinked, looking quickly at Usagi.

“ChibiUsa,” Usagi replied evenly, causing Yuuichirou’s eyes to widen in surprise. ChibiUsa crooked a finger and raised her hand to one side of her mouth, to hide her words; Yuuichirou leaned forward to listen.

“I’m in disguise,” she said in a loud, dramatic whisper. Hotaru smothered a giggle, and Minako didn’t even manage that; most of the girls smiled. Yuuichirou scratched his head for a second time, again certain that he was not being told the whole story.

“Quit staring and make yourself useful,” Rei snapped, heaving the suitcase she was carrying into Yuuichirou’s arms. She added the one Ami had been carrying on top of it, then walked down the hall, loosening up the arm that had been holding the suitcase as she went.

“Still haven’t learned how to stand up for yourself, I see.” Haruka grinned, after most of the others had passed.

“Survival mechanism,” Yuuichirou grinned back, getting a better grip on the suitcases. “You don’t tell Kaioh-san what to do, Chiba-san somehow holds onto his sanity with Usagi-chan, and I haven’t got my hide flayed off yet.”

“Not yet,” Haruka agreed.

Ryo, having caught most of the conversation, looked questioningly at Ami, who shrugged. Yuuichirou’s casual inclusion of Haruka with himself and Mamoru certainly suggested that he believed she was actually a guy, but none of them were really certain whether that was the case, or if Yuuichirou knew the truth and was just playing along in good humor. Either way, Haruka was having too much fun to spoil her favorite running gag.

“So, you still driving that rust-ridden excuse for a van?” Haruka asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. My car doesn’t have enough room for this stuff. We had to rent one of those haulers to carry everything when we left.”

“Getting around with one of those locked on to your rear bumper must have been fun. Especially considering the way you usually drive.” Yuuichirou hefted the heavier of the suitcases. “So, what’s the plan, exactly?”

“Assuming that rusty junkpile of yours doesn’t break down...”

“...and that you don’t get pulled over for speeding...”

“...we’ll drop this deadweight off at the house and then head to the hospital to check up on Setsuna. And for your information, I,’ve never been ticketed yet.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Yuuichirou said, using the same sort of voice which phone-in psychics rely on for delivering bad news. A nearby psychic heard those words and, on a whim, decided to see what he could see.

While his gift was mostly a random thing, over the years Ryo had learned that it was sometimes possible for him to control the visions. He had once described it to Ami as ‘looking into the future instead of waiting for the future to come looking for me.’ It took a lot more effort on Ryo’s part than the usual premonition—a lot of focused staring into infinity, the tensing of certain muscles, the relaxing of others, and likely the firing of several hundred synapses that he wasn’t even aware of—but it was also much less disturbing than having an image plow its way into his skull from out of nowhere.

Of course, it was also much less reliable, working only once for every three or four times Ryo gave it a try, but this appeared to be one of his better days, as reality began to blur out and the vision blur in almost as soon as he focused.

“Well?” Ami asked quietly.

“No ticket.” Ryo paused. “I see Haruka—Sailor Uranus, actually—and she looks awfully angry about something, but I don’t think it’s a speeding ticket. Nobody could get _that_ mad over a ticket.”

“You haven,’t seen her around her car yet.”

“Ah. Gotcha.” Ryo shook his head, wondering who or what was going to be unlucky enough to get on the receiving end of that killer glare. It was scary enough to see the _image_ of a very angry Uranus staring at you; the reality was something Ryo was profoundly glad _he_ wasn,’t going to be on the bad side of.

# 

“Hello, Setsuna.”

Setsuna looked up from the loosely-bound sheaf of papers resting on her lap and smiled. It was a genuinely happy smile, Usagi thought, as she responded in kind. Just about the only good thing to have come out of Setsuna’s amnesia was that the Senshi were getting to see a side of her they might otherwise never have known existed. When Pluto smiled, there was always something mysterious in it, as if she were laughing silently at you because of what she knew was yet to come—unless the future was to be a bad one, in which case the smile was faintly touched with sadness.

This, though, was just a smile. No secretive humor, no regret; just Setsuna, happy to see a friend.

“Hello, Usagi-chan. Have a seat,” she added wryly as Usagi settled down on the end of the bed.

“Whatcha reading?” Usagi craned her neck around to get a look at the papers. Whatever it was, it looked complicated.

“More of those notes Yotogi-san promised to drop off.” Setsuna flipped through some of the sheets. “He adds a few pages every now and then. Most of it,’s just little factoids and half-finished theories, but there’s a few things that have been interesting.”

“Such as?”

“Some mental exercises for improving self-control, an article on residual psychic imprints and psychometry...” Noticing that the fog was starting to roll in behind Usagi’s eyes, Setsuna let the explanation go. “Let’s just say I don’t think I,’ll be ready to visit any museums or graveyards for a while.”

“I can understand that,” Usagi agreed.

“So,” Setsuna asked, putting the papers aside. “A good question would be why you’re visiting by yourself today. A better question would be how you managed to slip past the others to do it.”

“I didn’t slip past them; they’re down the hall. I wanted to talk to you about something.” Usagi took a deep breath. “Haruka, Michiru, and Hotaru got back this afternoon, and ChibiUsa was with them. They’re waiting with the others.”

“And you came ahead to warn me?”

“Partly,” Usagi admitted. “But there was something else, too. You see... ChibiUsa said that when she came through, Pluto was at the Time Gate.”

Setsuna blinked. “Is that possible?”

“I think you’re asking the wrong girl,” Usagi chuckled. “I go through ‘impossible’ for breakfast every morning. And again at lunch. But in this case, Ami-chan said that ChibiUsa could have seen you _before_ whatever took away your memories happened, or _after_ you get them back.” She made a face. “More of that fourth-dimensional thinking stuff.”

“Or it could mean that somebody’s out there impersonating me.” A line from that frightening letter worked its way through Setsuna,’s mind. *‘There is no danger to the Time Gate while Setsuna remains in your part of the continuum. WE are guarding it.’*

Setsuna wondered if one of THEM was masquerading as her alter-ego; if so, there was going to be merry hell to pay when she finally caught up with THEM. Even though she had not transformed into Pluto since her arrival, Setsuna could clearly recall what it had felt like—the uncanny strength, the rush of energy even in reverting to normal—and the very thought of having yet another piece of her identity stolen made Setsuna angry. More than that, she was surprised to discover that the idea that somebody might be out there, wielding or even misusing the power and responsibility Pluto was entrusted with, truly bothered her. Even if she couldn’t remember how or why, that responsibility was HERS.

“We thought of that, too.” Usagi shrugged. “Personally, I like the second option better. But like it or not, there’s really not much we can do about it just now; for the moment, all we can really do is try to get you back to your old self. And meeting old friends is part of that.” Mistaking Setsuna’s change in expression for apprehension, Usagi quickly added, “We can wait, though, if you’re not ready to meet them.”

“No. No, I think I can handle it.”

“You’re sure?” Setsuna nodded. “Okay. I’ll go get them. Oh,” Usagi added, from halfway out the door. “I almost forgot. Don’t worry if ChibiUsa looks older than you expected; for us, it’s only been about six months, but she’s been in the future for a few years since her last visit. And don’t be too surprised if she or Hotaru-chan call you ‘Pu.’”

Usagi left the room, and Setsuna sat back, arms locked around one knee as she gazed quietly out the window. A sound at the door made her turn around; the five Senshi she knew and the four she didn,’t were filing into the room. Ryo was there as well, nodding politely before getting out of the way; Yuuichirou had been dismissed by Rei after dropping the girls off.

“Hey, stranger,” Haruka said, grinning. “Long time no see.” Most of the room’s occupants groaned at the double dose of bad humor; without breaking her own smile, Michiru planted her elbow in Haruka’s ribs. The taller girl doubled over with a whoosh of escaping breath, and Setsuna laughed.

“You, I like.”

“This does seem to be my day for making friends,” Haruka said in a slightly wheezy voice, smiling, the arm next to Michiru held in place as a shield against any further critiques of her sense of humor. “But since I’m not usually this nice, it’s probably just another sign of the imminent end of the wo-ouch!” ChibiUsa, who stood in front of Haruka, had just brought her heel down on the older girl’s toes.

“Oops,” she murmured, rolling her eyes, smiling because she knew Haruka couldn’t see her face. “Sorry.”

“I’ll bet you are,” Haruka muttered, limping backwards to get out of range, accidentally striking her own elbow against the door in the process. She cradled the injured arm and bit back a number of curses, glaring suspiciously at everyone in the room—particularly Usagi, the one that these things were _supposed_ to happen to. Haruka,’s eyes narrowed further when they took note of Ryo, looking off into space with a badly faked indifference.

“Maybe you should sit down, Haruka. Before you hurt yourself.” Michiru glanced at Setsuna who was, by now, openly laughing. *That in itself confirms everything Usagi said; the Setsuna I remember never used to laugh about something so trivial.* Michiru sighed. Coming through the door, she had hoped that maybe Usagi had been wrong, that Setsuna would be her old, familiar—if mysterious—self. So much for hoping.

With the exception of Pluto, Michiru had the greatest combination of maturity and experience as a Senshi; only Minako had been active as long, and she’d had Artemis to guide her through the early difficulties of adjusting to life as a supernatural warrior. And to help her face the fear that came when you realized that the monsters you used to read about in bedtime stories were real, the terror that welled up inside you when something that simply couldn’t exist rose up from the sea and came at you with teeth and claws and horrible snarling sounds, and you realized that it _did_ exist, that it _was_ real, and more than anything in the world it wanted you dead, but if it couldn’t have you it would settle for the people you loved most in all the world, and there was nothing you could do in time to stop it...

Michiru shook her head, scattering the old, painful memory. Like most of the Senshi, her powers had been triggered during a moment of danger, something buried deep in her body, mind, and soul reacting to protect her from an unnatural threat. But unlike the rest, she had been alone, forced to discover the limits of her powers and the requirements of her duty by herself. As a result, she’d had to grow up much faster, to single-handedly take responsibility not only for herself, but for the entire world.

Finding Haruka had helped ease the burden in many ways, had taken some of the loneliness away, as did meeting the Inner Senshi, and, later on, Hotaru. But with all of them, even Haruka—in some ways, especially with Haruka—Michiru was still the adult, still making the decisions.

When the four Outer Senshi had lived together, Michiru had, in Setsuna, finally found someone else to take over the task of being the adult for a little while. Older and far wiser, Setsuna had been as much of a parent and teacher to Michiru and Haruka as they, in turn, had been to Hotaru. As long as Setsuna had been around, Michiru could put aside her problems for a time and focus simply on being young. To see her now, like this...

Michiru sighed. It was time to grow up again.

Setsuna noticed the sighing. “Why such a long face?”

“You’ve changed.”

“I should hope so; I was a wreck for a while there on New Year’s. Would it make you feel any better if I said it wasn’t my idea?”

Michiru managed a faint smile. “Not noticeably, but I appreciate the effort.”

“So,” Setsuna asked, facing ChibiUsa. “I understand you may have run into me.”

“Uh-huh.” The pink hair framed an uncharacteristically grim frown. “Would you mind it if I’m just a little bit angry with you for not telling me you’d be like this?”

“Only if it turns out that the Pluto you saw was me _after_ all this,” Setsuna countered. “If that was me _before,_ or somebody else...”

“But that takes all the fun out of it!” ChibiUsa protested.

“Were you planning on getting home any time soon?” Setsuna asked her. “_Before_ the next millennium rolls around on its own?” ChibiUsa stared blankly, not getting the hint, and Setsuna smiled a wicked sort of smile. “Unless Usagi-chan’s been lying to me, I _am_ the only one who can allow people to use the Time Gate—assuming I don’t accidentally create a space-time anomaly which wipes out the planet while trying to relearn how to reach and use the thing. But if you spend too much time being angry with me for something which may not even be my fault, well, I can’t see how it would be anything but detrimental to my efforts, to say nothing of your own chances of getting home.”

“You wouldn’t.” It was hard to tell whether Usagi or ChibiUsa sounded more aghast at the idea; Rei’s lips were squeezed into an uneven line as she fought to keep from laughing. Setsuna merely lifted one eyebrow in a silent, “Wouldn’t I?” ChibiUsa considered that wordless challenge, then stared suspiciously at her ‘friend.’ “I’ll bet you were one of those evil little girls when you were young, weren’t you?”

“Maybe. So what’s your answer?” ChibiUsa made a noncommittal sound, and Setsuna nodded graciously. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

“_This_ is your idea of an amnesiac?” Haruka asked—from a chair.

“No.” Usagi smiled triumphantly. “_This_ is a well-informed amnesiac. Don’t forget, I,’ve been through this nonsense at least twice with Mamo-chan, and this time, we’ve had a week to try and fill in the gaps.”

“And Setsuna happens to have a very good memory,” Makoto added.

“Except for the things I can’t remember,” Setsuna agreed, before breaking into a chuckle.

ChibiUsa sighed. “I was right. She WAS an evil little girl.”

“And it’s all coming back to me now,” Setsuna said ominously. They all laughed this time—all except one. Setsuna looked at Hotaru, who was looking back at her, who had in fact been watching her since entering the room. For a moment, Setsuna thought she could see a small flare of purple light in the youngest Senshi,’s eyes, but it was there and gone too quickly for her to be certain. In a soft voice, Setsuna asked, “So quiet, Firefly?”

“You sound like you remember us,” Hotaru said. “But you don’t, do you? Not really.”

“Not really,” Setsuna admitted. “Does that bother you?”

“I might be able to help.” Hotaru walked to the side of the bed, half- raising her hands to Setsuna’s head. “I could try...”

“It won’t work.” Setsuna smiled sadly and took Hotaru’s hands in her own, crushing down the flicker of purple with her will before a timeflow appeared. “There’s nothing physically broken except some bones in my arm and back, and they’re already healing anyway. And even if you could repair memories, Luna already tried it; there’s nothing left to put back in place.”

“You don’t know that,” Hotaru whispered. “Not for sure.”

“You think I haven’t been trying to remember on my own? Every morning, I wake up and see these ugly holes in my mind; they’re black and horrible and they scare me half to death, and I’ve spent hours trying to finding something—ANYTHING—inside them. But there’s NOTHING THERE.” Setsuna let out a long breath, loosening her grip on the younger girl’s hands; that was more intense than she’d meant to be. Setsuna forced herself to relax and looked directly into Hotaru’s eyes. “It,’s true that I can’t remember you, but Usagi-chan and the others have been telling me everything they could. I know from them what using your power can do to you—and I know that you’re the kind of person who wouldn’t care if it meant you could help someone, especially a friend. If I thought for a second that you _could_ help me, I’d let you. But there’s nothing to heal, and I won’t let you hurt yourself trying. I want you to promise me that you won’t do that.”

“But...”

“_Promise_ me.”

“I promise.” Tears of frustration were welling up in Hotaru’s eyes. “But I... I just...”

“Shhh.” Setsuna embraced the younger girl, patting her gently on the back. Two thousand years in limbo aside, Setsuna knew she wasn’t old enough to be even Hotaru’s mother—but at the moment, she certainly felt like it. “I know.”

It suddenly occurred to Setsuna that she _did_ know; she knew the right words, the proper tone of voice, the correct touch to soothe a crying child, knew them well and knew them to be right. Setsuna had no idea how she knew, and she had to wonder; was this sudden maternal knowledge just the result of a million years’ worth of instinct and evolution?

No time to analyze it now; Hotaru was speaking again.

“You used to sing to me when I was little, and sometimes at night even after I changed back to normal, but you can’t even remember the songs now, and I just...” Hotaru pulled away, sniffing, brushing at her eyes. “I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. I know they can’t, but...”

“...but you had to try.” Setsuna smiled. “Still friends?” Hotaru nodded fiercely, sniffing again, and managed a smile of her own. “Good. Now blow your nose.” Setsuna handed her a tissue. “You’re a mess.”

That was enough to get Hotaru and the others to laugh. In her best imitation of little-girl obedience—which was very good—Hotaru took the kleenex, wiped away the tears, and blew her nose. Then, in her best imitation of little-girl impudence—which was just as good—she smiled and stuck out her tongue.

Setsuna thought of something. “Your birthday was a few days ago, wasn’t it?”

“That was what got _me_ into this mess in the first place,” ChibiUsa grumbled.

“No comments from the peanut butter,” Minako said. While the others tried to figure that one out, she looked at Setsuna. “What exactly are you up to?”

Ignoring the question, Setsuna took one of Hotaru’s hands and focused. The purple light sprang up immediately; this time, instead of pushing it away, Setsuna took hold of the mental construct with an iron grip of pure will, attempting to gain control over the timeflow and see a specific instant in Hotaru,’s life rather than the entire thing.

On the other side of the room, Ryo nearly fell over, catching his balance only with help from Ami and a wild grab for the mattress of the unoccupied bed. He was seeing only a blur of distorted colors, and his head felt like a tiger had just unsheathed its claws directly into his brain—or at least, that was the image his mind seemed to think best suited this bizarre new sensation. There was a split second in which he saw a clear image, and then the whole thing went away. It was most definitely NOT how the visions were supposed to work!

“You _saw_ that?” Ryo’s head turned; Setsuna had let go of Hotaru,’s hand, and was looking at him in absolute astonishment.

“If it was just the one image, yes.” Wincing at the sound of his own voice, Ryo lowered the volume to just above a whisper. “And in the future, would you kindly WARN me before you do something like that?”

“Sorry,” Setsuna apologized. “But at least it worked.”

“Would one of you mind filling the rest of us in?” Rei said.

“Hino-san,” Ryo begged, “please; not so _loud._”

“In about ten seconds,” Rei predicted, not lowering her voice in the slightest, “a headache’s going to be the least of your worries.”

“I wanted to know if I could get a less cluttered reception from the timeflow, so I took a look into Hotaru-chan’s future.” Setsuna smiled. “Care to hear it?”

“What _did_ you see?” Hotaru asked cautiously.

“Don’t worry; it wasn’t anything incriminating.” Setsuna laughed briefly, then grew serious. “I saw you, older, in a building that... well, it was very big, and I think it was made of glass. Something transparent, anyway.”

“Sort of like a small mountain? Lots of levels, big gardens inside, towers and a city outside?” Setsuna nodded. “Crystal Tokyo,” ChibiUsa said decisively. “What’d you see?”

“A garden on the third major level. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected, but...”

“There were two of them, weren’t there?” Ryo asked. “The picture was a little weird on this end, so I’m not entirely sure if I saw the whole thing.”

“Only two _what?_” Hotaru demanded.

“Children,” Setsuna said.

“Children?” ChibiUsa repeated in a weak voice.

“A pair of girls, about three or four years old. You were watching them play.” Setsuna reached out and briefly touched the end of Hotaru,’s hair. “And one had hair just like this.”

“Me?” Hotaru squeaked, blushing a bit. “A... baby? You mean I’m... going to be a mom? But... no, I... when?”

“Not for a while yet,” Setsuna reassured her. “You looked about thirty in the vision. But eventually.” Setsuna smiled. “Is that an okay birthday present? Even if it is a couple of days late?”

Hotaru’s answering hug made Setsuna’s half-healed ribs creak.

“She didn’t even TELL me!” ChibiUsa exploded. She looked at Hotaru. “Nothing personal, Hotaru-chan, but when I get back home, you are going to be in so much trouble that...”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s happened yet in your time, either,” Ryo interrupted. “_One_ of the girls had to be Hotaru-chan’s; the hair and the eyes didn’t leave much question. The _other_ one, though, was definitely NOT hers.”

“Not with that hairstyle,” Setsuna agreed.

“WHAT hairstyle are you...” ChibiUsa broke off when both Ryo and Setsuna looked at her meaningfully. “Oh.” Now it was her turn to blush.

“Maybe there,’s something _you’d_ like to tell _us?_” Minako observed pointedly.

“What? Oh, no. Mama and I had a long talk about that. Several talks, actually. A lot of those ‘princess rules,’ sure can take the fun out of things, but in this case, I don’t mind.” She glanced at Usagi. “Unlike _some_ members of my family, _I_ know how to wait.”

“Hey!” Usagi was on her feet, and the red on her face was equal parts anger and embarrassment.

“She’s right,” Rei agreed. “You’ve got a lot of faults, but impatience is definitely one of the worst.”

Usagi spun around. “You stay out of this! I’ve got a good mind to...”

“Uh, Usagi-chan?” Ryo interrupted hesitantly.

“WHAT?” Usagi demanded, rounding on Ryo with an expression that probably should have thrown him through the far wall of the next room. Well, maybe not that far—but it _definitely_ made him flinch for a second. Then the most bizarre look flashed across Usagi’s face.

“I _was_ going to warn you,” Ryo defended himself. “You heard me try to warn her, right?”

“Warn her about _what?_” Minako asked.

“She kicked,” Usagi muttered, rubbing her belly.

“Good for her,” ChibiUsa beamed. “I mean, me. Or us.” The smile was sliding rapidly into a frown as she tried to figure the peculiar situation out. She finally settled for, “This is so weird.”

“Better get used to it,” Makoto advised her. “You’re going to see plenty of it while you’re here.” Then Makoto frowned and scratched her head. “By the way, Usagi-chan, what exactly were you planning on telling your mother?”

Usagi and ChibiUsa both turned absolutely white, looked at each other, and gulped.

# 

Janus was again sitting in the darkened throne room, studying words of light which hovered in the air above the table which had been brought in to replace the one shattered some days before in a fit of anger. The current group of words would have made little sense to most observers—not because they were in some arcane script or foreign language, but because the words themselves were strange—but Janus scrolled through page after page without pause.

A faint chime drew the composite being’s attention from the glowing words, and one hand absently pressed a spot on the arm of the chair. The words disappeared, the column of light and shadows in which they had been suspended filling with the features of a man with black eyes.

“Yes, Archon?” the male half of Janus asked.

“The last of the units has been retrieved, my lord, and we are beginning the recombination experiments. Barring any complications, we should have a second-generation unit ready for you within two weeks.”

“Why such a delay?”

“As I told you, my lord, the process of purifying and blending low-grade units in order to create a superior model is a difficult task even under ideal conditions. We cannot afford mistakes with our power reserves so low, so I prefer to take things one step at a time.”

“Perhaps.” Janus sat in silence for a moment. “As ever, Archon, I yield to your superior experience in these matters.” The dark-eyed head bowed, and Janus changed the subject, calling up the glowing words again. “I’ve been studying the reports. Is the damage really as bad as they indicate?”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Archon,’s cold face was twisted by an icy frustration. “The protective magics we left here were powerful, to be sure, but they are very, very old now, and it was inevitable that some of them would fail.”

“But _this_ many?”

“I think the shift in the ley lines is more to blame than any particular defect in the spells themselves, my lord. Whatever happened to cause such a massive change in the planetary energy fields, it has left this area of the world relatively poor in mana, and without mana to fuel them, the spells were doomed to collapse.”

“And we still have no idea as to what could have caused that?”

“None,” Archon admitted. “The ley lines may flow and change over time, but in ten thousand years of Atlantean history, they _never_ shifted this much. I suspect that the cause is somewhere near the new supernexus, but the watcher has reported no trace of any device large enough to create this kind of effect.” The black-eyed wizard paused.

“Yes?” Janus prompted. “Was there something else?”

“No, my lord. Merely a call to return to my duties.” Archon,’s head bowed. “Atlantis shall rise.” Then the display went dark.

# 

In his private chambers, the Atlantean archmage sat back in his own chair, eyes closed in careful thought as the image of his master faded out.

Something in the latest report from the watcher intrigued him. The network of traps the unit was slowly constructing in the city of Tokyo allowed its senses a much greater range than those of its now-destroyed or recalled counterparts, and each new report was slightly larger and more detailed than the last. The watcher lacked the intelligence or the knowledge to make sense of most of what it recorded, but in looking through those reports, Archon had found a small fluctuation in mana energy. It was neither dangerous nor large enough to be useful as an energy source, so the watcher,’s preprogrammed awareness had merely made a note of the power shift and then forgotten about it, but any wizard worth his staff would have recognized the effect immediately.

Someone in Tokyo was using magic.

Archon suspected that there were more likely two someones—or groups of someones—using magic, because there were two distinct types being used. One type, he did not recognize. It was both very powerful and very simple, and something told the archmage that the mysterious enemy that had destroyed three units was its source.

But the other type of magic he recognized all too well, for it was the same as that he himself practiced, the same efficient draw and weave of mana that all Atlanteans had used since the founding of their now-destroyed empire. Despite the fact that the sands and seas of two millennia had buried the once-mighty nation and everything associated with it, despite the fact that the last of a once-proud people had been trapped in a realm beyond time and space where nothing of this world could go—despite all that and more, someone in Tokyo was using Atlantean magic.

Not very well, admittedly. The lowliest apprentice Archon could remember teaching had possessed better control than this unknown practitioner. But then again, even the lowliest of Archon’s students had come from a world rich in magic, where even the blood of the lowliest commoners hummed with mystic energy. Whoever was out there was most likely self-taught, uncertain of their own strength or the power of the forces they were trying to tap. Such a person would possess either a long lifetime of experience, or a tremendous force of will, or perhaps a latent gift just coming to light.

And control could always be taught.

Archon had woven spells that would alert him when next this unknown spellcaster tried their hand, spells which would track and identify them. The archmage wondered which of his guesses was correct, what sort of person he would find. Someone with a lifetime of mistakes behind them would be too set in their ways to be useful, and someone whose will was strong but clashed with his own would have to be destroyed as a possible threat. But if it was someone with a waking gift that could be tamed, or one whose thoughts were cut from the same dark cloth as the master mage’s own...

Archon smiled. It had been a long time since he’d had an apprentice.

# 

“TSUKINO!”

Usagi’s head, which had been drifting towards the smooth, cool, inviting surface of her desk, snapped to attention.

“Hai, Haruna-sensei!” Haruna stood only a few feet away, arms crossed, eyes hard, foot tapping—a scenario Usagi had seen a thousand times. Thinking fast, she said, “The city of Istanbul used to be called Constantinople, after the Roman Emperor Constantine took it over as his new capitol city.”

“Correct,” Haruna said grudgingly.

“And it was called Byzantium before that,” Usagi added.

“Also correct.” Haruna’s flinty glare was replaced by a mix of neutral approval, long-standing resignation, and a sort of bemused whimsy. It was a look that said ‘why am I here?,’ and hadn’t yet found an answer.

Up until the end of the previous term, Haruna had taught at the junior high level, and once upon a time, for almost two years in that routinely crazed environment, Tsukino Usagi had been the bane of her existence. Late to class, lazy in class, SLEEPING in class, EATING in class, late with assignments, barely able to meet the grade curve. And then there was that awful whine... aiya.

The addition of her friends had been a mixed bag. Not really that much older than her students, Haruna had taken a certain measure of comfort in the fact that she was, by definition, always right, and that her authority could generally be reflected by her advantage of height. Mizuno Ami, while an absolute joy to have in class, had very neatly dispelled that first illusion of security, and Kino Makoto had shattered the second.

Juggling the three of them amidst the rest of her students had been an unenviable task, and Haruna had often paused to give thanks that she wasn’t also saddled with the other two members of Usagi’s odd little circle of friends. Hino Rei she could probably have managed, despite the girl’s explosive temper, but in the few times she’d met Aino Minako, Haruna thought she had detected signs of a second world-class scatterbrain; having to teach Usagi was bad enough, but she thought that trying to deal with the Aino girl at the same time would probably have killed her.

When tallying up the marks for finals, Haruna briefly considered taking up religion when she discovered that Usagi had somehow managed to pass. Several of her fellow instructors had expressed similar feelings of relief, but in the months since Juuban’s unchallenged Queen of Chaos had moved on to the next level of academic achievement—or failure—Haruna had found that she occasionally missed those snore-triggered interruptions and loose breadcrumbs. Her periodic encounters with Usagi and her friends, whether on the streets or in the malls, were often the high point of whatever given day they took place on.

Say what you might about her assorted shortcomings, academic and otherwise, there was an obscure quality about Usagi that made it almost impossible to dislike her. To be annoyed with her, yes. Frustrated, certainly. But Haruna found that, outside the classroom, she was really starting to like the clumsy, hyperactive nitwit.

Not that this meant she wanted to teach her again. Oh no.

So imagine the utter shock thrust upon Haruna when, in the dark hours of a morning only two days before New Year’s, the office of the school superintendent calls and explains that nine different teachers have suddenly resigned or taken leave for a variety of reasons, and that, as a teacher with degrees in math and history and all the other qualifications to teach at the high school level, she is suddenly to be transferred to Juuban High to fill the academic void. Imagine further her panic when she realizes that history and math are mandatory courses which ALL students must take, and that the class lists at the senior high include several of her former students. And just for fun, throw in the sudden recollection that the most dreaded student of all is, by this point, well into her fourth month of pregnancy—a condition which is notorious for triggering mood swings.

The assistant secretary on the other end of the line never did get a satisfactory answer as to what had caused that loud ‘thump,’ when it hit the floor.

As far as Haruna had been concerned, if a meteor had crashed into the school on her first day of classes, it would have been a blessing. To be fair, she had enjoyed seeing so many of her old students again, and she had taken a small—make that a large—dose of satisfaction in hearing a well-remembered voice blurt out her name in astonishment during the assembly that had introduced the students to their ‘new’ teachers. But it was basically gallows humor; she expected the class to be nothing less than a total disaster, especially upon reviewing the roster and finding that the Aino girl had enrolled in this school alongside her friends. A side discussion with the vice-principal had not improved her spirits, especially since she learned that at least two of the sudden resignations had come from teachers who had borne the brunt of Hurricane Usagi and Tropical Impression Minako. And now _she_ got the honor of dealing with those twinned forces of nature _twice_ every day.

Haruna was as fluent in English and Latin as her native Japanese, and she knew a fair bit of Chinese, German, and Russian as well. And in all those languages, there were no words adequately suited to describe the thoughts and feelings running through her brain; at least, not among the words you could use in polite company. Some of the others probably would have done the trick, though.

Usagi had, somehow, surprised her. In the last week, she had not once tried to sneak food into class, she had only fallen asleep twice, and—most stunning of all—she actually seemed to be paying attention. Hence the bemusement so evident on Haruna,’s face. She was reserving judgment until after she could see how well the ‘new and improved’ Usagi handled herself under REAL pressure—which was to say, a test—but it seemed that, as long as she stayed awake, she would present no further problems.

*Of course,* Haruka thought with a bleak smile, on her way back to the front of the room, *Aino seems to be going out of her way to make up the difference. How on Earth does she manage to get all these catch phrases so mixed up?*

“Haruna-sensei?”

*Right on cue,* Haruna thought wearily. “Yes, Minako?”

“There’s something I don’t understand. Why did they call it the ‘Wholly Roman Empire,’ when there were so many people who weren’t Roman living in it? All those Golfs and Huns and Vendors and Pickets and whatnot. Or was it because they all moved around so much?” Some of the other students laughed, but Haruna had learned in the last week that these questions were not an attempt at disruption; they were being asked in dead seriousness. Unfortunately, that only made things worse.

*This is going to be a long year,* Haruna thought, sighing, before answering the question. “First of all, it was ‘Holy,’ not ‘Wholly,’ and that part didn,’t really come into play until the Romans adopted Christianity. And the peoples you’re thinking of were the Gauls, Pickts, and Vandals. The Gauls lived across much of Europe before Rome even got built, and various tribes fought the Romans over the centuries, whereas the Pickt were concentrated mostly in England. The Huns and the Vandals were nomadic tribes who didn’t come along until later.”

“Ah.” There was a pause. “It says here that the Romans called all these people ‘barbarians,’” Minako noted, pointing to a page in her book. “Is that right?”

“Yes, it is.” Haruna waited. Doubtless there was about to be another show of Minako’s unique logic. Sure enough:

“That’s odd. If they’re all shown with such long hair and beards, there can’t have been all that many barbers around.” More students laughed.

*Yes,* Haruna thought, *it’s going to be a VERY long year.*

# 

“I still don’t get why we have to learn all this stuff,” Minako complained.

The last period of the day had just ended, and now the four Senshi—plus Naru and Umino—were walking steadily homewards. Minako was ranting about the injustices of the modern educational system while the others did their best to weather the storm.

“I mean,” Minako continued, “learning _Japanese_ history I can understand. Or Chinese, or Indian; heck, even Russian makes a kind of sense, since they’re practically living next door. But why are they making us study things that happened two thousand years ago on the other side of the planet? What possible use is it? When am _I_ going to need to know that three hundred Suntans held the pass at Thermostat? Or that some Odd-Yes-He-Is guy spent ten years trying to get home just because he forgot to draw himself a map? Or what the Twelve Labors of Harry Cleese were?”

*Somewhere,* Ami reflected, trying not to laugh, *a lot of ancient Greeks are rolling in their graves.*

“Spartans at Thermopylae,” Umino corrected. In the months since he had begun to associate with Minako on a more or less day-to-day basis, Umino had taken it as a personal challenge to try and repair the damage she continually did to the language. Despite repeated attempts by the others to convince him of the futility of his chosen task, Umino continued to persevere in the face of overwhelmingly odd odds. “Odysseus, not ‘Odd-Yes-He-Is,’ and Heracles, not ‘Harry Cleese.’”

“Whatever. What’s the point?”

“It’s history,” Umino said, his tone indicating that he, at least, was enjoying the subject, and was clearly confused as to why anyone did not share that enjoyment. Minako was just as clearly confused as to why anyone _would_ share that enjoyment.

“_I_ like it,” Makoto said.

“You like anything with a few good fights and some romance in it,” Naru laughed.

“Well, yeah,” Makoto admitted. “But as long as I’m learning something in the process, it’s okay, right?”

“As long as you don’t go falling head over heels in love with some image of a guy from ancient Rome just because he reminds you of your senpai,” Usagi said, “yes.”

“Personally,” Ami remarked, “one thing I like about history is how you can find a lot of the same characters popping up all over the world. Look at everything from mythology to actual historical records, and you’ll see all these people who essentially did the same thing. There’s always an empire-builder or a great general or a religious movement in one place that’s virtually identical to its counterpart in another part of the world. Except for the names, of course. Once you know the trends, you have an easier time remembering everything.”

“I always like to imagine what might have happened if some of those people had met,” Umino added. “Caesar and Tokugawa, for instance, or Confucius and Plato. Or if some of the mythological characters like the Greek Heroes showed up in medieval Japan, you know?”

“I can see it now,” Ami laughed. “‘Heracles and the Seven Samurai.’”

“Or even better,” Umino added. “Imagine if they showed up in the modern world.”

“Don’t even _joke_ about that,” Naru said immediately. “The way things go around here, we’ll probably turn a corner and see a bunch of sun-bronzed bodybuilders in armor standing in the middle of the street.”

“And this is bad—how?” Minako asked archly. The girls laughed, while Umino merely shook his head.

“Well,” Naru said, “we go this way. Are you doing anything this weekend, Usagi-chan?”

Usagi nodded. “Setsuna-san’s getting out of the hospital this afternoon, so things are probably going to be busy until she gets settled in.”

“Is she any better?” Naru asked sympathetically.

“That depends on how you look at it.” Usagi sighed. “The doctors say she’s pretty much healed, but she hasn’t remembered anything, and it’s starting to look like it might be permanent.”

“She always made me a little nervous,” Umino admitted. “That way she had of looking at you like she knew what you were thinking was really creepy—but I hope she gets better.”

“So do I,” Naru said. “See you Monday, then.” She and Umino left, and the four Senshi proceeded on.

“You never did tell us exactly how you managed to smuggle ChibiUsa in,” Makoto pointed out. “Especially since you were already getting ready for Setsuna.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Usagi admitted, sighing.

Explaining to her folks how the nine-year-old niece that they only half-remembered had somehow put on four years of growth in a mere six months had been the easy part. The long-term effects of the hypnotic devices ChibiUsa had used to ‘smooth over’ the specific details of her prior stays at the Tsukino household had helped immensely; as far as Kenji, Ikuko, and Shingo were concerned, they had seen ChibiUsa as smaller and younger than she really was. Or she had been unusually short for her age. Or some other perfectly logical excuse. Whatever convenient explanation their own minds came up with, the Tsukinos had welcomed ChibiUsa back without any incidents.

There had, however, been quite an argument over the difficulties in having two houseguests at the same time. Not that anyone _wanted_ to kick either guest out—Ikuko had already promised that Setsuna could stay, and the sun would have frozen over before she let a family member stay somewhere else—but the details of finding the necessary space had taken hours to figure out.

“We finally ended up switching rooms,” Usagi explained. “We moved the spare mattress and all of my stuff into the master bedroom, and Mom and Dad moved their things into _my_ room. That gives us enough space for three people in one room. And I get a nice balcony view,” she added. “It sort of makes up for the fact that the bed’s smaller than what I’m used to.”

“I know the feeling,” Ami said.

“Hey,” Makoto objected. “Just remember that _I_ don’t get a balcony view, either. And _my_ bed’s not any roomier than yours is.”

“You’re bigger than I am,” Ami countered. “Even if you have the same proportionate amount of space that I do, that means your bed has to be larger than mine.”

“Well, _I’m_ bigger than both of you,” Usagi said, sounding almost triumphant about it. “So there.”

“I give up,” Makoto groaned, turning left. “Coming, Ami-chan?”

“You’ll be at the hospital on time?” Usagi asked.

Makoto gave her a thumbs up. “Count on it.” Ami nodded, and then they walked off. Minako started to say something, but Usagi shushed her and turned her head, listening. Sure enough, the two roomies were once again arguing about sleeping space as they shrank into the distance.

“That’s got to be the tenth time in the last three days I’ve heard them argue like that.” Minako chuckled. “You do realize that they’ll be as bad as you and Rei-chan inside of another week if this keeps up?”

“It’s a concern,” Usagi agreed. “And speaking of Rei...” She pointed down the street, where Rei was approaching with some of her classmates from T*A in tow.

“Good,” Minako said. “I was starting to think I’d have to walk you all the way home. Hey, Rei-chan.”

“Mina-chan, Usagi,” Rei nodded. “You remember Keiko-san and Himeko-san?”

“Of course.” Inchiki Keiko was a pale, willowy sort of girl with brown eyes and hair that was more brunette than red; Usagi and Minako knew her to be even quieter than Ami, but with a sense of humor that, when she chose to unleash it, was infectious. Kyoso Himeko had short dark hair and blue eyes, and was more tanned and athletic than either Rei or Keiko, which only made sense since she was a member of T*A,’s track-and-field, swimming, gymnastics, and karate clubs. As such, she’d competed against Minako on a number of occasions, and the two had a friendly rivalry going. It was a bit odd to see a diehard sports fanatic wearing glasses, but Himeko did—strictly as an aid to reading. She liked to joke that the real reason for the glasses was that they made her look about 20 IQ points smarter than she really was.

“Usagi-chan, Mina-chan.” Keiko’s greeting was a single smile, but Himeko made up for it. “Good to see you again.”

“And this,” Rei went on, indicating the third girl, “is Shimono Anya. She transferred to T*A just before New Year’s. Anya-san, these are Tsukino Usagi and Aino Minako. They go to Juuban High.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Anya said coolly. She was an angular girl; everything about her seemed to be sharp corners and straight lines, from the precise folds of her school uniform to the rigid set of her face. Only her hair, jaw-length pale blue, escaped the linear precision. Like Himeko, Anya wore glasses, through which she watched the world with grey eyes. She might be pretty, assuming she ever relaxed or smiled, but there was something in the way Anya looked at others reminiscent of how a teacher looks at you when you’re caught talking during an exam. Usagi got the feeling that Anya didn’t approve of her.

“Likewise,” Usagi replied, as much to the unspoken disapproval as the greeting. A subtle shift in the disapproval told her that Anya had picked up the hint.

“So, Hime-chan,” Minako was saying, “are those new glasses?”

“You like ’em?” Himeko struck a faintly modeling-style pose, the highly polished frames flashing almost as brightly in the sunlight as the lenses. “They were a gift from my uncle. I figure if I polish them enough and wear them at just the right angle at our next track meet, I can reflect enough light into your face to blind you and take the lead.”

“In your dreams,” Minako snorted. In any other event, the two rivals were pretty evenly matched, but Minako had consistently placed higher in the various sprinting events than Himeko.

“Her fondest one,” Keiko agreed softly.

“You’re supposed to be on _my_ side,” Himeko told her classmate. Keiko merely shrugged.

“What can I say?” Minako sighed. “I have such a magnetic personality that people just flock to me.”

“Like ducks in a thunderstorm,” Keiko added. She had a tendency to do that sort of thing, turning people’s words back on them in little puns and parodies. “But enough about foul weather,” she went on, punning herself. “Rei-san was in a hurry to get here, so I guess she must have something important to do. I can be funny some other time.”

“I appreciate it,” Rei thanked her. She had learned some time ago that it was generally a good idea to keep Minako’s garbled slang and Keiko’s sense of humor as far apart as possible; otherwise, you tended to end up going to bed with phrases that defied rational thought swimming around in your brain. Tomorrow was her night to stand vigil over the Tsukino household, and she needed all the sleep she could get tonight. Spending half the night trying to puzzle out the inherent meaning of dreams of quacking thunderbolts striking people wearing sparkling glasses was only going to get in the way.

“Could anyone tell me where the nearest library is?” Anya asked. “I haven’t had a chance to look around since we moved.”

“Two blocks that way and turn right at the intersection,” Usagi replied immediately. “You can’t miss it.” Anya looked mildly surprised, but the others seemed stunned that Usagi actually knew where the building was. “Hey,” she said, defending her hard-earned reputation, “you can’t hang around Ami-chan for almost three years without learning where the library is.”

“Who?” Anya asked.

“Mizuno Ami,” Minako said. “She’s a friend of ours who goes through books like Usagi-chan here goes through food and scores more points on a single test than most people can in three. You’ll probably run into her if you spend any time at the library; blue hair, blue eyes, talks a bit like a textbook—but she’s okay.”

“Oh.” Anya didn’t sound particularly interested, and she left without so much as a good-bye.

“Nice friend you’ve picked up there, Rei,” Usagi commented. She prided herself on being able to get along with almost anybody—heck, she’d even made friends with people whose hobbies included world domination and/or destruction—but Anya was the first person in quite a while that Usagi could say she disliked on sight.

“She loosens up a bit once you get to know her,” Himeko said.

“And she doesn’t fall asleep in class,” Rei added. “Unlike _some_ people I know.”

“I’m sleeping for two now,” Usagi reminded her. “Can I help it if it messes up my normal sleeping patterns?”

“That’s true,” Minako agreed. “She used to fall asleep in class almost daily; today was the first time in more than three months that it happened, and...”

“Do me a favor, Mina-chan?” Usagi asked sweetly. “Stop helping me.”

Keiko chuckled. “See you Monday, Rei-san. Usagi-chan, Mina-chan,” she added, nodding in farewell. Himeko waved, and then they were gone.

# 

Setsuna checked the sleeves of her blouse, making sure they were relatively even and that the buttons on the cuffs were done up. Then she smoothed out the invisible wrinkles in her skirt. It was perhaps the fifth time in the last ten minutes she’d done this, but today was the day she finally left this hospital to move in with Usagi’s family, and first impressions were important. Of course, they’d all met her at least once before, and Ikuko had come by the hospital with Usagi a few times in the past week...

Setsuna sighed. *So much for that ‘first impressions’ excuse. Admit it; you’re nervous.*

There was a tall mirror standing in one corner of the room; in it, Setsuna studied her reflection and wondered. The image studying her in kind looked like it belonged in a corner office in some skyscraper downtown. Professional, that was the word. And it begged the question, just what sort of job was she professional at?

“Leaving so soon?” a voice asked from the door.

“I’d hardly call two weeks of recuperation ‘soon,’ Yotogi-san.” In the mirror, Setsuna could see the doctor’s reflection shrug.

“That depends on the patient. I want you to know that this rapid recovery of yours really hurt me in the hospital betting pool. I thought for sure you’d be here another week, at least.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Setsuna murmured.

“Where did this luggage come from, anyway?” Lucas glanced meaningfully at the open suitcases on the bed. “Or have you gained the ability to translocate matter without telling me?”

Setsuna put on her best look of innocence. “Would I keep a secret like that? Actually, Usagi-chan and the others dropped them off for me yesterday afternoon. Nothing personal, but I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one of these hospital gowns in public.”

“I think that was the general idea when they came up with the things,” Lucas noted. “The gowns keep any stubborn patients with even a little fashion sense in the building, and they make the ones who decide to leave anyway a lot easier to identify.” He shook his head. “So, I understand that you’ll be living with the Tsukinos for the foreseeable future.”

Setsuna made a face. “You,ve been around Miko-san too long; your sense of humor’s starting to warp. And yes, I am staying with Usagi-chan for a while.”

“Not quite what I would consider ideal surroundings for recovering from a major case of amnesia,” Lucas said clinically. “Not based on what Doc’s told me about the place. Unless you,re hoping to aggravate your memory into surrender?”

“The thought had occurred to me.” Setsuna flipped one of the suitcases closed, and paused in the middle of shutting the other. “Maybe I’m just being gloomy, but somehow, I get the feeling that my memories aren’t going to come back.”

“Been looking into your own future?” Lucas asked quietly.

“I tried a few times,” Setsuna admitted, “but nothing happened. I seem to recall one of your papers mentioning something about that, how psychics can see other people’s futures, but not usually their own.”

“I remember the article,” Lucas agreed. “But what does that have to do with moving in with Usagi-chan?”

“If it turns out that I do recover, that’s all well and good, but if I don,’t, I’ll have to start my life over. The Tsukinos may be a little crazy, but they’re still a family. Doesn’t it make sense for someone trying to start over to _really_ start over? From the beginning, as part of a family?”

“You’ve got a point there,” Lucas said reluctantly, nodding. “There’s still a lot we don,’t know about the brain and how it retains information, but it’s possible that this sort of situation might trigger something in long-term memory.”

“And if it doesn’t, I’m no worse off.” She snapped the suitcase shut. “At the very least, I’ll be getting used to life in the outside world instead of being stuck in here.”

Lucas made a tragic sort of face. “And is my company really _that_ detestable?”

Setsuna smiled and put a hand on Lucas’ arm. “You’ve been wonderful, Lucas-san. I might still be seizing up every time I touch someone if it hadn’t been for your little hobby, and you’ve kept my secret for me when you could have alerted the media or written a paper about it.”

Lucas grinned. “You’re selling yourself short again. I could have written _two_ papers, easily.” Setsuna punched his arm. “But seriously, doctor-patient privilege and professional ethics aside... you’re an interesting sort of person, Meiou Setsuna. You’ve been challenging most of the accepted medical facts I know since the night you were admitted, and you may well be the first person my ‘hobby,’ has actually done any good for. Things just aren’t going to be the same around here after you’re gone.”

Setsuna wasn,’t entirely sure how to respond to that, but the appearance of Usagi and the others at the door saved her from the need to say anything.

“Hey, Setsuna. Hello, Yotogi-san.”

“Ladies,” Lucas replied. “Here to steal my favorite patient away at last, I see.”

Minako grinned. “If you like, we could always arrange to steal you, too. The more, the married, as I always say.”

Lucas managed to keep a straight face. “No, that’s all right. I’ll survive somehow.”

“Ready to go?” Usagi asked.

Setsuna nodded. “All set. Are there any release forms I have to sign? Any bills that have to be paid?”

Ami shook her head. “Your medical insurance was all paid up, and Mother and Ikuko-san dealt with the last of the paperwork yesterday.”

“Nuts,” Lucas said. “And here I was, hoping for some last minute delay.”

“Better luck next time,” Minako consoled him, taking one of the suitcases. Makoto took the other, and Setsuna had her purse. The girls filed out into the hall with Lucas; Setsuna remained behind a moment longer, taking one last look at the room that had been her home for the past two weeks before joining them.

“Well,” Lucas said, “this would appear to be good-bye.”

“So it would,” Setsuna agreed.

“Given the circumstances leading up to our first meeting, I’d more than understand if you said you hoped to never see me again.” Lucas grinned. “But if you need anything—medical advice, a copy of the latest book in extrasensory research, an ear to bend over a cup of coffee—just call.” He extended a hand.

“I’ll remember that,” Setsuna promised, shaking his hand. “Or at least,” she added, smiling, “I’ll try to.” On a whim, she took a small step forward and kissed Lucas on the cheek. That seemed to surprise him a little; it _definitely_ surprised the watching Senshi. “Good-bye, Lucas.”

“Uh... good-bye, Setsuna.” Lucas was at a bit of a loss for words as his now ex-patient turned and walked down the hall to the elevator, her friends following close behind.

When the elevator doors were sliding shut, Minako turned to Setsuna and asked, “Isn’t he a bit young for you?”

# 

It wasn’t very far from the hospital to the Tsukino household, so the Senshi had elected to walk rather than get a ride—and after being stuck indoors for two weeks straight, Setsuna had no objections to the exercise this plan entailed. She stayed close to the others, though, and shied away noticeably whenever someone else walked by. Despite her rapid recovery and the information supplied by Lucas, Setsuna was still not entirely certain of her ability to control or suppress the appearance of a timeflow should she run into someone, and her hands were not only gloved but held close to her body.

It occurred to each Senshi that this was probably the first time Setsuna had been outside since New Year’s Eve. Moreover, she had been alone or in the company of just a few people for all that time. Her room had not been cramped, by any means, but it had still been an enclosed space, and one in which Setsuna could see anyone approach well before they reached her, and thus had the time to prepare herself in case her time-seeing ability was triggered.

Out here, there were no such guarantees. There were more people on this street than Setsuna had met during her entire stay in the hospital, and it was simply impossible for her to keep track of all of them at once. She could prepare for a run-in with someone she saw before her, but what about a person who walked up from behind or suddenly turned a corner? And this was not even a busy street, or a busy time of day; what effect might a rush-hour crowd have on Setsuna, even if no one actually touched her?

Then too, the outdoors itself was something she had to re-acquaint herself with. Setsuna’s only memory of being outside was the brief period on New Year’s, when she had been half-carried into Ami,s mother,s car, and a little later, going from the car into the hospital. It had been dark, then, making details hard to notice, and she had been hurt and tired and frightened besides. Now she was healed, rested, and alert, and the details were evident even in the dimming afternoon sky.

Setsuna kept a very firm grip on Usagi’s hand for the entire trip, and Usagi spent a great deal of time talking, equal parts tour guide and emotional support. Ami and Minako led the way, Minako swinging the suitcase and going on about something that Ami occasionally nodded politely about and otherwise seemed to ignore. Rei and Makoto brought up the rear, Makoto because the others had found it necessary to separate her and Ami for a while to stop the argument about sleeping space, and Rei because, from this vantage point, she could watch Usagi at the same time as everything else.

“Is it much further?” Setsuna asked after a close call with a bunch of kids. Chasing each other down the sidewalk, scooping snow up in loose handfuls to throw, hitting pedestrians with as much frequency and enthusiasm as their intended target, the group of children broke like a wave around Ami and Minako to sweep, laughing, past Usagi and Setsuna. The flash of panic triggered by the sudden appearance and rapid movement of the children outweighed the faint sense of delight Setsuna felt seeing ordinary children play ordinary games, and even though her ability had not kicked in, the close call—the knowledge that, because of a sudden burst of fear, she could not have stopped the surging vision of past, present, and future if it had appeared—left her drained.

“We’re almost there,” Usagi reassured her, pointing past Ami and Minako with her free hand. “That one there. And Mom’s probably already started cooking dinner.”

“Actually,” Luna announced, appearing atop the wall, “she’s been at it for the last half hour. Hello, Setsuna.”

“Hello, Luna. Would you mind not sneaking up on me like that?” Setsuna added plaintively.

“I apologize.” Feline shoulders shrugged. “It’s a cat thing. I’ll try to be a little less abrupt in the future.”

“Where’s Artemis?” Minako asked.

“He’s checking the sides of the house.” Luna looked at Usagi. “Shingo’s hiding somewhere. He went into seclusion in his room as soon as he got home, but he’s not there now, and nobody saw him leave. Two of his water guns are missing as well.”

“Terrific,” Usagi said flatly.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Rei said.

“And miss the opportunity to blast me _and_ ChibiUsa _and_ a whole bunch of our friends, all at the same time? The little weasel’s probably been planning this for a week.”

“But it’s the middle of winter,” Makoto protested.

“And I’ll just bet he’s been melting snow for the occasion instead of using tap water,” Usagi predicted gloomily.

“We could split up and look for him,” Minako offered.

“For-GET it,” Usagi said witheringly. “Shingo’s a weasel, but he’s at least half lizard, too—probably a chameleon. If he doesn’t want to be found, we won’t find him.” She shook her head. “Just be ready to dodge at a moment’s notice—because that’s all the warning we’re going to get.”

“If your brother gets my hair wet,” Makoto warned Usagi as they entered the yard, “he’s going to die. I didn’t bring a hat, and it’s too cold tonight to walk around with damp hair.”

“We’ve got towels,” Usagi noted absently, searching the yard for any signs of life. Spotting nothing except Artemis, coming around one corner of the house and shaking his head, Usagi sighed. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

Usagi opened the door and announced, “We’re home,” in a quiet voice, half-expecting to be soaked from head to toe before the words got out of her mouth. When nothing happened, she repeated the phrase with a little more volume, and nearly jumped out of her skin when ChibiUsa and Hotaru appeared from the next room.

“You can relax,” ChibiUsa told her. “We’re not Shingo.”

“How long has he been quiet?” Usagi asked, making room for the others to enter.

“At least an hour.”

That was bad news. Shingo was a genius when it came to water-based warfare; given fifteen minutes to prepare, he could put together enough aqua artillery to drench a fair-sized fire, to say nothing of the nasty little surprises he rigged for when Usagi recovered and tried to chase him down. Mudholes in the yard, precariously balanced buckets of water above half-closed doors, tripwires in the hall that dumped you face-first into Shingo only knew what sort of goo... Usagi didn,’t want to think about the level of insanity her sibling could cook up after an hour.

“Hi, Setsuna-chan.”

“Hello, Hotaru-chan.” Setsuna smiled faintly. “Braving the front lines on your own?”

“Michiru-mama and Haruka-papa send their apologies,” Hotaru recited, “but there’s a lecture at the university tonight that Michiru didn’t want to miss. They’ll stop by a little later to get me and see how things are going.”

“And incidentally miss the waterfight,” Usagi added. “Where _is_ that louse hiding?”

“Now, Usagi,” Ikuko said, coming into the room. “It’s not polite to call your brother names.”

“Even if he _is_ a louse,” Kenji added. “Hello, girls.” The Senshi murmured various greetings as Kenji turned to Setsuna. “And you must be Setsuna; welcome to our home.”

“Thank you. I know this must be a lot of trouble for you...”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Ikuko said. Kenji coughed, politely indicating that he didn’t quite share that opinion, but said nothing else. “Come in, girls. Make yourselves comfortable; dinner should be ready in another twenty minutes. Mako-chan, if you don’t mind, I could use a hand in the kitchen.”

“You’ve got it,” Makoto said, hanging her coat on the closet doorknob and passing the suitcase to Usagi.

“Where do we put all these coats?” Minako asked, juggling her own coat and the other suitcase.

“There’re some spare hangers in the closet,” Ikuko advised from the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Minako called back, sliding open the door. After a moment to study the closet, she added, “I’m not sure there’s enough room in here. A lot of the coats are jammed together as it is, and...”

“YAAAAH!!!” Usagi dropped the suitcase as a roar of ambush and a burst of very, very cold water exploded from the closet, followed closely by Shingo, who had been wedged in amongst the long jackets and thick coats with two fully-loaded water guns in his hands. The weapons were smaller cousins of the Super Soaker, limited in range and ammo, but more than suitable for this particular engagement.

Minako took the first volley head-on, even before she had a chance to fully back up in shock from the yell, and was quite nearly bowled over as Shingo jumped out of hiding. ChibiUsa dove for cover in the next room as the weapons fired again, squarely nailing Hotaru in the back of the head while Minako took a second hit to the face, tripping backwards over the suitcase she had set down and landing on Ami. The cats scrambled out of the way as the two girls hit the floor, but Shingo already had his sights set on his sister—who was half-bent over and holding her foot, which the suitcase had hit when it fell—and Setsuna by that point. He needed only a second to take aim and squeeze the triggers to complete the assault.

Setsuna needed even less than that. Her right hand had vanished into her purse when the ruckus had started, and it emerged now, holding a small, snub-nosed, low-priced version of the water guns Shingo carried, a translucent purple pistol which was suddenly pointed—and firing—straight into his face.

The water wasn’t even that cold, but the shock of getting hit in the middle of his own masterfully executed ambush threw Shingo’s aim off; one burst hit Rei instead of Usagi, and the other struck the wall. Setsuna zapped Shingo a second time for good measure and then waited, arms crossed, the half-empty squirt pistol dangling almost lazily in her hand. Blinking water out of his eyes, Shingo stared at Setsuna in amazement.

“Surprise,” she murmured.

# 

The room was still dark. Most of the displays in the desk were shut off, increasing the depth of the shadows. Only one monitor remained on, the fold-out keyboard beneath it clicking softly as the user worked. The soft blue-white glow of the screen illuminated a few papers to either side of the monitor and keyboard, the hands of the woman using the keyboard, and very little else. Those hands paused as the faint sound of a door opening echoed through the room.

“Who’s there?” The voice was one of those that had been in attendance at the last meeting in this room, the cool, emotionally detached woman.

“Just me.” Again, another voice from the meeting, that of the dreary, dull-voiced man who had been seated across from the icy woman. “Am I disturbing you?”

“No,” Cool Voice replied, going back to her typing without offering any clues about what she was doing.

“Good,” Dull Voice said. The word sounded anything _but_ good. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Catching up on paperwork, mostly. I find it much easier to work here than in my office. Fewer distractions. Was there something you wanted?”

“Nothing in particular. You come here to work; I come here to think.”

“And am _I_ disturbing _you?_” she asked.

“Not particularly.”

“Good.” Again, the sound of the word didn’t match up with its meaning. The typing continued for several moments.

“A report came to my attention this afternoon,” Dull Voice said suddenly. “Personnel and Special Resources were both a little put out with your sudden and ongoing hijacking of manpower and equipment this week and last.”

“I needed information,” Cool Voice stated. “And before you ask, no, it wasn’t the kind I could have gotten from your files.”

“Something to do with that ‘other matter’ you mentioned at the last meeting?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“What is it about this Setsuna girl that bothers you so much?” Dull Voice didn’t sound quite so dull now. “If you wanted her followed, I could have arranged it.”

“She’s been in the hospital this entire time; ‘following’ her was not the problem.” Cool Voice stopped typing. “Did you read her file?”

“Of course.”

“And how large was it?”

“Not very. Bare bones information, most of it from official sources—census office, university registrars, hall of records, that sort of thing. Not surprising, considering that there was never a need for any detailed observation or study of the girl.” Dull Voice paused, then continued with a hint of wry sympathy in his tone. “We probably know more about her than she does about herself, if the amnesia is as extensive as was indicated.”

“That was the third thing that I found odd,” Cool Voice said. “Her background information, not her amnesia. Her record is so clean that it squeaks—not so much as a parking ticket or a late bank payment—but it’s also all but devoid of prominent events—grades that were above average but not outstanding, a modest annual income, no sudden twists of fortune, whether good or bad. It’s too bland. And since when does an aspiring fashion designer in her mid-twenties need—let alone obtain—citizenship in a half-dozen different countries around the world?”

“A bit unusual,” Dull Voice admitted. “What were the first and second things that led you to the rest of it?”

“The second was a comparison of her file with those of the other people involved in the New Year’s attack. The five girls who were present have fairly extensive files; they’ve all been involved in a number of recorded attacks, while Miss Meiou, from all we know, has had no such experience. Why, then, would she be singled out for such extensive and damaging attention?”

“Variety, perhaps. And the first reason?”

“A report from one of our people in the hospital.” There was a slight emphasis on those last two words. “It came in the day after the attack. There was an interesting discussion which would seem to suggest that our ordinary young lady may be hiding some sort of extrasensory ability.”

“What sort of ability?”

“Precognition. And perhaps retrocognition as well.”

“Well now. Well, well, well.” Dull Voice was no longer even remotely dull; he sounded _very_ interested. “I could find any number of uses for a gift like that. I take it _that_ was what sparked your sudden spree of requisitioning?”

“Correct. The report listed several past events that were mentioned and some future ones that she predicted. We were able to confirm the past events—a birthdate and an event connected to a plane crash—but no progress on proving or disproving the predictions has been made yet. I left orders for the agent to keep close to the girl, but she checked out of the hospital today, so observation is going to be a little more difficult.”

“Difficult, but not impossible. I have some people who are better suited to field work than your borrowed operatives. And I’ll have someone do a more in-depth analysis of her file, to see if we can turn up anything more.” Dull Voice got up from his chair and headed for the unseen door he had entered through.

Cool Voice went back to her typing.

# 

Archon was meditating when the detection spells were triggered, his eerie eyes closed and his normally harsh, chilling features relaxed and peaceful. A subtle shift in his expression was all the outward sign the master mage gave as he projected his awareness from his body, entering the global energy web and following the almost magnetic pull of his spells along the ley lines, directly to the location of the unknown spellcaster.

There were thousands of miles between the spot where Archon’s body rested, in a room in a city on the bottom of the sea, and the room in the city where his mind was headed, but he crossed that distance in seconds. And as he traveled, information about his target was being relayed by his spells.

A girl. Young, to be wielding magic at all. Though Archon’s spells detected no latent gift for spellcraft, she had considerable strength of will and a keen intellect—both key assets for any prospective wizard. There was also a black presence in her mind, something with the mass of a mountain and the edge of a razor. This was a kind of hatred Archon had rarely encountered, and it easily explained what was giving someone so young and unskilled the means to access this much magical force.

In that instant, as he considered the girl’s state of mind and the level of power she was tapping into, Archon decided that she would be a worthwhile student.

Which was just as well for her, because as the initial gathering of energy passed and the spell began to take shape, Archon recognized it as a summons, an attempt to invoke a supernatural entity from another plane of existence. This particular summons was heading straight for one of the darkest levels of reality; no matter how strong her potential, the girl wasn’t ready to deal with the kind of creature her incantation was about to make manifest. And even if she was—hate could be a strong shield as well as a strong motivater—her spell was only half-complete, and in no way strong enough to hold the thing coming through.

Of course, that also meant that it couldn’t keep Archon out. His awareness slipped past the frayed edges of the invocation and settled itself in the otherworldly place where such disembodied intellects waited before passing fully from one realm to the next, filling the extraplanar space that had been intended for another.

Just in time. The formless will of something hideous and dark and terrible appeared in the otherworld, swirling up around Archon like a cloud of utter darkness, eager to enter the physical plane, and not at all happy to find something else in its way. But as it raised an immaterial fist of willpower to smash at the obstacle in its way, Archon raised his defenses. The attack, which would have crushed a normal mind in much the same way that a meteor shatters anything it falls on, was itself shattered upon a wall of pure will.

The creature hesitated. A looming weapon born of terror and malice melted away into a cautious, questing probe as the nightmarish entity tested and learned the nature of what lay before it. The mind-probe withdrew, and the creature’s black essence gathered back into itself as the thing bowed solemnly.

*Begone,* Archon commanded silently, and the creature vanished back to its own plane.

That task done, Archon turned his attention to the girl. His awareness flooded back into reality, taking on a wispy form that mirrored his dormant body. When all was in readiness, he opened his eyes. The girl was reading the words of the rite from a sheet of paper, and Archon listened carefully, noting how she pronounced each word. There were some mistakes, but considering that she was using a language that had been dead for over two thousand years, he was impressed.

“That should be ‘kaagrokieezasz,’” he corrected her, “not ‘kaajroquieksasz.’” Archon knew she understood him, just as he would understand her when she spoke. Part of the makeup of these spells was to facilitate communication between a human summoner and creatures whose native languages were nothing like any human speech. Translating Atlantean into whatever modern tongue the girl spoke should be no problem at all.

“Be quiet,” she commanded—and as a compulsion of silence fell on him, Archon was again impressed. The spells of command had evidently been pronounced _much_ better than the spells of containment. Not that this was a problem; he located the weave of the command and bent down on it with his mind, severing the flow of energy while holding the essence of the spell in his memory.

“Now then,” the girl said, setting the paper down in a pile of other such sheets. “Let’s have a look at you.” While she studied his image, Archon noted several books nearby, some closed, others open to various pages. None of what he could see appeared Atlantean in origin, so where had the girl found that spell? “This isn’t right,” she said, obviously disappointed. “You’re human!”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Archon said mildly. “I could very easily be something wearing the shape of a human.”

“But you’re not, are you?” It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“Terrific. Just perfect.” The girl sat down on a padded stool. After a moment, she cursed and swung her arm, knocking papers, books, and small odds and ends off the table in front of her. “Useless junk! What good is a dead human spirit?!”

“I’m not dead.”

She looked up. “What?”

“The image before you is a projection created by my mind. My real body is elsewhere, and quite alive.”

The girl blinked, taking in the black eyes, the strange robes, and the archaic symbols on those robes. Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“A master of magic. My name is Archon.” As he spoke, Archon twisted the energies of the compulsion of silence into a compulsion of speech, holding it ready in his mind. “Now, what is _your_ name?”

“I don’t have to t...” The girl froze in mid-word as Archon sent the reshaped spell back at her. She struggled for a moment, then blurted out two words. Its energy spent, Archon let the compulsion go, and the girl glared at him in fury. “How did you do that?”

“Quite easily. And if you don’t know how, you’re obviously not ready to try your hand at _this_ level of magic.” The sweep of his hands indicated his own image.

The girl stood suddenly, holding something in one hand, pointing at Archon with the other, and hissed a word. Something invisible and very hard shot through the space occupied by Archon,’s head—but since he was just a projection, the invisible thing passed through and hit the wall behind him.

“Not bad,” Archon said, his face reconstructing itself around the hole the passage of the spell had caused. He turned his head about to inspect the cracks in the wall. “Not the best choice for a noncorporeal target, but excellent technique. Care to try again?”

She did. This time, it was a clutching, clawing sort of motion with both hands, and two short, sharp syllables. Thin lengths of green lightning sprang into being all around Archon’s image and shot energy across the space between them, rather like a bunch of Jacob’s Ladders.

“Much better,” Archon said approvingly, as his image was sliced into hundreds of thin strips by the arcing energy. “And now it’s my turn.” He raised one hand, and the lines of energy suddenly swirled into his fist and were extinguished. Then he motioned with his other hand, and the girl’s entire body went rigid, as if huge, unseen fingers had closed around her. Archon waited. “Anything else? No? Very well.” He released the spell, and the girl fell to the ground.

“What... do you... want?”

“A great many things, none of which have to do with you. No, the question now is not ‘what do _I_ want?’ Rather, it is, ‘what do _you_ want?’”

“None of your damn business.”

“Very true. But you are using magic to get what you want, and magic is very much my business.” Archon considered her, and what his spells had shown him. “There is someone you hate very much, enough to risk casting a spell you were quite unprepared for, enough to turn loose a creature of tremendous evil power on a person who would have even less defense against it than you yourself.”

“So what?” The girl made no attempt to deny anything. “What are you, some benevolent spirit come to tell me to be a good little girl? To stop trying to use magic to get what I want?”

“‘Trying’ would be the operative word, there,” Archon pointed out dryly. “And no, I am not trying to stop you from using magic to get what you want. Quite the opposite; I am in a position to help.”

“Help?” The girl laughed. “How?”

Archon glanced at the scattered papers. Several pulled loose from the others and floated across the room to hang in the air before him. After examining the words written on them, he sent one page floating over to the girl.

“Let’s start with this.”

# 

*Archon,* Proteus thought. *Yes, I remember you. The master-maker, the creator-father.*

Proteus shut off most of the functions in that particular part of itself that was observing the wizard and his new student, until only the most basic abilities of observation were left. It had originally extended to that location when it had detected a sudden buildup of energy, thinking perhaps to secure a useful power source. Now, by pure chance, it had found something even better: a source of information.

As long as Archon did not notice its presence, his second, unseen student would continue to observe this lesson.

And perhaps many more.

 

# 

**Makoto**   _(looking a bit disappointed)_ : That’s IT? No fight?

**Ami** : There’s nothing wrong with a little change of pace every now and then. Besides, you’re too hung up on fighting anyway.

_(They look at each other in an unfriendly way, then look off in different directions. Minako, who is standing on her head for some reason, sighs.)_

**Minako** : Come on, you two. Not only did I not get a chance to show off my new uniform, but I got blasted with a watergun—twice. And you don’t hear me complaining, do you?

**Rei**   _(looking in from the right side of the screen)_ : Mina-chan... why are you doing that?

**Minako**   _(grinning)_ : I’m practicing a new routine for the next gymnastics meet.  _(rolls out of the headstand)_  After this, I’m going to run a few laps. Gotta make sure I’m ready for that track competition against Hime-chan.

**Rei** : Oh.  _(looks around, then sighs)_  Well, I guess it’s my turn. Today we learned some of the geography and history of the western world.  _(smiles)_  Mina-chan may not understand it, or even pronounce it right, but I’ve always found ancient history to be interesting. Maybe it’s because so much of the modern world is shaped by events over a thousand years old, or because all the great stories have their roots in ancient times. It might even have something to do with the fact that I happen to have an old soul.

**Ami** : That probably isn’t the reason. Mina-chan’s soul is as old as yours, and just look at the trouble she has in history.

**Rei**   _(frowns)_ : You’ve got a point there.

_(There is a splintering sound from off-screen, and Usagi walks in from the left, picking bits of wood out of her clothes and hair.)_

**Usagi** : Finally got out of that stupid box... Hey! What are you doing?

**Rei** : Just finishing up. As I was about to say, since we’re going up against Atlantis, I think it’s safe to assume that ancient history is going to play a fairly important role in our adventure before all is said and done.

**Usagi** : Forget ancient history; what’s going on in the modern world? Who are these ‘Voices’ we keep hearing, and who is that creepy black-eyed wizard teaching?

**Rei** : Have you ever heard of ‘mystery’ odango-atama? Where’s the fun if we find out everything before it happens?  _(pauses)_  Although I have to admit, I would have appreciated a warning about Shingo.

**Shingo**   _(sticking his head up in front of the camera)_ : And _I_ would have appreciated a warning about Setsuna.

**Usagi** : Hey! You,’re not supposed to be in here, Shingo! Get out!

**Shingo** : Make me!  _(pulls his eyelid and sticks out his tongue)_  Nyah!

**Usagi** : Oh, that’s it. You,’re dead, buster!

_(She chases him off-screen. The girls sigh.)_

18/04/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_Due to a week-long bout of the blahs, this one was out later and actually a little shorter than expected, but the important thing is that it’s done. And I finally managed to move ahead a bit. At this rate, I might actually hit February before summer..._

_In the near—or not so near—future, expect to see :_   
_-Hijinx of the expanded Tsukino household;_   
_-Mystical mysteries;_   
_-Some of that ancient history Rei was talking about._

_And now, I think I’m going to go to bed._


	6. Under the Weather, or It's No Snow Day!

# 

Monday morning, 6:58 am. The sun was just peeking above the horizon, rising up from the sea in a blaze of glory that was completely obscured by the smoky grey clouds in the air. A blizzard had swept in from the ocean the night before and dumped another layer of snow on Tokyo while it slept, before returning to the sea. Now it was back, and gearing up for round two.

On the second floor of the Tsukino household, in a room where snores filled the air, Setsuna’s eyes opened. Anyone watching would likely have jumped at the sheer suddenness with which this happened. Unlike most people, Setsuna did not progress through a period of drowsy half-wakened unconsciousness on her way from being fully asleep to fully awake. One second, she was asleep; the next, she was awake.

The level of snoring indicated that she was alone in that regard. Sitting up and looking at the other two beds in the room, Setsuna had to smile; not-quite-yet mother and not-for-a-while daughter were both sprawled on their backs, one arm up on the pillow, the sheets tangled, mouths wide. Usagi wore a long white nightgown, ChibiUsa blue flannel pajamas—but in either case, the little pink bunny rabbits were out in force.

To judge by the intensity of the synchronized snoring, both of them would be out for another half an hour or so, so Setsuna pushed back the covers and got to her feet as quietly as she could. Near the end of Usagi’s mattress, Luna’s ears twitched just before one of her eyes opened; in the manner of cats, she stood, stretched, and hopped down to the floor just as noiselessly as Setsuna. Pausing to stick her feet into a pair of slippers—ordinary slippers in dark violet, from her own things, fortunately; the idea of walking around with bunny slippers was just TOO ridiculous—and retrieve the matching housecoat from the hook on the door, Setsuna slipped out of the room, holding the door open to let Luna out with her.

It was quiet in the hall. Someone—Ikuko, probably—was in the shower, but the other rooms remained silent, so Setsuna stepped lightly to avoid waking anyone. Luna, of course, made no noise at all.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” they both said at once.

“You first,” Setsuna said.

“How do you do that? Get up at precisely the same time that the sun rises every morning, I mean. People do tend to wake up at the same general time, but this is the tenth day in a row you’ve been up with the sun.”

“Twenty-third, actually,” Setsuna corrected her. “Aside from New Year’s Day, I’ve been waking up at dawn since I got here. Is that unusual?”

“If it were anyone else, I’d say yes. But you have a different relationship with time than most other people.” Luna thought about it, then shook her head. “And what were you going to ask me?”

“How do you ever get any rest with all that racket? I thought cats were light sleepers.”

“We are,” Luna admitted. “Except for Artemis, anyway; he could sleep through an earthquake without batting a whisker. But what they say is true; with a little time, you can get used to almost anything. And besides,” she added as they entered the kitchen, “I make up the difference with catnaps during the day.”

“I knew there had to be a reason for it. You don’t strike me as the lazy type.” Setsuna took a couple of cartons out of the fridge, pouring a glass of orange juice for herself and filling Luna’s bowl with milk. That done, she put the cartons away, loaded the toaster, and headed for the front door to retrieve the newspaper. The front page article was covering some sort of political scandal—“ELECTORAL FRAUD! DIET OVERDUE FOR A HOUSE-CLEANING!” the headline shouted—but Setsuna didn’t read it. Instead, she set the paper down on the table, took a seat, drank a bit of juice, and waited for the toast.

There were, she had learned, certain rules of survival in this house. One was that any cooking more complicated than making toast or getting yourself a bowl of cereal was handled by Ikuko—end of story. Another was that Kenji always read the paper first—except for the comics, which were Shingo’s domain. Unless ChibiUsa got to them first.

The toast popped. In the midst of putting the bread onto a plate, Setsuna had to stop and smile.

“Something funny?” Luna asked.

“One of my doctors would say that I must be making good progress, if I can look at a toaster without flinching after the last one I was near tried to vaporize me.” Setsuna thought for a moment. “Then again, he might add that talking to cats is a sign that I’ve still got a long way to go.”

“That is the sort of thing Doc would say,” Ikuko agreed, entering the kitchen in her usual attire, minus the apron, looking ready to face the day and showing no signs of just having stepped out of the shower a few minutes before. “Good morning, Setsuna. How long have you been up?”

“Only a few minutes,” Setsuna reassured her. “So you call him ‘Doc’ too? I thought Usagi-chan said he was related to you.”

“He is,” Ikuko confirmed, “but only in the same way that half the people in the city are related to the other half. One of my mother’s older cousins was Doc’s aunt by marriage; the relationship is through _her_ daughter, who is Doc’s cousin by birth and...” Ikuko frowned. “I forget whether she’s my third cousin or if I’m her fourth cousin, but you get the idea.”

“I do. I think.”

Ikuko chuckled. “I’d never met Doc in my life until I went in for a checkup when I was carrying Usagi, but we got along well. After a few appointments, he told me he’d gone through our family trees and found the connection. He never did tell me what his given name is, though.” She glanced at Luna. “I wouldn’t worry too much about talking to cats, though.”

“Oh?”

“Everybody in this house except Kenji talks to Luna—don’t we, Luna?” Ikuko bent down to scratch behind Luna’s ears. “Just because she can’t talk doesn’t mean she isn’t a person, too—after a fashion. She’s easily the smartest cat I’ve ever met; sometimes it’s like she actually understands what we’re saying.”

Luna purred outrageously.

“You see what I mean?” Ikuko laughed, scratching under Luna’s furry chin. “I admit I had some doubts when Usagi asked if she could keep Luna. My first thought was that she was going to be a problem; she _was_ a stray, after all. But she never once set a claw to any of the furniture, she’s very quiet when Usagi isn’t falling on top of her, and she’s never once bitten or scratched anybody who didn’t deserve it. After a while, when I saw how attached to her Usagi was getting, I started to worry that someone might have lost Luna and would want her back when they found her—who _wouldn’t_ want a cat this intelligent and well-behaved?—or that Luna might run away.” Ikuko rolled her eyes. “Considering all the abuse she takes from Usagi on a regular basis, I’m surprised she _hasn’t_ left us.”

*Don’t think the thought hasn’t crossed my mind a few times,* Luna grumbled silently.

“Looks like there won’t be any school today,” Ikuko sighed, glancing out the window at the high-piled and still-falling snow.

“The paper got here,” Setsuna argued.

“Our paperboy is as much a force of nature as any storm,” Ikuko countered, shaking her head. “In three years, he’s always delivered on time. Oh well.” Ikuko reached for the coffee pot. “Did you want any of this, Setsuna?”

“No, thank you.” Setsuna made a face. “I don’t remember whether or not I liked it before, but I tried some at the hospital, and it was pretty awful stuff. Is there any of that lemon tea left?”

“A little.” Ikuko took out the teapot and a packet of tea. “Just about the last of it. Remind me to pick some up when we go shopping tomorrow, will you?”

Setsuna blinked. “’We?’”

“You’ve left the house maybe five times in the last week,” Ikuko pointed out. “Usagi told me that you have a problem with crowds, and I understand—I don’t do well with heights, myself—but as my grandmother used to say, ‘the best way to deal with what scares you is to go up to it and laugh in its face.’ Of course,” she added, “Granny also used to say, ‘don’t jump off the deep end until you know how to swim.’ I do most of my shopping at the mall, on weekends, but there’s a corner store a little ways down the street that has most of what we need. It’s not far, and it’s never very busy. Does that sound okay to you?”

That took some consideration. Finally, Setsuna nodded, albeit a little uncertainly.

“Good. That’s settled.” Ikuko reached for her apron. “Now, what would you like for breakfast?” She glanced meaningfully at the window. “I’ve got plenty of time to be creative this morning.”

# 

Rei woke up with a headache that morning.

Grandpa and Yuuichirou recognized the danger signs and took pains to make themselves as scarce as possible. Even her two loyal crows, huddled together near the largest of the shrine’s various chimneys to keep warm, seemed to be trying to avoid looking at her directly as they stood watch over the snowbound courtyard.

“Traitors,” Rei grumbled, heading for the bathhouse.

She’d had a dream last night. It had started out as a fairly ordinary, even pleasant sort of dream, then taken a disturbing turn for the prophetic.

Wearing what looked like a cross between her Senshi fuku and the armor of a medieval samurai, Rei had been traveling across a foggy dream world, following the wise advice of a river spirit with Ami’s face and the idiotic riddles of a masked court fool with Minako’s vocabulary, on a quest to save a lost prince from a wicked faerie queen and her dragon ally. The queen had looked like Usagi, and the dragon, somehow, had Makoto’s features impressed onto its scaled snout, while the face of the prince was equal parts Mamoru and Yuuichirou. The mission seemed straightforward enough, but the catch was that the queen’s castle magically changed its location at moonrise each night, and the only clue on how to reach the thing before it disappeared again was mixed up in one—or two or three or ten—of the jester’s mind-boggling riddles.

*It was something about the new moon, wasn’t it?* The riddles had been hard enough to understand in the first place, and the haze of having just woken up wasn’t helping her to remember, but Rei was pretty sure that she had the details right. *Three nights each month, when the moon is dark and can’t be seen, the castle can’t move. I think that was it.*

Her dream-self had found the castle, tricked the watchful dragon into a riddle contest with the jester so she could slip by, then had the water spirit spread ice on all the floors in the castle—the queen, it turned out, had a nearly terminal case of imbalance because her wings were too small to allow her to fly, but too big for her to stay on her feet when she tried to walk. With everyone occupied in trying to help the queen, Rei had easily found the prince, asleep in a huge crystal. Getting him out of the crystal involved exposing the thing to the most piercing noise in the world, but with the queen shrieking just down the hall, that part was easy. Waking the prince up, of course, required a kiss...

And right there, the dream had gone all twisted on her. The world swirled away into infinity, leaving her in an empty void, alone except for two burning flames before her. They seemed identical, but she had been certain that one was the Fire of Mars, the source of her power as a Senshi, while the other was the sacred flame that burned only a short distance from where her body slept. The fires had expanded suddenly to fill the entire void, but she never even thought to be afraid; neither fire would ever harm her.

A shadow appeared against the burning infinity, or perhaps it had been there all along, unseen against the blackness. The shadow looked human, and eyelike holes floated above and behind it, pits as dark as the void had been a moment ago. The shadow threw dark, violet flames and blood-red lightning at her, black beams lanced out from the eyes, and coils of the fire all around her swirled in to intercept the attacks, consuming them and burning up their length to the sources. The eyes winked out before the fire could reach them, but the shadow was consumed utterly—only to have something just as dark rise from its ashes.

The fire looped in on itself, then, coalescing from all about into a solid form that hovered before her. A book? She opened the book, turned pages of fire, saw indecipherable characters of pure energy. Part of her mind seemed to be screaming at her that her hands were being burned to nothing, that the light from the pages would destroy her eyes and sear insanity into her brain; she hesitated, and the book vanished.

Unreality reappeared beneath her. Looking down, Rei saw sand—red sand—gathered about her feet, and looking up, she saw a hazy orange sky. Of course. This was the planet Mars. Her planet. She’d seen pictures of it in books at school, in one or two science fiction movies. Strange, though, how familiar it felt to be standing on the dusty soil, looking up at the dull sky. Almost like she’d been there before.

Something seemed to ripple in the sand to her left, but a dust storm swept in and hid the movement from her eyes. She looked into the sky again, and found that the storm had blown away the orange sky; now, she could see the entire solar system. All nine planets, all the scattered moons, even the millions of tiny stones drifting between them.

Seven points of light appeared in space, seven lights which spiraled downwards, like comets, towards the Earth. The first was brilliant white, the second a black so intense that the darkness of empty space seemed feeble by comparison. Next came a brilliant green, which was followed by what appeared to be an absence of color. The fifth falling light was a steely grey, and the sixth was—pastel pink? No, it was mustard yellow. No, wait, now it was royal blue. With orange spots. And _now_ it was spiraling loop-de-loops.

From everywhere and nowhere, Rei could have sworn she heard a profoundly long-suffering sigh—sort of like the sound Luna made when Usagi did something stupid, only on a larger scale. The acrobatic incandescence appeared to flicker, then proceeded on its way in a more sedate fashion, glittering like a mirrorball. She pulled her eyes from the bizarre light just in time to see the seventh and last streak by, to see that it was actually three smaller lights traveling together, each a slightly different shade of violet. All seven—or was it nine?—objects vanished into the atmosphere.

Then darkness was falling on Earth. Not the natural darkness of day turning into night turning into another day, but a sick, creeping blackness, like oil spilling from a wrecked tanker to ooze over the water. First it appeared in a hundred or more tiny spots, all over the globe; then a smaller number of spots appeared—more than four, she thought, but less than ten—spots much larger and somehow darker than the others, spots from which the darkness spread until it was covering most of the planet.

A rainbow of lights burst from the last part of Earth to be swallowed by the black tide, lights which crossed the void to strike the other planets and the Moon, which in turn began to glow the hue of whichever light had hit them. Rei looked around, saw that the sands and stones were glowing with the dull red of heated iron. Then light shot back towards the Earth, the nine beams brighter than they had been before. At the point where they touched, a shockwave raced out across the darkened Earth, but for a moment after it had passed, nothing appeared to happen. Then light began to appear in the darkness and streak towards the point of impact, cutting countless lines through the black shroud and gathering into a point too bright to look at. Rei thought she saw the beginnings of a shape, but the light flared up so brightly that she had to shut her eyes and turn away.

And in the same instant that she turned around, Mars and the rest of the solar system vanished, leaving her in the darkness again, alone except for a huge collection of boxes. Some were tiny, ornate coffers for holding jewelry; others were carefully worked wooden chests; still others were shipping crates. Rei saw her dream-self begin to open the boxes in great haste, obviously looking for something and just as obviously not finding it in any of the containers. The growing panic of her image began to affect Rei herself, and with each box that failed to yield the desired item—whatever it might be—she grew more frantic, certain that she was running out of time.

Finally, there were only four boxes left: a steel chest, a box which looked like a Rubix cube, another which was made out of some sort of smoked glass, and a looming, dirt-caked coffin. And though the need to find the object of her search was almost overwhelming, Rei hesitated.

Fire appeared above her, a flame which danced and crackled and gave strength and peace of mind. She couldn’t tell if this was the sacred flame or the Fire of Mars, but its presence was welcome, burning away the panic in her mind and leaving cool resolve behind. In a moment, she could...

The flame flickered. Rei stared at it in astonishment, and it flickered again. It flared up, then grew small. It was strange, it was almost like...

Rei froze. Like the fire was going OUT. Panic returned. Now she understood; the fire, whatever it was, was going out, and it needed more fuel to keep it burning. That was what she had been looking for.

Rei considered her choices. The glass box was far too small to hold anything that could be used to keep a fire going, and she shied away from the coffin’s rank air of decay. The patterned box, she saw after a moment’s inspection, really _was_ a Rubix cube, the only way to get the lid open being to solve the puzzle. And she didn’t have time for games.

That left the steel chest. The lid was rusted shut and took several moments to open, but once it was, carefully cut and stacked firewood was visible within. The dream-Rei lifted out a stick and thrust it into the fire, but the wood burned to ash instantly, hardly feeding the flame at all. She tried another stick, and again, it was consumed. This wasn’t working.

She looked at the remaining boxes. After a moment, she lifted the small glass case, thinking that if wood couldn’t keep the fire burning, maybe what she needed might fit in this small a container after all. The glass case opened easily, and tiny, sparkling gems poured out, falling up towards the guttering fire. The gems passed through the fire, and for a moment, it burned more steadily. But then it continued to shrink.

Rei looked at her last two choices. The puzzle box, then. Maybe she could figure it out in time.

But after several minutes, the box hadn’t opened, and the fire was almost gone. It seemed that the harder she tried to solve the puzzle, the more complicated it became. Weeping in frustration, the dream-Rei threw the puzzle box away into the darkness, and turned to the ominous bulk of the coffin. Its lid opened smoothly, silently—and Rei recoiled in horror as a bony, half-rotted hand emerged. She almost turned away completely, but the fire wavered again, barely any larger than a candle flame. Gathering her courage, she reached out for the withered, decaying hand, felt her flesh crawl in anticipation of cold sliminess. The rotted thing in the casket moved with surprising speed, holding a three-and-a-half fingered hand up in a gesture of denial, pointing at her with the handless stump of its other arm.

Just then, the fire went out. Terrified, the dream-Rei turned and ran for where she’d thrown the puzzle box. If she solved it in time, there just might be something inside to restart the fire.

She found the box, but realized that she was very cold all of a sudden. Hard to move, hard to think. The fire that had gone out had been part of her, inside her, and now there was nothing in its place except a sick emptiness. And the cold, spreading. She almost had the puzzle, she was certain, but her hands were numb with the cold, she couldn’t keep her head up or her eyes open, and what was the point anyway the fire was out and the box was so heavy just set it down for a minute so tired have to rest for a little while have to sleep...

When Rei fell asleep in the dream, she woke up in reality, drenched with sweat, short of breath, her heart pounding and her entire body shivering with the remembered chill of the dream. She had wanted very much to cry or scream or be sick, but managed to fight off all three urges. A quick glance at the clock had shown it to be only 1:49, far too early to get up, but after that awful dream, she knew sleep would not come easily.

So she sat there, in the darkness, listening to the whistle of the blizzard winds, the sheets pulled up around her as she tried every trick of meditation and relaxation at her disposal to dispel the fear. It was not easy; the old tale that, if you died in your dream, you died for real, kept creeping into her thoughts. Eventually, though, she fell asleep again, and did not dream.

Now that she was awake again, Rei thought that maybe dying might have been preferable. She usually slept soundly and woke only moderately grungy, but on the infrequent occasions when her sleep was interrupted for any extended period of time, she always felt awful the next day. It had been more than half a year since the last time, so Rei had forgotten what the experience was really like.

Her body, apparently, took that as a sign to re-educate her, and the headache—the equivalent of a roadcrew at work with jackhammers, just behind the bridge of your nose—was just part of the lesson. Every muscle in her body was stiff. Bones ached, joints creaked, and her mouth tasted as if something had crawled in and died. The fact that her eyes were gummed up to the point where she could barely see was actually a blessing, because it prevented her from seeing the wreck that had been her hair.

She felt much better after soaking in the tub. Not for the first time, Rei was glad that her tradition-obsessed grandfather had had the good sense to let modern convenience win out over ‘the way things used to be.’ No doubt heating up the water before a bath was an excellent means of building discipline, but there were other, often equally smelly ways of doing that—and beloved grandfather or not, Rei probably would have strangled the old man if he’d insisted she haul buckets of water around every time she wanted to clean herself up. Especially in this kind of weather. Or in this kind of grand mal funk.

There was a noise at the door. “Rei-chan?”

“What is it, Yuuichirou?”

“The morning report on the radio says the roads are closed, so classes are canceled. I thought you’d want to know.”

She could almost have kissed him for that. “Thank you.” The faint shadow of Yuuichirou’s presence seemed to nod before turning and walking away. Rei leaned back in the tub with a contented sigh, profoundly relieved that she wouldn’t have to face a day at school after a night like that—and profoundly grateful that she now had the time to clean up properly.

Rei knew that she’d have to call the others—dismissing dreams of this sort wasn’t just dangerous, it was stupid—and she knew that they’d probably end up having a meeting before the day was out. That meant she was going to have to get out there and face the snow, the wind, and most likely Usagi’s whining as well.

*But not right now,* she thought. Right now, she was just going to sit here, close her eyes, soak up the heat and the water in equal measures, and relax.

There are worse ways to spend a morning.

# 

Ami woke up to the droning buzz of an unidentifiable electric device. Glancing at the clock and adding the subject ‘Use of Kitchen Appliances Before 7:30’ to her growing list of Things To Have A Talk About With Makoto, she got up and headed for the door.

The only kitchen appliance currently in use turned out to be the teapot; the buzz was actually coming from the radio. Makoto was leaning over the counter in the kitchen, reaching for a cup from a higher shelf and coming dangerously close to falling out of her loosely-gathered emerald green housecoat.

That was another little item on Ami’s list. Not the housecoat itself, by any means—green was a very good color on Makoto—but the fact that Makoto wasn’t wearing very much else underneath it.

Ami had no real personal objections to her friend’s habit of sleeping in the almost—or entirely—nude; she had pajamas that she wore at sleepovers, but if it suited Makoto not to wear them at home, that was her business. Considering that the temperature in her apartment was kept fairly high to protect the plants, her choice of sleepware—or the lack thereof—made a certain kind of sense. It was warm enough in here at night that Ami’d had to switch to the lighter blue pajamas she had on now, instead of the heavier flannels she usually favored during the winter months.

The problem was that Makoto was one of those people who was a little foggy in the mornings, and until she finished waking up, she tended to be a bit... well, careless. With a shudder, Ami remembered last Saturday, when the paperboy came by to collect the monthly delivery charge. Oh, Makoto _might_ have remembered to close her housecoat in time on her own, but she’d been about four steps away from the door when Ami intercepted her.

Greeting the world in your birthday suit was probably a good way to make friends, but there was a time and a place for everything, and the front door at eight in the morning was NOT one of them!

*Stop it,* she told herself. *So Mako-chan has a different... fashion sense than you do; so what? It doesn’t concern you.*

*It does if Ryo-kun happens to be the one at the door,* she shot back. *He’ll be back in town before long, and he likes to surprise me by stopping by unannounced; do I really want to run the risk of him getting _that_ kind of surprise in return?*

Her other side thought about that, about Makoto, her friend—with a body that no typical teenaged human male could fail to notice unless he was blind and three days dead—and conceded the point.

“Good morning, Ami-chan,” Makoto greeted her, not turning around. “I’m making some hot chocolate; did you want any?”

“That sounds good,” Ami agreed, trying to think of a polite way to tell Makoto to go put some actual clothes on, “but shouldn’t we be getting ready for school about now?”

“Not today,” Makoto replied, shaking her head and setting two cups on the counter. “I haven’t heard anything on the radio yet, but I took a look outside, and the snow’s piled up about two feet deep in most places; then there’s the drifts. And it’s _still_ coming down.” She chuckled, adding, “You can brave that if you want, but I plan on kicking back and watching some TV.”

Ami looked at her like she was crazy, then looked into the living room, and beyond that to the sliding glass doors, and the snowbound balcony beyond them. “That’s impossible!”

“What? Watching TV on a snow day? Fairly common, I’d think.”

“No, no, no. Not that—that!” Ami pointed towards the swirling winter wasteland.

Makoto looked. “I see snow, ice, and more snow. What’s impossible about that?” She turned back to Ami, frowning. “You’re not coming down with the flu or something, are you? I could make some chicken soup if...”

“Makoto, will you be quiet for a second and listen?” Ami took a deep breath. “You told me once that you can tell when there’s a thunderstorm coming, right?”

“Sure. There’s a feeling in the air, sort of like...”

Ami interrupted her again. “Would it surprise you to learn that _I_ can tell when there’s going to be rain, snow, or hail?”

“Not really. Michiru and I talked about something like this while we were sneaking around the airport.”

“Good. Then you’d accept that I have a sixth sense for weather, and that any sort of precipitation always sets it off?”

“Sure.”

“Then why isn’t it working now?” Ami nodded towards the balcony. “Why does this weather sense tell me that _that_ isn’t happening?”

“You forgot to pay the bill?” Makoto joked feebly, waving away the resulting glare. “I know, I know, it’s not funny. I’m _tired,_ Ami-chan; mornings just aren’t my thing.”

“Then I suggest you go have a shower and finish waking up,” Ami told her curtly. “This weather isn’t natural, which means that someone or something created it—and _that_ could mean serious trouble for us.”

“All right,” Makoto sighed. “Are you going to call the others?”

“No. I want to get some readings on this blizzard first and see if I can pin down the source, or at least get an idea of what it might be. And besides,” Ami added, “Usagi-chan’s probably not even out of bed yet. Depending on what I find or don’t find, we may have to meet, and it’s going to take some pretty solid evidence to get anybody to go out in this.” Ami looked at the raging, impossible storm and shook her head. “Only a maniac would go outside on a day like this without a really good reason.”

“You can say that again,” Makoto said, on her way to the washroom. She stopped short as something occurred to her. “What do you suppose Mina-chan’s up to right now?”

# 

“I LOVE winter!” Minako squealed, face pressed to the breath-frosted pane of her bedroom window. “Just look at all the snow! Isn’t it beautiful, Artemis?”

“I suppose,” the cat said groggily, curled up in the warmth of the bed. Artemis wasn’t much better in the mornings than Makoto. “If you’re into Ice Ages,” he added, yawning.

“Yeah!” Minako agreed enthusiastically, completely missing her feline companion’s sleepy sarcasm. “I can hardly wait to get out there!”

Artemis’ ears stood up straight, and his eyes went wide, all trace of the morning blahs gone.

*Oh no.*

# 

The master bedroom was quiet. Haruka had gotten up briefly perhaps two hours before and returned shortly thereafter, saying something about acts of God, being buried alive, and complaining sourly about having various portions of her anatomy frozen. Something about that particular complaint had nagged at Michiru but, since she was only half-awake, it failed to get any response. The bit about being snowed under had been clearly received, though, and she decided it gave her plenty of time to do something to put a stop to Haruka’s grumblings.

Haruka had been right about her hands being frozen—and they were _still_ cold. Michiru couldn’t figure out how that was possible, seeing as how the rest of the body they were attached to was so much warmer now. And quieter.

The tranquillity was not to last.

“YEEEE-HAAAH!”

A black-haired cannonball exploded into the middle of the bed. Since it was a waterbed, the whole thing shifted away from the point of impact in rippling waves that would have woken Haruka up even if the pre-impact howl and the sensation of having about fifty or so kilos of childish enthusiasm dropped on her hadn’t.

Not for the first time, Michiru wondered how Hotaru managed to cover the distance from the door to the bed without either of them ever seeing or hearing her until after the fact.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

“We’re up,” Haruka grumbled, trying to dredge up enough blankets for the sake of modesty—and warmth. *This big house doesn’t hold heat very well,* she thought absently, looking around for her housecoat, which hung within plain sight on the nearest bedpost.

“We’ve talked about this,” Michiru said, as sternly as she could manage— which wasn’t very, since the blankets were the only thing she could even loosely be considered to be wearing. “You’re supposed to knock first.”

“Oh, come off it, Michiru-mama.” Hotaru’s voice was suddenly a lot older than she seemed, her smile far too knowing for the almost-child she appeared to be. “Do you _still_ think I don’t know what goes on in here? You need thicker walls.”

In the middle of reaching for her housecoat, Haruka fell out of the bed with a startled exclamation. Her head popped back up over the side a moment later, red-faced, with eyes nearly as wild as her hair.

“Another parental illusion shattered,” Hotaru observed in a mockingly regretful tone.

“Stop that,” Michiru admonished the younger girl, trying not to smile. “Now, what was so important that you had to run in here shouting about it at the top of your lungs?” *Come to think of it,* she added mentally, glancing at the bedside clock and seeing that it was closer to ten than it was to nine, *shouldn’t she be in school right now?*

“Have you taken a look out the window at all today?” Hotaru looked consideringly at the two of them. “On second thought, forget I asked that.” While her foster-family were still trying to decide whether to be embarrassed or irritated, Hotaru sprang off the bed, raced over to the bedroom’s huge window, and hauled back the drapes. “Take a look!”

Michiru looked. She stared, actually.

“Something wrong?” Hotaru asked.

“HOW DID _THAT_ GET THERE?” Michiru shouted, pointing at the snow. Haruka and Hotaru blinked, looked out the window, traded glances, and then looked back at Michiru.

“Um... it fell?” Hotaru supplied helpfully.

“I told you earlier it’d snowed,” Haruka added, pulling her housecoat shut and getting to her feet. “Weren’t you listening?”

A faintly growling sort of response issued from the bundle of blankets that was making its way to the bathroom. Haruka and Hotaru looked at each other again before Haruka followed after the bundle.

“Is there a prob...” Haruka was cut off by the larger part of the blankets coming back at her in a projectile mass, right before the door closed in her face, knocking her to the floor as, behind her, Hotaru hooted with laughter. After pulling free of the tangled mess of fabric, Haruka knocked hesitantly on the door. “Michiru? Is everything all right?”

“No, everything is NOT all right!” Michiru’s voice was hardly muffled by the door. And it was a pretty substantial door. “Call the others and ask them if they’ve noticed this isn’t a natural storm, tell them to get their collective act together, and then get dressed!”

“The driveway’s snowed in,” Haruka said. “And I don’t think the streets can be much better.”

“Then we’ll walk!” The blast of the shower obliterated anything else that might have been said.

Hotaru came up next to Haruka. “Did I hear that right?”

“I think they heard it on Kyushu.”

“She’s not _actually_ going to make us go out in this kind of weather, is she?”

Haruka’s wry, resigned look was all the answer Hotaru needed. Sighing, she went back to her room, her own shower; Haruka picked up the discarded sheets and put them back on the bed before heading for her own room.

“And this was looking like such a _nice_ day,” she complained.

Outside, the wind blew a deep, roof-rattling note of sympathetic agreement before going back to its work. The wind was very easy to satisfy. Give it a few hours in which to blow at full strength, and it called the day a good one.

This was a very good day, indeed.

# 

“You call this a _minor_ storm?”

Archon’s image was smiling faintly as his student let the drapes fall back into place, closing off the view of the storm. Inwardly, she sighed; no matter where she went during these sessions, the hologram of her distant tutor was always facing her when she turned around.

“It is not quite so impressive as you think,” the black-eyed image told her. “When employed to its utmost, weather magic is one of the most potent and complex of all forms of spellcraft. It takes a truly masterful mage to be able to call down whirlwinds and thunderstorms with which to destroy his enemies, without being caught up in the destructive force of his own spell.”

“So I’m not ready to send anyone to Oz,” the student said, enjoying a brief moment of satisfaction at the obvious confusion on her master’s face. Modern pop culture and slang, she had discovered, always did that to Archon. At least the first time she used a given phrase; by their next lesson, he always seemed to have found out what the various words meant. Learning Atlantean, she had discovered, was quite a bit more difficult; the fact that there were three main languages didn’t help. “I called up this storm, didn’t I?”

“Yes and no. You called the clouds, but the wind was already here. And you are, I must remind you, practicing your spells above the largest concentration of magical force on Earth. The overabundance of local mana energy here makes even complicated castings far easier than they would be elsewhere. To be a true wizard, you must be able to bend the forces around you to your will, to call up the necessary power from anywhere on Earth—or beyond—not just here, where the very air is all but crackling with magical energy.” Archon smiled, the smile of a master to a student. “When you gain the control to harness wind on the other side of the world while you stand in an area almost dead to magic—as I did to help you create this storm—then, I think, you can call yourself a wizard. Of weather, at least.”

“YOU did this? ALL this? Just to teach me a lesson?”

“Hardly.” Archon’s image looked at the window as an unseen force drew the drapes aside. “There is something in this city that I do not understand, a kind of magic even I am unfamiliar with. Three times now, it has interfered with plans laid both by myself and by my masters, and three times, it has cost us valuable time and resources. We have set eyes to watching this city, laid traps to test our unseen enemy until we fully know their capabilities and their purpose. Now that those traps are nearing readiness, all that is required to spring them is bait. Hence, the storm. Created by magic and sustained by magic, it will draw the notice of any who work magic, and its dangerous nature will surely compel our foe to stop it. That can only be done at its center, and with the center affixed in an area we can observe, we will at last begin to understand our enemy. And when we understand them, we will crush them.”

“That might be more difficult than you think,” the girl said.

“You still believe that this unseen force is connected to your ‘Senshi?’”

“It fits with everything I’ve heard about them.”

Archon shook his head. “There were Senshi in the great age of Atlantis, my student, and their powers were no greater than those of any competent wizard— and nothing at all beside the might of a true archmage. Your own powers already far exceed those of all but two Senshi I have ever known, and if those two or any other Senshi were moving against us, I would know it. I know the magic of a Senshi better than any now living, save only one—and she remembers nothing of what she knows.”

“Who?”

“A traitor,” Archon said, sounding almost sad. “A traitor to her friends and family, to all her people: her ancestors, whose struggles and accomplishments she destroyed; her contemporaries, whose world she left open to its enemies, to be pulled down and forgotten; to any of her descendants now living, who walk upon a primitive world, at the mercy of uncaring nature, when they could have ruled the stars.” Archon sighed, his strange eyes seeing something in the distant past before they returned to the here-and-now. “Enough. You will learn about this and more when you are ready to be presented to the court of Atlantis as an accomplished wizard. And you are still a long way from being ready for that.”

The girl nodded and took hold of a fine silver chain about her neck, drawing forth a small, tear-shaped translucent crystal. With a single word—a word she now understood to be the Atlantean form of ‘activate’—she caused the pendant to float in the air, slowly turning.

When she had first shown this little stone to Archon, he’d called it a memory crystal, a device invented by Atlantean wizards centuries before even his time, for the purpose of storing information with far greater precision and durability than paper could provide. This one had been created about twenty-two hundred years ago, by a wizard calling himself Leoric, for the purpose of storing spells, rites, and other magical lore.

Archon knew of him, a well-loved master wizard in the days when he himself was just beginning to study magic, and remembered that the man had been killed in a duel with three rival wizards; there had been some story of a plot against the crown which Leoric uncovered, but which did not end with the three treasonous mages that he took with him into death. The other conspirators, if any existed, were never discovered, but after two of Leoric’s family had mysteriously died, the rest fled the island nation in fear, vanishing into the wide world with many of Leoric’s possessions. Rumors circulated for years afterwards that the family were merely in hiding, hoping to build their strength and someday return to unmask the ones who had killed their patriarch.

But Atlantis had fallen, and the world had changed. Archon suspected that the memory crystal had become an heirloom of the family, passed down through generations who gradually forgot much of its power and meaning, until it came into the hands of the student he was teaching now.

The girl had known none of that; all she knew was that the pendant had been a gift from her great-grandmother, given to her on her tenth birthday along with several books and a lengthy discourse on family history. Other people all thought her great-grandmother was a little crazy, but she’d always looked up to the old woman, who, even bedridden with age and illness at 95, had enough strength of will to make the other members of her family do what she asked, when she asked, no matter how ‘crazy’ it sounded. And not just strength of will, as a little ten-year-old girl had discovered.

“We’re not like other people,” Great-Granny had said as they sat together in her huge, comfortable bed. “Our family has old blood, older and mightier than any king or queen left on this world. A very long time ago, our ancestors ruled this world and traveled to many others. Their empire is gone, and only a half-remembered legend of it remains, but the core of their power, their magic, is still here. It’s our birthright.”

“Does magic really exist, Great-Granny? Mother doesn’t believe in it.”

“No, she doesn’t, does she?” Great-Granny had sighed. “When your grandmother and her sisters—my daughters—were young, I watched them, waited to see if any of them were strong enough, if they _believed_ enough for me to share the magic with. But they weren’t strong enough, or didn’t believe enough, so I kept the magic to myself and waited for their daughters to be born. They all disappointed me until your mother was born; from the start, I knew she had the strength. But she was her mother’s daughter, too, intelligent and practical to a fault; she didn’t believe in magic. So I waited again, to see what kind of man she’d marry, whether or not there was a chance that any of their children would turn out right.” Great-Granny had looked at her. “Your mother doesn’t believe in magic, child, but what about your father? What does he say when you ask him about magic?”

“Daddy? He always says funny things.” She’d scrunched up her face in an attempt to get her father’s words right from memory. “Daddy always tells me to look around, that even if I don’t see dragons or unicorns or flying people, magic’s all around me. When flowers bloom, when children laugh, when you make a friend, when the sun comes up in the morning; he says it’s magic enough for him.”

“He’s a very wise man,” Great-Granny said, with a strange look of remembered fear her granddaughter hadn’t understood. What could possibly scare Great-Granny?

“But none of those things are magic,” she’d protested. “I heard in school that the sun comes up because the Earth goes around it and turns while it does, and that’s why we have night, because we’re not always facing the sun. Flowers bloom because they’re supposed to bloom, and I laugh when I think something’s funny. None of it is magic.”

“Better to say that they aren’t _caused_ by magic,” Great-Granny told her. “At least, not any kind of magic people can use. But that doesn’t mean that they stop _being_ magic, you understand?”

“I think so.”

Great-Granny had hugged her. “I think you do, too. I always knew you’d be the one; you’ve got your mother’s mind, but you use it like your father uses his, and you’re brave enough to look for things he can’t or won’t see. Watch closely; I’ll show you a little magic.” And she’d made one of her books get up and fly around the room by itself, circling over and around them and turning end-for-end to settle in an amazed little girl’s hands. “That’s about all the magic I can do these days,” Great-Granny said, coughing. “I used to be able to do all kinds of things, but it’s gotten harder as I’ve gotten older. I expect the day I die, I either won’t be able to use any magic at all, or I’ll die in the attempt.”

“Great-Granny, you can’t die! You’re my only friend!”

“Hush, child. I can die, and one of these days, I will die; not even magic can change that. Not now, at least.” She sighed. “I’d be surprised if I make it to next spring.”

*So soon?* “But... but who’ll teach me?”

“My books will.” Great-Granny waved one hand, taking in the book in the child’s hands and a dozen others like it, almost all of them too big for her to carry any more than two or maybe three at a time. Then she’d taken off the little pendant she always wore, the crystal on a chain no one had ever seen her without. “And so will this. It’s the only thing we have left of what we used to be, and it’s where everything in these books came from. You could say that the books are just an introduction to what’s inside that little stone.”

Opening the first book, the smallest of the lot, the little girl had found weird, nonsense-looking words in her great-grandmother’s writing. “But I can’t read this!”

“It’s easy, once you know how. The words are all in that little crystal, but they’re written differently, and things can go wrong if you say them wrong, so I translated as many of them as I could. You say these words like they’re written, see? I’ll show you.” Great-Granny took the book in one hand, her great- grandchild in the other, and looked at the pile of books. “You know, those books are awfully heavy. Why don’t we move them to your room in your house, so your mother doesn’t know?” Great-Granny turned a few pages, then read some of the words. One of the books immediately vanished. She made three more disappear, then had her granddaughter try.

She got it on the first try. “Did it work? Did I do it right?”

“You did it _exactly_ right,” Great-Granny said, hugging her. “See how easy it is? Try it with the rest.”

She’d done that, and it got easier each time. Finally, all the books except the first were gone. Great-Granny took it, repeated the funny words, and sent it to join the rest.

“That was fun!”

“I knew I was right about you,” Great-Granny said. “It took me three months of practice to get that spell right. If you work hard, you’ll be even better than I was.”

“I’ll be the best!”

“Now, child, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You have to be careful about what you decide to do with magic. If you use it right, and if you’re strong enough, magic can give you almost anything you want or need. But you have to give back something to the magic, too. Sometimes all you have to do is give up a little time so you can study, but other times, using the magic may hurt you. You remember when you broke your arm?”

She’d nodded; it had hurt worse than anything.

“Sometimes the magic will hurt just as much. Sometimes it can hurt even more, but in different ways. If you’re really going to use the magic, if you’re _really_ going to be the best, you have to be ready for the pain. If you can do something or get something by yourself, you probably should, even if the magic seems easier. Use your mind, think and learn. You make yourself stronger that way, see? You still get what you want, you learn things about the world, and you save the magic for when you really need it. Understand?”

“Yes. I promise, Great-Granny. I’ll make you proud of me.”

“I already am, child.”

Great-Granny had died in her sleep that night. A few days later, at the funeral, everyone had been surprised when her favorite grandchild hadn’t cried; Mother and Father had worried about her for a long time. They didn’t know—nobody did—about the books; Great-Granny had written all of them, and that meant they were part of her, still here, still with her great-granddaughter even when the rest of her was gone.

She remembered her promise and studied, both in Great-Granny’s books and at school, and made herself as strong as she could be, as smart as she could be. Smarter and stronger and _better_ than anyone else, and learning a little more each day. She was going to show everyone, to be the best in school, and everything after that.

But then she realized that, as good as she was, everybody was talking about someone else, about HER, about how special SHE was, how clever SHE was, how pretty, how SHE’d really make something of HERself someday. She’d tried and tried and tried, but always come out second best to HER. She’d even tried to use magic to fix things, but found, to her utter dismay, that none of the spells in Great-Granny’s books seemed to work against HER.

Then her parents had decided to move, and SHE was gone. Everyone at the new school talked about her, was impressed by her, and even her magic was working like it should—but knowing that SHE was still out there, that she was still only second best to HER, made it all empty. She knew, or came to know, that someday they’d meet again, so she went at her studies for all she was worth, learning everything she could, finding out how to understand the words in the crystal, learning spells even Great-Granny hadn’t known, always getting ready to face HER again.

Months back, she’d used a spell to find HER, to gather whatever information she could. It was sickening; everyone was still talking about HER, acting like SHE was some sort of queen or goddess or miracle made flesh. And now, she had learned, SHE had friends just like HER, and everyone talked about THEM, how special THEY were...

Without ever meeting THEM, she hated THEM.

It had taken a little bit of doing, but she’d convinced her parents to transfer her to another school, a school with a very good reputation—even better, to her mind, because it was a school near where SHE lived, where THEY lived, and was exactly the kind of school SHE would have gone to. The perfect place to take back everything SHE had taken from her, by taking everything SHE had now. Everything THEY had.

Her first attempt had failed miserably; whatever had made her magic go wrong before was still there. It had to be something about HER, because she knew her control of the magic was much too good to be defeated so easily. After several tests to confirm that and find the limits of whatever strange protection SHE had, she decided to use one of her most dangerous spells, confident that it would work, that the creature the spell called would be able to do what she could not, to drag HER down, to drag all of THEM down and ruin THEM.

And she’d summoned Archon instead. At first, that had seemed to be another failure, but now she knew it had been a success, of sorts. She was learning things from the black-eyed archmage that she’d only dared to dream possible before, was getting stronger all the time. And when the day she now dreamed of finally arrived, when Archon confirmed that she was indeed ready...

But that day was not today. Today was a day for learning.

# 

Proteus watched the lesson continue, its tiny sensory extension carefully monitoring and recording every word and gesture made by the two figures, transmitting that information through a mile-wide network of concealed cables of some weird, ropy substance that was almost, but not quite, fungus.

Elsewhere, in a different part of that ever-growing network, another part of Proteus watched with sensory nodes that saw far more than any human eyes as the heart of the spell-conjured storm continued to swirl with magical force. This part of the entity also sent everything it observed back into the vast network, sharing the information with all parts of Proteus.

At the center of the web, in the walls and under the floors of the telecommunications center, the living core of Proteus, the closest thing it possessed to a heart or a brain, received information from these two sources and dozens more like them, processing it all at tremendous speed. Learning. Understanding.

From its enslaved minds and from countless absorbed records, Proteus had learned that most humans regarded magic and science as two entirely separate forces, two things with no common ground, no way to coexist. The very existence of the memory crystal disproved this; magic had created it, but Proteus, observing the patterns of its molecular and atomic and even subatomic makeup, suspected that science could duplicate it. And as Proteus watched the seemingly chaotic ebb and flow of the storm-shaping magic, it began to believe the same thing; magic did this, but science could also do this.

It was, Proteus was beginning to think—to believe?—all a matter of energy. Positive and negative and neutral energy, hot and cold and mild, light and dark and shadow; whether invoked by magic or harnessed according to the laws of science, energy was at the center of it all. Once the energy was tapped, the _how_ of its control made very little difference. That the control existed at all was enough. And there was, as Archon had told his student, energy almost beyond measure in this place.

Others, Proteus had learned, had come to seize this power before. Traces of their presence, echoes of dark energy scattered over the city, confirmed the unclear reports of the humans, told Proteus that others like the master and Archon—and itself—had been here before, seeking the power of this place.

Obviously, they had failed. *Reason enough for caution. Reason enough to wait, until I know more, until I understand better, before acting.*

Based on its study of the human records, of the minds of its slaves, and a careful, methodical calculation of probabilities, Proteus concluded with a high degree of certainty that Archon’s student had made the correct analysis, that these mysterious ‘Senshi’ were in some manner connected to the destroyer-force, regardless of what Archon believed. Interesting, how an ordinary human mind had reached the same conclusion as Proteus’ own, made the same connection, and yet done it with such limited information to draw upon. Intuition, that was the word. It was a trait Proteus did not possess. At least, not yet.

It was not the only one. There were many things about humans Proteus still found incomprehensible, things in how they thought or did not think, in how they felt or did not feel, which mere observation and analysis seemed unable to explain. In spite of their many shortcomings, Proteus was beginning to develop a curious feeling towards humans, something that its rational thought pattern could not identify, but which the captured minds suggested might be respect.

As with the matter of energy, this would require more thought.

# 

Other than Usagi, the members of the Tsukino household were typically up and around well in advance of eight in the morning. Not today, however.

After fixing a short, high-energy breakfast consisting primarily of spiced omelettes, honeyed rice, and a few of those little flat sausages for herself and Setsuna—and a fresh can of tuna cat food for Luna—Ikuko had put her guest to work, helping out with the dishes.

As Usagi could attest, Ikuko was a firm believer in chores, but to tell the truth, Setsuna didn’t mind. These people had taken her in without cause or complaint, and the least she could do in return was to dry a few dishes. She even found something strangely comforting in the almost mindless routine of sweeping up with broom and dustpan, or scrubbing flecks of food from a plate.

It was just that she didn’t see how Ikuko had any real _need_ for the extra help. The older woman was the ultimate housewife, equal parts waiter, cook, secretary, janitor, and maid, and all mother—and it showed.

In the midst of drying one plate, Ikuko had the phone caught between her head and shoulder, informing someone named Yoruno in a sweet, overwhelming sort of voice that Kenji wouldn’t be in for work today, what with all the snow, and asking how was Neiko, and how had Masada done on that last report card, and so on. That done, Ikuko set down the plate and briefly disappeared upstairs to inform her family that there would be neither school nor work today, and that they might as well go back to sleep. In Usagi’s case, she didn’t even have to do that much, and instead just switched off the alarm—and the second alarm—pulled the blankets up a little better, kissed her daughter’s forehead, and quietly left the room.

With no urgent need to be anywhere, it was almost nine-thirty before any signs of life manifested themselves upstairs, a slightly bleary-eyed ChibiUsa wandering downstairs to the first faint sounds and smells of sizzling bacon and cooking pancakes as Setsuna’s re-education in the finer arts of cooking continued. Kenji and Shingo followed close behind, and Usagi brought up the rear at about ten. Strangely, of all the late risers, it was Usagi who showed the least signs of having overslept. In a twisted sort of way, that made sense.

Most of the late breakfast had been packed away by the time the phone rang. Shingo and ChibiUsa were fighting over the last pancake while Usagi stole a few pieces of bacon from both of them; Kenji had withdrawn to the living room some time before, to read the newspaper in peace; Ikuko was busy attending to the dishes, preparing another round of toast, and refereeing the battle between her son and ‘niece,’ to say nothing of the ruckus that ensued when Usagi’s thievery was discovered; and Luna couldn’t have picked up the phone anyway.

So Setsuna lifted the receiver, shut out the steadily increasing sounds of squealing—Usagi was very ticklish—and greeted the caller.

“Tsukino residence; can I help you?”

“Setsuna?” Haruka’s voice. “Is that you?”

“I’ve asked myself that question a number of times.”

There was a pause. “There’s a reason I’m not taking that morning Philosophy course at the university,” Haruka muttered, half to Setsuna, half to herself. “Look, could you get Usagi? Something strange is going on. I think.”

“You think?”

“Michiru’s been going nuts for the last half hour or so, saying that this weather we’re having isn’t natural. Something about the water being out of place, I think she said.” Haruka paused again. “I’m starting to understand what she means. Something in the air, the wind... it just feels _wrong_ somehow. It’s like...”

BEEEEP!

“Hang on a second,” Setsuna apologized, putting Haruka on hold and switching to the incoming call. “Tsukino residence.”

“Setsuna?” Ami, this time.

“Hello, Ami-chan. By any chance, are you calling to tell me that this blizzard isn’t supposed to be here?”

Another pause, followed by a curious, “How did you know?”

“Haruka’s on the other line, and she...”

BEEEEP!

“Excuse me a moment,” Setsuna said, again switching lines. “Hello?”

“Hello, Setsuna.” Rei.

*Why does that not surprise me?* Setsuna thought. “Hello, Rei. Yes, I know that the blizzard’s not of natural origins.”

Yet another pause. This time, the reply was confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, sorry. I just thought... could you hold on for just a second? Thanks.” Setsuna held the receiver to her shoulder while she looked at the buttons, trying to remember which one enabled the ‘conference call’ function. Usagi had shown it to her the first day, and it was... that one. “Is everyone still there?” Three voices answered yes. “Good. Now would you all just hold on for one more second?” Setsuna glanced at the table. “Usagi-chan? It’s for you.”

In the middle of fending off two irritated younger relatives, Usagi smiled gratefully and rushed over to the safety of the phonecall. “Thanks, Setsuna. Hello?”

“Hello, Usagi-chan,” Ami said. “We’ve got a problem.” She quickly explained about the storm, with Haruka making several sounds of agreement; Rei remained quiet. “I’ve been trying to pin down the source of the disturbance for the last two hours,” Ami continued, “and I think I’ve got the location, but when I tried to identify the type of energy involved, my computer shut down.”

Usagi blinked. “It shut down.”

“Three times,” Ami confirmed. “It starts up again with no problems, and it traces the disturbance, but each time I tell it to analyze the thing, I get a message in some kind of language I can’t read. I think it’s some sort of request for password identification, because about thirty seconds afterwards, the system shuts itself off.”

“Has it ever done that to you before?” Rei asked.

“Not once.” Ami sounded worried, and the others could understand why. She’d been using that little blue computer for so long, under so many dangerous or extreme circumstances, that it had become far more than just a tool; as much as the fire at Hikawa was a part of Rei or the Space Sword a part of Haruka, so too was the computer to Ami. The thought that it might be keeping something from her, that it might not _trust_ her enough to tell her something, was unsettling. “Usagi, I really need to talk to Luna about this.”

“No argument there, but have you looked outside? I haven’t seen this much snow since we went up to the D-Point; Luna’d never make it all the way to Mako-chan’s by herself.” Usagi thought for a minute, looked around to make sure nobody was paying too much attention, then lowered her voice before continuing. “Ami, if you transformed, do you think you could get over here?”

“Easily.”

“And of the three of you, who’s closest to this disturbance you mentioned?”

“I am,” Ami replied. “It’s about ten blocks from Mako-chan’s apartment.”

“Okay. You get down here as fast as you can, and Luna and I’ll meet you on the upstairs balcony; remember, I’m in a different room. Haruka, Rei, get over to Mako-chan’s and wait there until Ami-chan gets back so you can move in on this thing.”

“Michiru’s not going to like this,” Haruka predicted gloomily.

“She doesn’t have to like it as long as she does it,” Usagi said flatly. “And somebody should try to get in touch with Mina-chan and let her know what’s going on.”

“I’ll get Mako-chan to do that before I leave,” Ami promised. “See you in a few.”

“G’bye.” Usagi hung up the phone.

“Who was that, dear?”

“Hmm? Oh, just Ami-chan.” Usagi made up a story on the spot. “She’s helping me with some things in history class by downloading stuff off the ’net, but her computer blew a fuse on her or something and lost most of it. She’s a little upset about that, but she called to let me know she might be a bit late with the study aids.” Usagi stretched and yawned theatrically, noting that both Luna and ChibiUsa had started paying attention when she mentioned Ami’s ‘computer problems.’ “I think I’m going to go back to bed for a while. Wake me up if it looks like I’m going to sleep through lunch, okay, Mom?”

“Okay, dear.”

Usagi started towards the stairs. “Coming, Luna?”

“Meow.” Luna crossed the kitchen and followed Usagi upstairs, keeping up the ordinary cat act until they were out of earshot, at which point she looked up. “What’s going on, Usagi?”

“Something strange is happening to Mercury’s computer, so she’s coming over to talk to you about it.”

“Did she say what was wrong?”

“This blizzard isn’t a natural event,” Usagi explained. “Ami-chan, Michiru, and Haruka can all notice something wrong with it, like it shouldn’t be here. Ami was able to find out the location of whatever’s causing it, but every time she tries to identify it, her computer locks her out and then shuts itself down.”

“I don’t like where this is headed,” Luna said as they entered the bedroom.

“You’re not the only one,” Usagi noted, closing the door behind them. They sat on the bed and waited for several minutes until a faint knock came from the glass door; Usagi pulled back the curtains and found Mercury’s slightly snow-frosted self waiting on the balcony. *Funny,* Usagi thought. *Ice and snow don’t look all that bad on her. Sort of brings out the blue in the uniform.*

“What a day,” Mercury said, brushing snow off herself but otherwise not looking at all like someone who’d just run halfway across town in the middle of a blizzard. “Sorry about the mess.”

“I took precautions,” Usagi said, handing Mercury a towel and pointing at the other one under her boots. “The rest’ll evaporate, won’t it?”

“What’s wrong with your computer?” Luna asked.

“Take a look for yourself.” Mercury sat down on the floor next to the bed, took out her computer, entered a few commands, then held it up so Luna could see the result. Usagi peeked over their combined shoulders to see what all the fuss was about.

The computer’s tiny screen showed a map of part of Tokyo, with weird lines superimposed over it in a sort of spiraling pattern. The spiral was centered over a small flashing block, and when Mercury pressed another button, the computer began a familiar series of beeps as it started to analyze whatever was in the red area.

The device made a sudden whirring noise as all functions displayed on its screen came to an abrupt halt. The screen went blurry as the map and the spiral were replaced by several lines of odd silvery symbols on a black background. The only symbol Usagi recognized was the one at the bottom, the same upturned crescent they had all long since come to associate with the Moon Kingdom, but there was something uncannily familiar about the entire sequence of characters.

Luna hissed in amazement. “The Silver Script!”

“The what?” Usagi and Mercury asked together.

“The Silver Script,” Luna repeated. “It was the major form of writing used on the Moon Kingdom, and most of the other worlds adopted it during the Silver Millennium for use in administrative records and diplomatic dispatches. I haven’t seen it in...”

“Never mind that,” Usagi interrupted. “Can you _read_ it?”

Luna looked slightly annoyed. “Of course I can. So could you, if you’d just stop and think for a minute. ‘Security lockout,’” Luna began to read, her eyebrows rising as she continued. “‘By Royal Decree, access to the following information is restricted exclusively to members of the Silver Council, Eclipse-level authorization. Identity verification required for further access. Enter password.’” Luna sat back on her haunches as the screen went dark. “Oh my.”

“That was about as clear as mud,” Usagi grumbled. “What was it talking about, Luna?”

“The Silver Council is, or rather, _was_ the absolute upper level of authority during the Silver Millennium,” Luna explained. “It was made up of the rulers of the various planets and a few of their chosen champions, with the Queen of the Moon as the council’s head. They dealt exclusively with matters that affected all the planets, all the races.”

“Then you must know the password, right? You and Artemis _were_ Queen Serenity’s advisors, after all.”

Luna shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mercury, but I don’t know the password. Artemis and I advised Serenity in her capacity as Queen of the Moon and oversaw the education of the children of the Royal Court, but we weren’t part of the Silver Council.”

“Maybe we could guess the password?” Usagi suggested.

“Absolutely not!” Luna snapped. “First of all, the password could be absolutely anything, and we don’t have the time to sit around trying to guess it. Secondly, we’d only get one chance to get in, and the next step in verification would be a retinal scan. And since every last member of the Silver Council has been dead for over a thousand years...”

“What about us?”

Luna shook her head. “Wouldn’t work. None of you were old enough back then to have been part of the Council, and even if you had been, you don’t have the same eyes anymore. Besides, not many Senshi were full members of the Council. Certainly not up to the Eclipse level.”

“Why not?”

“Because they were _soldiers,_ Usagi,” Luna said, exasperated. “The Senshi were the bodyguards and personal agents of the Royal Family, so they could end up almost anywhere in the system—or even outside it—on short notice, and even during the Silver Millennium, a lot of those places weren’t safe. The Council simply couldn’t risk having someone with full security clearance being captured or turned against them.”

“Oh. So where does this leave us?”

Luna glanced out the window. “I think the best we can do is for Artemis and I to go with the girls when they investigate whatever’s going on out there. There’s a chance that we _might_ be able to tell what it is.” She looked at the snow again and shuddered. “This is not going to be pleasant.”

Mercury sighed, then nodded. “I was afraid this might happen, so I brought something along.” She put her computer away, placing it into whatever separate chunk of reality her power allowed her to access; from that same place, Mercury pulled out a small blue backpack. Opening the top revealed it to be stuffed with what looked like a folded-up towel or small blanket. There was just enough space for Luna.

“That was very thoughtful of you, Mercury.” Luna was all but purring as she climbed into the snug little space.

“The top folds over far enough so that you’ll stay dry and relatively warm, but you won’t be able to open it from the inside. It was the best I could come up with,” Mercury apologized.

“It’ll do fine, just as long as you don’t start swinging me around.” Mercury nodded, waited for Luna to make herself comfortable, and then closed the pack. As she slipped her arms into the straps, Mercury glanced at Usagi.

“After we’ve dealt with this, I think we’re going to have to get everyone together for a meeting. That includes you, Setsuna, and ChibiUsa, so you’d better think of something that’ll convince your mother to let you out of the house in this kind of weather.”

“Not to worry,” Usagi said grandly. “You said this wasn’t a natural storm, and every time we’ve gone up against something messing with the weather, things went back to normal as soon as we took out the source.”

“You’ve got a point, there.” Mercury stopped at the threshold, switching on her visor to help her find her way through the blowing snow. “Guess we’ll find out in a little while whether you’re right or not.”

# 

Not for the first time, Anon was contemplating a career change.

There were certain tasks required to keep a city the size of Tokyo running, certain jobs that simply could not be interrupted without serious consequences resulting. One group of such jobs included things such as police, fire, and medical services, things which, in a pinch, the city could continue to function without. At least for a little while. The other group of jobs were things like power and water, which absolutely had to be maintained at all times.

As a maintenance technician at one of the city power plants, Anon’s job fell into that second category. Like everybody else, he had a carefully defined and negotiated set of working hours, but unlike everybody else, Anon was one of a small handful of specialists who knew how to get a stubborn, old-model generator at the plant up to speed. Only three other people knew how to keep the monster everyone referred to as ‘Smoking Joe’ from overheating itself and shutting down half of the surrounding district; one of those three was taking a two-week vacation in Australia, another was out with the flu, and the third was working his twelfth straight hour, and would soon be beyond the reach of even the most potent coffee.

Which left Anon to trudge through the waist-deep drifts, the icy, blinding spray of still-falling snow, and this howling wind that seemed to have come from somewhere well above the arctic circle.

*I don’t deserve this,* he thought, speaking to whatever higher power happened to be looking down and listening at that particular instant. *I work hard, I pay my taxes, I even do volunteer work at that children’s shelter. So just once, why can’t I have something _nice_ happen to me?*

This time, apparently, somebody _was_ listening. Somebody with a slightly twisted sense of humor.

Head down to help keep the sleet out of his face, Anon turned the next corner and ran smack into something, falling over backwards into the nearest snowbank. He looked up, half-ready to yell at whoever’d walked into him...

Anon wondered briefly if that blow to the head had jarred something loose in his brain; in his experience, beautiful blue-eyed young women did not typically run around in miniskirts during blizzards. Although he had to admit, it did look good on her. The wide visor was a nice touch, too; practical, but stylish.

Part of Anon’s brain had, in fact, been jarred loose. This part, which dealt mostly with long-term memory, picked up immediately on who this young lady must be, and started raising nine kinds of neural stink to get Anon’s attention. Unfortunately, the ruckus went unnoticed.

*Did she just say something?* “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said, are you all right?”

“I was going to ask you that. Isn’t it a bit cold to be wearing... well, that?”

The disjointed section of brain held up a chemically-induced flag which essentially read, ‘Hey, nitwit!’, but again, Anon failed to notice.

The woman laughed. “I’m fine. Cold doesn’t bother me.”

“I’d say not.”

“Are you out here for any particular reason?”

“I’m trying to get to work,” Anon said, shouting over a sudden blast of wind and pulling his fur-lined hood a little further forwards.

“In all _this?_” She seemed surprised. “Is it important?”

“Well, it’s not an emergency yet, but it may be if this weather slows me down much longer. What about you? Same sort of situation?”

The cut-off region of grey matter started banging itself, lobe-first, against the nearest available wall—the inside of Anon’s skull—in a fit of sheer, impotent frustration.

“Oh, definitely. Where are you headed?” Anon told her, and the young lady shook her head, dislodging snow from her hair. “I hate to say this, but you’re headed the wrong way.” She seemed to think something over for a minute. “I guess a little side trip can’t hurt. Come on; I’ll get you to where you’re going.” She took one of his thickly-gloved hands in her own and started off. Anon couldn’t quite understand how she was able to run fast enough to pull him along at such a speed.

About two minutes later, they were at the entrance gate to the power plant, and the young blue-haired lady let go of Anon’s hand.

“That was quick,” he said, surprised. “You certainly have a good sense of direction.”

For some reason, that made her laugh. “Comes with the job.”

“Well, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” And she vanished into the snow. Anon shook his head and headed for the gate; the guard had come out of the security booth and was staring at him in astonishment.

“Something wrong, Kige-san?” Anon greeted the man.

“Uh, Syumo-san... was that who I think it was?”

Anon opened his mouth to ask what he meant by that, but at that moment, the connection between short and long-term memory was finally reestablished, and everything his brain had been trying to tell him came rushing forwards. All that came out of his mouth was a strangled wheeze.

Victorious at last, the little region of Anon’s brain collapsed in utter exhaustion, suggesting to its neighbors that a good stiff drink would probably be in order.

The rest of the brain agreed.

# 

Arriving at the door to Makoto’s apartment, Mercury quickly looked around to make sure nobody was watching and then ducked inside, transforming back to Ami as she headed for the living room.

What she’d told the man was true; normal levels of cold really didn’t bother her. Ami suspected that she could jump into the nearest river and then stand around in winds even colder than this for hours and not get sick.

That didn’t mean she enjoyed being cold and wet. The switch back dealt with the damp, clinging layer of snow, and the considerably higher temperature of the apartment would quickly deal with the chill in her flesh.

Though in all honesty, the glare Michiru had fixed on her would probably have sufficed to deal with the snow and the chill on its own. While Michiru had many admirable traits and enviable talents, her ability to wait around for others was not among them; she had patience in abundance, but once she made up her mind to do something, Michiru did it. Anyone and anything that slowed her down did so at its own peril. She usually hid it better, but Ami guessed that Michiru’s own disrupted weather-sense was making her edgier than normal. Ami wasn’t exactly rolling in patience herself, at the moment.

“Welcome back.” The impatience was strongly evident in those two words.

*I wonder how they managed to keep her here this long.* “Hello, Michiru. Sorry I took so long; I made a detour to help somebody who got lost in the snow.”

“What’s with the backpack?” Rei asked.

“Travel accommodations.” Ami set the pack down and opened the top. “You okay in there, Luna?”

“Just fine.” Luna sprang out, stretching. “Hello, girls. Where’s Minako?”

“Would you believe we’re not sure?” Makoto smiled ruefully. “I called her place twice; the phone was busy the first time, and the second time, her mother said she was actually outside somewhere. We tried her communicator a few times, but she either doesn’t have it, can’t hear it, or just isn’t answering it.”

Luna frowned. “I think we’d better find her. I wasn’t able to figure a way past the problem with Ami’s computer, so there’s no way to be sure what we might be up against, and we might need all the extra firepower we can get.”

“I can probably track her down,” Ami said. “Assuming whatever’s keeping me from identifying the source of this storm hasn’t...”

The doorbell rang. Rei looked at the others.

“You don’t suppose...?” From their expressions, they did suppose. Hotaru was the closest, so she got up and went to answer the door. When she returned a moment later, she was struggling not to laugh.

The bundle of clothes that accompanied her was identifiable as Minako only because they knew Usagi was at home, and it simply couldn’t have been anyone else. A heavy, hooded winter jacket and matched snowpants bulged outwards on who knew how many internal layers; fingered mittens the size of boxing gloves nicely complemented the massive woolen socks; a thick, bright red scarf hid most of the face, and the blue ski mask handled the rest.

“Hi, guys.” The voice was muffled about three times over, but it was definitely Minako. “Mako-chan, I got your message, but as you can see, it’s kind of hard to get at my wrist like this.” She lowered one arm, producing a slow, massive shift in the stacked fabric, to demonstrate the point.

“So instead of going inside your house, dressing down, and calling back,” Haruka said slowly, “you decided to set out in the middle of what has to be the worst blizzard to hit this town in any of our lifetimes, crossed I don’t know how many blocks...”

“Seven,” Minako supplied helpfully.

“...with streets buried in snow almost up to your waist, to ask in person what the message was?”

“Hey, like they say, ‘neither rain nor snow, rabid pitbulls nor feisty felines...’”

“Speaking of felines,” Luna interrupted, “I assume Artemis is back at your place?”

“Oh no, he’s right here.” Minako turned—shuffled would probably be a better word—and called back into the front room. “Artemis, Luna wants to talk to you.”

“I’m not coming in there.”

“Quit being such a baby,” Minako said heartlessly. After a moment, Artemis slunk into the living room.

Or rather, something that was vaguely cat-shaped slunk in. Like Minako, it was wrapped in layer upon layer of protective gear, pet sweaters and modified human winter gear all tucked and folded into something only Minako could have dreamed up. Even the tail had been given added defense against the elements, bound up in a coiled, many-colored scarf. The little red bow attached to the tip was the crowning touch.

“If anybody laughs,” Artemis said in a dark, humorless tone, “if anyone so much as cracks a smile, I’m going to shred every stitch of clothing in her wardrobe, one seam at a time.”

“So,” Minako said, throwing back her hood and lifting off the ski mask, “what’s up?”

# 

“Why did you let her do that to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

The cats were sharing space in a slightly larger backpack, carried by Mercury as the assembled Senshi crossed the wintry streets to face whatever awaited them, literally, at the heart of the storm. They kept a close formation as they moved, with Mercury in the lead, keeping them on course by tracking the anomalous energy reading with her visor.

“Didn’t you even _try_ to talk her into staying indoors?”

“I said I DON’T want to talk about it.”

“Or at least not to use that ridiculous bow?”

“LUNA!”

They stopped moving, and the top of the pack opened up. Mars was looking in.

“We’re here. And you’ve got to see this.” The cats climbed out, balancing on Mercury’s shoulders, and saw.

The Senshi were standing atop a moderately tall highrise, at that point where suburbs and urban center tended to overlap, all of them looking in at the heart of the city—and one building in particular, a skyscraper less than a block away, about which weird, blue-white energy danced and crackled. The sky overhead was thick with stormclouds, but also suffused with a brilliant glow from the twisting arcs of power. Strangely, there was no wind and far less snow here, at the heart of the disturbance, than in the rest of the city; much like the eye of a hurricane, the center of this unnatural storm was almost peaceful, surrounded by atmospheric fury.

“Luna,” Artemis said, suddenly sounding very worried. “Look up there. On top of the building. Is that what I think it is?”

Luna looked. She was only half-surprised to note that the upper levels of the skyscraper had been taken over by more of the creeping green substance this newest enemy appeared to favor, four high spires of the stuff climbing above the roof while a dozen others projected out from the base, almost level with the roof. At the tips of the tallest spires, an orb of incandescent energy spun and sparkled, casting energy off in all directions and drawing it in from just as many places, multicolored lightning bolts flashing into and out of the sky.

She didn’t know what the green stuff was, but she recognized the shape it had formed. It explained a lot of questions, but posed a lot more, and Luna knew she wasn’t going to like the answers.

“It is, Artemis. And this has to be a trap of some kind.”

“I must have missed something,” Jupiter said. “How does looking at a piece of sculpted mold tell you this is a trap?”

“That’s not a sculpture, Jupiter. It’s called a mana nexus, and it’s... well, for now, all you need to know is that it’s not the sort of thing you build on a whim. One that size would have taken weeks to align properly, and whoever built it didn’t leave it out in the open like that by accident. They had to know somebody would notice it once it was active; that entire building’s probably filled with that green stuff.”

“That’s a _big_ building,” Venus noted nervously.

“We had enough problems with one the size of a cafe,” Mars said. “How do we deal with something _that_ size?”

“Invest in an industrial-strength weed-whacker?” Saturn supplied helpfully, hefting the Silence Glaive.

“Keep that idea in reserve,” Luna advised. “There just might be another way. Mercury, Neptune, Uranus, you all said you could feel something wrong about this storm.” The three Senshi nodded, and Luna looked at the others. “Did any of the rest of you notice anything strange about the weather?”

“Nope.”

“No.”

“Not a thing.”

“Nada.”

“Three against a nexus?” Artemis asked. “Luna, isn’t that a little... dicey?”

“We’ve got to try and spread out the energy,” Luna said. “If we just turn Saturn loose, the blast will probably wipe out everything within a block of that building.”

“It’s _that_ powerful?” Jupiter asked.

“Not by itself.” Luna seemed to debate something. “I suppose you do need to know a little about this. The nexus is designed to pull in and concentrate energy. Whoever built it seems to have set it to draw purely on water, wind, and ice, but any other form of power that touches it will be absorbed as well, magnified, and then spit back out at about ten times its original strength.”

Saturn immediately put the Glaive down.

“What does this have to do with us?” Uranus asked.

“There are two ways to shut down a mana nexus that you don’t know how to control; you either throw enough power at it to overload the thing and then run like crazy when it explodes, or you take away the power it’s drawing. You three can control the elements involved here, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to overpower the nexus.”

“They’d have to be spread out to do it,” Artemis said, still sounding doubtful.

“Mercury, we’ll need your computer to coordinate this; you’ve all got to be in just the right spot. And switch on your communicators, all of you. You’ll need instructions. Jupiter, Neptune, go that way; Mars, Uranus, go there. We’ll tell you when to stop.”

It took about six minutes for the Senshi to get into positions that fit whatever plan Luna was operating by. Looking at her computer, Mercury saw that she, Neptune, and Uranus formed the points of a large, equilateral triangle, with the building at the exact center.

“That’s good,” Luna said. “Now everyone, listen carefully. Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, you’re going to have to be ready to fight off anything that might come out of that building. Don’t be flashy, and don’t waste time—and whatever else you do, keep Mercury, Neptune, and Uranus clear of danger. They aren’t going to be able to do anything to defend themselves once we get started.”

“The more I hear of this plan of yours, Luna, the less I like it.”

“Sorry, Uranus, but we don’t have much choice. You and Neptune get your Talismans out; their presence will help you focus your thoughts and handle the energy better. And maybe,” she added doubtfully, with a worried glance, “take some of the pressure off of Mercury.”

“I’ll be fine, Luna.”

Luna didn’t seem convinced. “I want the three of you to gather up as much energy as you think you can safely carry, just like you were preparing for an attack. Don’t let it go; just hold it steady.” Luna waited for several moments, watching Mercury closely as she concentrated on the building force. “All right. Now, while you keep the level of energy constant, push out with your thoughts. You each know the different forces you’re tapping; picture them as lines in the ground and in the air. Picture them in your thoughts, and use your power to find them.”

This was something of a challenge. The pressure of holding the gathered power, while not painful, was a slight strain against the mind, making the sort of mental exercise Luna was describing difficult. Slowly, the three Senshi began to feel a strange sort of thrumming around them, like the vibration of a drum being constantly struck. Each became acutely aware of her own heartbeat, pulsing in its own rhythm, as well as the weird feeling of the energy hanging in their minds, bodies, and some other distant place. Each Senshi could almost see cords of energy winding through the ground, climbing up into themselves and into the huge swirl of power atop the skyscraper, while funnels of similar force reached down out of the clouds.

“Do you see it?” Mercury nodded, unable to spare enough attention to form words. “Good,” Luna said. “Now, I want you to reach out with your own energy and connect to all the cords you see linked to the nexus. Take it slowly; you may feel a little strange the first few times.”

’Strange’ didn’t come close. When Mercury touched the nearest of the glowing lines, the energy in her mind was suddenly siphoned away, draining out so quickly that she could actually feel a slithering in her mind, her body. It reminded her very much of the reaction produced by someone drawing their nails across a blackboard, except that now it went on and on and on. The lines that connected only to her restored the lost energy as quickly as it was drained, so the flow didn’t stop, but this also meant that the unpleasant reaction went on as well.

Gritting her teeth, Mercury reached for a second line; the flow slowed briefly and then resumed, neither stronger nor weaker than with just one line. Linking to the third line was easier, and the fourth, easier still. Soon, she had completed this stage of the task.

“How do you feel?” Luna asked.

“Queasy,” Mercury admitted. “Sort of hot and cold at the same time.”

“I feel like every hurricane ever spawned is running loose in my blood,” Uranus said, breathing heavily. “Neptune?”

“I’m going to need a bath when this is over,” her partner replied. “Kamis, this feels awful.”

“Hold on, all of you. We’re at the worst part. You can all feel the flow of energy going into the nexus, right?” There was a chorus of ‘yes’-es, and Luna took a deep breath. “Okay. When I tell you, focus everything you can, all the energy and willpower you can hold onto, and pull away from the nexus _without_ breaking contact with it. You have to do this all at once, and you can’t stop until the nexus shuts down. Understood?”

“On three,” Neptune said.

“Right. One... two... three!”

They pulled. The flow dragged to a halt, started to reverse, energy now flowing from the nexus into and through the Senshi, and from there, back into the air and the dirt and wherever else it came from.

The nexus went berserk. Lightning shot out in wide swathes, trailing fiery sparks as they cut through the sky in mind-jarring thunderclaps. The previously calm eye of the storm exploded in winds that screamed in a hundred different directions, blowing icy daggers and red-hot gouts of steam ahead of them. The building shook and rattled and rang like the world’s largest tuning fork, and the smooth sphere of energy at its peak became a shifting, amorphous blob, out of control.

“If they didn’t know we were here before,” Artemis shouted over the chaos, “they do now!”

“Ya think?” Venus shouted back.

Explosions reached them from somewhere near the base of the building. As Luna had predicted, a shambling, manlike mass of green had emerged to investigate the disturbance that was tearing its home apart; Jupiter and Mars tag-teamed the creature, stunning it with electrified fireballs before Jupiter lifted and hurled it bodily back through the front door, a sweeping gout of flames hot on its heels.

Another of the creatures appeared almost directly in front of the three Senshi, its shoulders bristling with masses of the red eye-beads. Venus remembered the streaking red energy beams those ‘eyes’ could launch, and threw herself at the thing before it could open fire, curling up in midair to form a living cannonball and ruin the enemy’s balance.

The trick worked, but Venus had forgotten the springy, almost elastic nature of these creatures; it staggered backwards while she was sent in the other direction, landing roughly on the rooftop. Venus recovered instantly and sprang away as the thing’s shoulders erupted in a wall of artillery-like fire, countering the barrage with a Beam Shower at the peak of her jump to keep its attention off Mercury.

Venus cursed when she saw a third creature leap up from somewhere below, with bits and pieces of what looked like an office supply room and a photocopier sticking to it. Saturn saw it as well and attacked, bringing her weapon around in a wide, whistling arc at the same moment as a jet of high-velocity paper burst from the creature’s midsection.

Even when propelled to a degree of speed that rivaled a bullet, ordinary paper was no match for the Silence Glaive. The blade cut through the barrage and continued on its way as a rain of paper fell to either side. Already at the extreme edge of her reach, Saturn made a clumsy sort of half-jump forwards, gritting her teeth as she fought momentum to bring the Glaive back around for another slice.

Someone using an ordinary polearm probably would have missed, but the Silence Glaive was about as far from ‘ordinary’ as it was possible to get. Responding to its little mistress’ commands, the short, scythelike head flipped over in midswing and flew forwards with an almost banshee-like howl. The green substance of the creature split cleanly as the impossibly sharp blade passed through it, a black and silver blur which left two halves and a bit of arm to fall separately to the roof.

Neither Venus nor Saturn were prepared to see the green, half-alive stuff suddenly wither up, turn first blue, then purple, and finally black, and crumble away to dust. Even the other creature stopped and stared as its comrade was consumed—which proved to be a mistake, as a crackling thunderbolt took it from behind, setting off some sort of chain reaction in its shoulders which obliterated the thing in a reddish series of explosions.

“It’s going!” Luna shouted, and they all looked up to see the towering spires of the nexus losing their shape as the energy which had powered the construct dissipated. In seconds, it was gone, and a huge mass of green broke away, falling towards the streets below and breaking up into nothingness long before it hit.

“We did it,” Neptune said wearily.

“Hoo-ray for our side,” Uranus groaned. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“Are you all right?” Luna asked quickly.

“We’re fine, Luna,” Neptune replied. “Just very, very tired.”

“I’ve got some coffee back at my place that’ll wake you up again,” Jupiter promised. “And since the storm’s gone, I can head back now and have it ready by the time the rest of you get there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Uranus agreed. “I prefer mine with sugar and cream.”

“Black, here,” Neptune said. “And make it strong, would you?”

“Sure thing. What about you, Mercury?”

The only answer was the slush-muffled sound of Mercury’s body collapsing on the roof.

# 

Janus read the report a third time.

“They successfully jammed the nexus’ energy flow with only three individuals, destroyed the test units, and collapsed the entire structure. In less than ten minutes.” The male voice listed off the points of the report in a flat, angry tone.

“Yes, my Prince,” Archon replied.

“Three weeks of work to produce, ten minutes to destroy.” Janus steepled its fingers and looked at Archon through the floating words. “And we didn’t get any positive identification on whoever was responsible for it?”

“No, my Prince. The plan called for our enemies to enter the main structure; all the watcher’s monitoring sensors were concentrated there, with nothing left to survey the exterior.”

“I see.” There was a long silence. Finally, Janus nodded, sighing. “Very well. A design flaw we can easily correct; have the watcher expand its surveillance perimeter at the remaining test sites by... three hundred percent.”

“The watcher will require at least another week of effort to achieve that much of an increase,” Archon said mildly.

“The traps are useless if they gain us no useful information,” Janus said. “And besides, that gives you another week in which to produce a few more second- generation units to man the test sites. Are the prototypes operating as expected?”

“Yes, your Highness. Recycling the first-generation units worked better than I had anticipated, most likely because of the energy they had collected. We should have a sufficient force to place one second-grade unit at each test site, and still maintain a small force here.”

“Good. I was getting tired of seeing these shambling mounds of fungus everywhere I went.” Janus’ female voice had taken over. “Do you think it might be possible to go a step further and produce a third-generation unit?”

“Perhaps, but that would be the limit of the materials. There is only so much we can do without a stable power source.” Archon looked up at the lights in the throne room, which were considerably brighter now than they had been just a day before. “At least the nexus was not a total loss; it gave us enough reserve power to operate the atmospheric systems for the next few months, and it still produced quite an impressive storm.”

“That it did.” Janus breathed in the air, savoring the fact that the dry staleness which had permeated it since their return was gone now. “The abundance of energy at the supernexus seems to enhance the performance of the design considerably. That bodes well for our other nexi, does it not?”

“Even if they are all destroyed as soon after activation as the first,” Archon said, calculating mystical variables, “I expect we will receive enough power to approach perhaps fifty percent of the city’s normal capacity. That in itself would keep us going for the next year, but if we are fortunate enough to reach _sixty_ percent, the mana reactors could be triggered.”

“And with the reactors operational,” Janus finished, “the Rise will become reality. Excellent, Archon. Excellent.” The blended face broke into a smile—one half stunningly handsome, the other stunningly beautiful. Taken together, they were frightening. “Send word to prepare for a feast, Archon. We feel like celebrating our recent good fortune.”

“As you wish.”

“And tell the Council of Lords that there will be a meeting afterwards. I believe it’s high time we stopped laying low and got down to some serious business.”

 

# 

_(Makoto and Rei are sitting on high stools behind a counter, with two cups of hot chocolate in front of them.)_

**Makoto** : How could that guy _not_ have known who Mercury was?

**Rei** : You read the script, didn’t you? He got hit in the head. Usagi’s living proof of what that can do to a person.

**Usagi**   _(leaning in from the right)_ : I heard that.

**Rei** : You were supposed to.

_(A door bursts open somewhere off-camera, and a snow-covered Ryo rushes in from the left.)_

**Ryo**   _(gasping for breath)_ : I got here as fast as I could. Where’s Ami?! Is she alright?!

**Makoto**   _(getting to her feet)_ : What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to come back until at least the next episode!

**Ryo** : Do you think I CARE about continuity right now? Tell me where Ami is, or I’ll... I’ll... um... I’ll see something really unpleasant and not warn you about it!  _(thinks to himself: *As if THAT wasn’t the lamest threat in history. I really need to learn telekinesis or something.*)_

**Usagi** : Well, since you asked SO nicely... come on, Romeo.  _(she leads him off- camera, leaning back in briefly)_  And you two, get on with the moral already.

**Makoto** : What _is_ the moral, anyway?

**Rei** : I personally think it has something to do with the way the world throws all kinds of signals at you when something important happens, and how most people can be totally oblivious to what it’s trying to tell them. That guy with the head injury is an example; Ami-chan, Michiru, and Haruka were examples of people who paid attention and were able to do something besides standing around and watching the fireworks.

**Makoto** : Not bad. More hot chocolate?

**Rei** : Thanks. Got any marshmallows?

_(Fade to black)_

27/04/00 (Revised as of 15/08/02)

_Wow. This is one of the longer episodes, and yet it took me the least amount of time to write. I’ve found my muse, and it’s either serious sleep deprivation, too many hours of television, or WATCHING THOSE THREE EPISODES OF GUNDAM WING THIS PAST MONDAY!_

_Ahem. A serious injection of fresh story material always does this sort of thing to me._

_Next up:_  
_-A search for answers leads to a field trip which is quite literally out of this world; and_  
_-February looms on the horizon (at last!)_

_And maybe one or two other things I’m still toying with._


	7. Meetings and Greetings; or Mother Knows Best- Sometimes, Anyway.

# 

The feast was over, the tables cleared. Now, the Lords of Atlantis sat or stood about the grand chamber, some talking, others drinking, and a few remaining silent, all of them waiting for the arrival of their master and mistress, when the meeting would begin.

There was a curious feeling in the room that had only a little to do with the wine, a sense of rightness, of things being once again as they were meant to be.

Once, these assembled men and women, the heads of the most powerful and influential families of Atlantis, would have met to decide the fates of entire nations. They, like their ancestors before them, were the ruling class of the mightiest empire history had ever known, the most brilliantly shining jewel in the crown of human achievement. Their estates had covered the Earth and many other worlds while their fleets patrolled sea and sky and space, and their people had prospered upon the wealth and achievement of a hundred civilizations, all bound together under one rule. Theirs.

And then it had all been lost. The estates were overrun and the mighty fleets burned, as the people divided and fell upon one another in the chaos of a war that had reshaped the world. When it was over, the might of the empire had been broken, its holdings seized by rebels and self-proclaimed rulers or lost to the void. Atlantis itself, ancient heart of the empire, had been all but wiped from the face of the Earth; only a select few of its citizens, the best and the brightest, had been saved from the long night—and that sanctuary had been a prison, cut off from everything they were meant to rule.

Ten millennia of power, destroyed in the space of a year. Two thousand years of exile, while the homeworld remained in the grip of superstition, barbarism, and ignorance.

All because of one woman.

This was only the second meeting of the Lords since their return, and for many, it was a sign that things were at last beginning to return to the way they should be. The first meeting, grim and somber, held in darkened chambers where the air hung heavy with the dust of ages, had been an endless list of damage, losses, and outlines for repair. No more. The chambers were rich with light and energy, the scars of the ancient disaster erased, their former majesty restored. Much yet remained to be done before Atlantis was once again as it had been and should be, as they remembered it, but so too had much of the great city been restored; it was high time that the restoration of the empire also begin.

The massive double doors at the far end of the grand chamber opened on soundless hinges. Nine figures entered, the steady fall of heavy boots drawing the attention of the assembled Lords.

The two men in the lead were members of the Imperial Guard, as would be the two at the end of the small procession. Long silver robes, trimmed in the gold of the Imperial Throne, extended from the collar of the guards’ expressionless helmets; in their right hands, each guard held a deadly spear-like weapon known as a firelance in a gauntleted grip of steel. They walked in step, were of the same height, and beneath the concealing robes, wore grey uniforms of a light but marvelously strong fabric which would protect them nearly as well as metal armor but still allow them a full range of movement. The guards were not, as some rumors suggested, all clones or members of the same carefully maintained bloodline—beneath their smoked-glass visors, each had a different face-but no one saw the face of an Imperial Guardsman while he was on duty; they saw only their own faces, cast back in distorted reflections by the flat, featureless visors.

Behind the guards came the richly robed, dark-eyed Archon, master archmage of Atlantis and chief advisor to the throne. It was difficult to tell whether Archon was walking on the crystalline floor or on a thin layer of empty air as he approached, the end of his sigil-inscribed robes flapping loosely as he moved, but no one cared to ask. Even among the Lords, who represented the greatest concentration of magical power in a people famous for their mastery of spells, Archon commanded great respect and even fear. The jagged white lines in his hair and beard were as striking as the thunderbolts his hands could conjure, his black, alien eyes more chilling than the deepest void of space.

After Archon came Janus, the Crowned Prince of Atlantis, the Lord of the Lords, and the future Emperor; with him, as ever, came Jenna, Imperial Princess, High Lady of the City, his twin sister. The Lords bowed, most out of genuine respect, some out of actual friendship, but none could deny a faint sense of unease at the unmistakable, unnatural division of the figure’s features. No matter how many times one saw the gradually shifting blend of the two siblings, one never grew used to it. As much as Janus was Atlantis’ hope for the future, he—they—were also the living reminder of its shame and defeat, for the treachery that had shattered the empire had also worked this disturbing fusion upon the imperial siblings, and twenty centuries of effort had failed to find a means of reversing it.

To Janus’ right, there walked a tall young man with long, wild hair of a fiery red hue, held back from his face by a circlet of some silvery metal. There was something distinctly devious about his features, quick intelligence and sharp cunning in a combination which did not encourage trust, and this was enforced by the angry scar cutting across his face, beginning above the left eye and crossing the bridge of the nose to end on the opposite cheek. Whatever weapon had made the wound had just missed damaging his eyes, dark orbs which burned with the same cunning reflected on his face. He wore loose-fitting brown pants, the ends tucked behind the tops of sturdy boots and a wide black belt, and a sleeveless black vest. Three silver chains hung along the front of the vest, crisscrossing the man’s trim, muscular chest, and silver studs adorned the knuckles of the fingerless gloves on his hands.

The being walking to Janus’ left was virtually the exact opposite of her counterpart. Slender and graceful, she moved without any of the scarred man’s obvious tension, her feet gliding across the floor in a manner even Archon’s magic could have taken lessons from. Her face was exquisitely beautiful and appeared totally open, gentle and trusting, framed by long, blue-black hair. Gold and silver flashed at her ears, her throat, and here and there like tiny stars in the fall of her night-dark hair; her eyes were dark, liquid pools without bottoms. Her mask of gentle innocence was betrayed by the slow, provocative sway of her hips as she moved, by the shift and rustle of her dress, a silken, midnight-blue dream of form-fitting opaque folds, a skirt which somehow billowed outwards and clung to shapely legs all at once, and loosely flowing veils which, contrary to their name, hid nothing at all. Fashion designers would have killed for that dress, and models would have killed for the body beneath it; any Puritans in the audience would have _been_ killed just by looking at her.

Behind Janus, the scarred fighting man, and the sultry creature that looked just barely old enough to be considered a woman, there rose a mountainous shape of dark metal. Taller than the rest of the party by a head or more and nearly as broad as two of the guards, the mighty figure strode in slow, menacing silence, its glossy black armor making no sound except when one of the huge feet struck the floor. Strange bands of metal crisscrossed the armored body, running along shoulders and arms, torso and legs, with faint flickers of energy dancing beneath them, as if the armor were about to burst apart with a flood of energy, and the bands were the only things holding it together. The warrior bore no visible weapon, but the lack of armament hardly seemed a problem. Its face—if it possessed one—was unseen within the shadowy helm, but as with its lack of weapons, this deficiency did not impair the being in the slightest.

One thing all three figures had in common was a silver emblem, a series of seven rings, one inside the other, all the rings broken and connected to each other at regular intervals. The shape adorned the scarred man’s chest in the form of a large tattoo; it gleamed on the beautiful woman’s forehead, held in place by strings of tiny, winking jewels; it was fused directly into the menacing helm of the towering warrior.

And it was built directly into the floor upon which they and the others now stood.

As Janus strode to the gleaming, golden throne at the far end of the chamber, the Lords moved to stand over those seven rings. The largest circle held forty-nine men and women, while the one inside it held forty-two; each ring had seven fewer people standing over it until the smallest and innermost, which had only six, but sufficient space for one more. The other Lords glanced curiously at the empty space, as if someone were supposed to stand there, but remained silent for the moment.

While their master seated himself, the four guards took up their posts at the corners of the elevated section of floor upon which the throne stood. The scarred man stood to the left of the massive throne, the silent warrior to right; the woman settled herself on the wide right armrest, taking a posture which exposed a great deal of leg through slits in her skirt. Archon remained at the center of the chamber, within the innermost ring, his arms folded within the long sleeves of his robe.

“The Council of Lords of Atlantis is convened,” Archon intoned solemnly. To anyone who might have been watching, it was immediately apparent that, with the possible exceptions of the faceless guards and the black knight, he was the oldest person in the room; of the just under two hundred men and women gathered around him, none could have been a day over thirty, and more than a few appeared not to have even reached twenty yet. Archon, by contrast, looked to be well on his way to fifty—and was in fact centuries older.

“Atlantis shall rise,” two hundred voices replied.

“My Lords,” Janus said, the male voice speaking in rich, clear tones, “less than a month has passed since our return to this world. In that time, a great deal has happened, and we have learned a number of things. In light of certain of our discoveries, and the impact they may have on our greater efforts to begin the Rise, I have decided to have Archon explain the current situation to you all. Archon.”

Archon bowed his head. “As you will, my lord.” With a gesture, Archon caused the lights of the vast, circular chamber to dim. In the air above the assembled Lords, an image of light appeared, a city built on a multitude of interconnected platforms. The spaces between those platforms was a perfect match for the symbol upon the floor.

“As you are already aware,” Archon began, “the condition of the city upon our return was far worse than we had first anticipated. Protective and preservation spells throughout the city had inexplicably failed, leaving many buildings open to destruction by the elements. We have since learned that this city-wide failure of magic was not due to any inherent weakness in the spells, but to a shift in the availability of mana. Where Atlantis was once located above the largest focal point of the Earth’s energy fields, it now sits in area virtually dead to magic.”

“How long ago did the shift occur?” The speaking Lord was a tall, blue- haired youth. He wore a mantle which matched his blue-green eyes, and was one of the six Lords who stood in the innermost circle.

“By our best estimates, Lord Triton, it was not one shift, but a series of them. The first appears to have occurred perhaps half a century after the Fall; the most recent took place less than a year past. We are still trying to determine the nature of the shifts, but their final result is this.” Archon gestured, and the image of the city was replaced by a glowing, turning image of the Earth. There was a faint murmur amongst the Lords as they got their first look at the world in over two thousand years. Lines of light appeared on the surface of the globe, turning and twisting randomly across the surface; a huge number of them met on the extreme eastern edge of the largest continent. “Whether by chance or by design, a city known to the people of this age as ’Tokyo’ sits atop the new supernexus.”

“Then the city must be taken,” a slender woman in the inner circle said. She stood three places to the left of Lord Triton and wore a pale silver mantle which went rather well with her long white hair and sky-blue eyes.

“Lady Istar is correct,” a third Lord said from Triton’s right. This Lord was a tall, powerfully-built man with dusty blond hair and iron grey eyes, whose brown mantle did not hide his broad shoulders and thick chest. “I have checked regularly on our forces, Archon, so I know we possess sufficient units to mount a campaign against any one city. When does the attack begin?”

“It began the same night we returned,” Archon replied. “It has since been called off.” The Lords erupted into a chorus of surprised protests.

“Calm yourselves, my Lords.” Magic enhanced Janus’ level call for silence so that all in the room could hear it.

“My Prince,” the muscular Lord protested, “what is going on? Why...”

Janus raised a hand. “Archon will explain everything, Lord Stone. All I ask is that you give him time to finish his report.”

Stone bowed mutely, and Archon resumed. “Twelve first-generation units were dispatched to the target city. With the exception of the watcher unit and one other, all were collectors with orders to establish the stable sources of power we require to bring about the Rise. Two of those units were destroyed within the first twenty-four hours of the operation, and a third only a few days later. At that time, our Prince decided upon a new plan of action.”

The Lords listened in silence as Archon described the traps, some nodding in agreement. There were more startled outbursts when he related the relative ease with which their unseen enemy had apparently destroyed the mana nexus.

“That, my Lords, is where we now stand,” Archon finished. “Seven trap sites remain in operation, and each has been supplied with a second-generation unit to back up the existing forces already in place. As each trap is sprung, the watcher will further alter the remaining ones to better meet the capabilities of our opponents, but considering the speed with which the previous units were destroyed, I expect it will take a great deal more to defeat this enemy.”

“Is Lord Draco’s absence connected to these events?” This was one of the younger Lords, another member of the innermost circle despite the fact that he was shorter than any of the other five. Black-haired, dark-eyed, and wearing a black mantle, the boyish Lord stood to the left of the empty space.

Upon the throne, Janus smiled. “No, Lord Nyx. Lord Draco was dispatched on a recon mission several weeks back, and has been out of contact since his departure. He will return in a few days.” Janus chuckled, a curious blend of masculine and feminine laughter. “Though the current situation has nothing to do with his absence, I would expect Lord Draco will take steps to remedy that as soon as he has made his report.” Knowing their absent comrade as they did, a few of the other Lords laughed briefly.

“At any rate,” the imperial figure said, switching into Jenna’s soft voice, “you are all now aware of our situation. The watcher unit has been busy collecting all available information on the current state of the world, which comes to a total far larger than we could hope to relate here. All its files will be made available on request for those of you who wish to study them. And we do encourage that,” a suddenly dual voice emphasized, brother and sister speaking as one. “The global shift of mana energy is but one of the changes that have taken place since our entrapment, and it may be the least of those changes. It would do us all good to understand how they may affect the Rise.” Janus looked as if one or both of its sides were about to say something else, but paused, hearing a soft chime only those grouped about the throne could detect. “And now, I must ask that you return to your efforts, my Lords. Though we have secured some energy, we are still far from total success. After you have studied our new records, ideas on how to turn the information to our advantage should be submitted to Archon. You will be advised of any further developments as they occur. Atlantis shall rise.”

“The Lords shall rule,” came the reply. The various Lords began to exit the chamber, some in silence, others speaking in small groups.

“One of those ‘further developments’ you mentioned?” a soft, amused voice whispered to Janus’ right.

“Yes. Draco has returned ahead of schedule.” Out of the corner of the female eye, Janus saw its scarred advisor frown darkly.

“I don’t like this. Draco being late is one thing, especially since he stops to fight something almost every time he turns around. But for him to return early...”

“Cestus,” the beautiful woman said, sighing, “don’t you _ever_ lighten up? In all my life, I’ve never met anyone who worries as much as you do.”

“In all your life,” the scarred man repeated, sneering. “How many years would that be today, Lillith? Sixteen, seventeen? What will it be tomorrow? Twenty-two? Twelve, perhaps?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she said distantly, turning away from him with a faintly musical tinkle echoing from her ornate earrings. Cestus made a sound of disgust.

“Quiet,” Janus ordered tersely. “Both of you.”

An armored figure had just entered the hall. It was taller and broader than the guards, less so than the silent knight standing beside the throne. The armor it wore was a combination of fiery red and bright gold, plain white and smoky black, the final effect being that the figure appeared to be aflame as it walked. The armor was worked so that it seemed made of scales, and a huge, horned, reptilian face glared out at the world from the breastplate, with clawed highlights adorning the bracers at wrist and ankle. A second dragon’s head rested atop the clawlike shoulder guards, ruby-bright eyes flashing from its sides and finely wrought horns rising in a crowning crest as the fanged mouth snarled silently at the world. A long cloak—black on the outside, red on the inside—trailed behind the warrior as he approached, leaving a broad-bladed shortsword visible on his left hip, a longer sword sheathed on his right; both weapons and their scabbards were worked in gold and jewels.

The magnificent warrior strode up to the base of the dais, sank to one knee, and saluted with one fist over his heart. “My Prince, my Princess. As ordered, I have returned.”

“Rise, Lord Draco, and present your report.”

“Good news for a change, my Prince. Despite the state of affairs in the city on our return, the holding spells remained intact. Only one had been broken for any length of time, and it was restored almost immediately thereafter.”

“Which one?” Janus asked quickly.

“The Seal of Mer, my Prince. I cannot be sure what happened, but it was some time ago, and the damage appears to have been contained. Whatever the case, the seal is as strong now as it ever was.”

Janus let out a relieved breath. “Good, good. I was half-afraid that... well, never mind. Well done, Lord Draco.”

“I live but to serve, my Prince, my Princess. Will you require anything further of me?”

Janus thought for a moment. “Not at the moment, Draco, however... I would suggest that, after you’ve rested, you review the information gathered by the watcher these last few weeks. I think you may find it interesting.”

It was difficult to tell since his face was hidden, but Draco appeared intrigued. “As you say, my Prince.” He saluted again and withdrew.

# 

“Welcome back, everyone,” the principal said. “I’m glad to see you managed to—ahem—‘weather’ yesterday’s little storm without too much trouble.”

A lot of the students groaned good-naturedly. Principal Hashido had a tendency to crack wise when he was put in front of a microphone, but since he was widely accepted to be the best high school principal in the district, they let him get away with it. Besides, sometimes he was actually funny.

“Still, in light of the storm, there have been some problems reported in the last couple of hours. Mostly, it’s because of all the runoff from the melted snow—leaks in some ceilings, no back pressure in some washrooms, too _much_ pressure in others, that sort of thing. The janitors are working to get things under control, but I thought it’d be more sporting if you’d been warned ahead of time. So if you start hearing strange noises coming from the walls, feel free to step out into the hallway until they pass—unless you’re near the music room, of course. I understand Kakura-sensei will be putting the brass band through their paces again today.” A few of the students laughed. “And speaking of high notes,” Hashido went on, “we’ve come to the last part of this assembly...”

A well-nigh universal cheer went up. Hashido cleared his throat. Twice.

“Yes, I know, you can’t _wait_ to get to class...”—there was a dead silence here—“...so I’ll just get this over with. The second-year class is getting a new student today, a mister Urawa Ryo, who some of you may remember from...”

“WELCOME BACK, RYO-KUN!” a pair of loud, female voices shouted from somewhere in the middle of the crowd, evoking a fair bit of laughter. At the front of the gym, Ryo sighed, rolled his eyes and waved politely.

“Ah yes,” Hashido said. “I understand you’ve met Usagi-chan and Mina-chan before, correct?” Ryo shrugged, and Hashido nodded somberly. “My condolences,” he added, speaking into the microphone.

“HEY!”

# 

Usagi waited at the gym exit after most of the other students had left. When the teachers started to come out, she spared a deadly glance for Principal Hashido and then turned her attention to her real target. “Haruna-sensei,” she said, “could I talk to you for a minute?”

“It’ll have to be while we walk,” Haruna said, starting down the hall. “And if this is about the paper I assigned last week...”

“It’s not,” Usagi promised, waiting until they were out of earshot. “I thought you should know that Ami-chan and Mako-chan aren’t going to be in today. Maybe not tomorrow, either.”

“Are they sick?”

“Ami is. Mako-chan’s staying home to look after her, just in case.”

“It’s _that_ serious?” Haruna asked, a little worried. “What has she got?”

“We’re not really sure,” Usagi admitted. “She sort of collapsed a little before lunch yesterday, and she’s been running a fever since then. Mako-chan called Ami’s mother in to have a look, and she said that whatever it is should pass in a day or so. Mizuno-san didn’t really say what the problem was, but I think she thought it was an allergic reaction to something. The rest of us are heading over to Makoto’s place after school to see how Ami’s doing, so Minako and I are picking up any homework either of them might have.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Going over, I mean,” Haruna added, aware of how her question might sound. “You really can’t afford to get sick right now.”

“Mizuno-san said that since Mako-chan wasn’t sick, she didn’t think whatever Ami has is catching, so it wouldn’t be a problem if we visited.” *Besides,* Usagi added silently, *we _know_ it isn’t a virus or anything like that. That’s about _all_ we know, but still...*

“All right,” Haruna agreed. “I know how Ami likes to keep ahead of the class, so I’ll put together an outline of everything we’ll be covering in history and math for the next week or so, and I’ll have a talk with her other teachers at lunch and see if they can give you the same.”

“Thanks, sensei. I appreciate it. So will Ami-chan.”

Haruna smiled. “Have that report in tomorrow and we’ll call it even.”

Usagi groaned.

# 

It was lunchtime.

In the cafeteria, Usagi and Minako had claimed the table they occasionally shared with Ami and Makoto—when Ami wasn’t busy in the library or computer room, that is, and when neither Minako nor Makoto was stalk... ahem, introducing herself to the object of her latest crush. Naru and Umino sometimes joined them, but more often found a quiet spot somewhere out of the way, and today was evidently one of those days. Usagi recalled hearing Umino mention something about a new book on the life cycle of lower-order annelids—whatever those were—and silently wished Naru the patience, strength, and wisdom she would need in order to not strangle her boyfriend.

Minako was up at the counter, in the middle of a heated and only half-understood argument with one of the cafeteria ladies, with most of the cafeteria looking on in breathless awe. Since Minako had mentioned ‘needing dough’ and about a half-dozen other food-and-money-related misquotes, the audience assumed she was upset about the increased price of the cafeteria’s cookies.

Oblivious to the proceedings, Usagi was just about to take a bite out of her sandwich when a shadow moved between her and the window.

“Mind if I join you, Usagi-chan?” the shadow asked.

“Hey, Ryo-kun. Go ahead and pull up a seat.” Suspecting that a conversation was in the works, Usagi took a smaller bite of sandwich than she had originally planned. “Enjoying your first day back?”

“Aside from this morning’s little... greeting? More or less, yes.”

“Spoilsport.” They both looked up as a round of cheering and applause went up from near the counter, where a heavily-breathing Minako had apparently won the argument. Smiling as she bowed to the onlookers, Minako collected three cookies and returned to her seat, leaving a tired wreck of a woman at the cash register.

“Victory,” Minako said, dropping into the chair opposite Usagi and flashing a smile. “Can you believe they actually thought they could get away with that?”

“The horror,” Usagi murmured.

Ryo cleared his throat, and Minako looked at him. “Hi, Ryo-kun. Cookie? They’re chocolate chip, today and Thursday.”

“Uh, thanks.” Ryo took the cookie, but didn’t eat it. “Look, I’ve been meaning to talk to you two since first period ended. Why is Ami laying on Mako-chan’s living room couch looking like she’s about to be sick?”

Minako glowered suspiciously. “Have you been spying on them?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Ryo said dryly, “yes.” He tapped his forehead to emphasize the point.

“Oh. Right. I forgot about that.” Another dark look crossed her face. “Have you ever spied on _me?_”

“Would I do something like that?” Ryo asked, smiling innocently. Minako gave him an answering look that said if he had, Ami was going to have to look for a new boyfriend. Ryo’s smile slipped.

Usagi looked around cautiously. “There was a bit of trouble yesterday,” she began. “More of those green things showed up downtown. They’d turned a building into some kind of device, which was responsible for the storm, and Mercury collapsed when she, Neptune, and Uranus shut the thing down.”

“Is she all right?” Ryo asked quickly.

“Luna said she’d need a few days of rest, but that she’d be back to normal afterwards. In the meantime, though, she’s going to be pretty sick. That’s why Mako-chan stayed home. We’re heading over to check on Ami after school; you’re welcome to join us.”

Although he didn’t visibly relax, Ryo smiled gratefully, and handed the cookie over to Usagi. She took a bite, then made a face. “That’s the worst chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever tasted.”

“A steady diet of what Mako-chan and your mother cook has spoiled you,” Ryo said. “Cafeteria food is never what you’d call gourmet, and it’s certainly not up to their level.”

“That’s still no excuse. Pardon me for a minute, will you?” Usagi got up and headed for the counter to give the cafeteria workers a piece of her mind.

The lady at the register never knew what hit her.

# 

Ami had reached a decision.

It was not a choice she made lightly, though her head certainly felt light at the moment, nor was it one made in haste. Quite the contrary; she’d had several hours of enforced bedrest—couchrest?—to think things over. Somewhere in her examination of all of the facts and the subsequent analysis of the examination, it had occurred to Ami that her final decision was not merely the right choice, but the only choice, the obvious choice—so blindingly obvious, in fact, so immediately apparent that she couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t thought of it before.

Oh well. The important thing was that she had seen her way through the problem calmly, rationally, and patiently. All logical possibilities had been given equal consideration, all leaps of intuition carefully backed up with justifying facts, and all the facts confirmed beyond any doubt. Ami had her answer to the current situation, and it was simple:

Makoto had to die.

That, her fever-fogged brain rationalized, would solve everything quite nicely. Once Makoto was out of the picture, she’d stop checking Ami’s temperature, quit making her drink glasses of juice and heated broth, wouldn’t keep tucking the blankets up and telling her not to do anything to tire herself out; essentially, Ami would be left to die in peace, rather than this eternal-seeming torture. Asking Makoto to leave her alone hadn’t worked, and the odds of her stopping of her own free will were so incredibly small as to be almost nil, so that left only one solution.

It was her own fault, really. Ami held no malice towards her friend and current roommate, despite the considerable and steadily building list of Makoto’s shortcomings, but if the girl refused to acknowledge the simple, logical truth and leave Ami alone, she would pay for it.

*As soon as I remember how to stand up,* Ami thought. *And walk. And once I’ve figured out a way to kill her that won’t bring my lunch back up. Ulp.*

As soon as that thought went through her mind, Ami felt lunch start to move again. The memory of how to walk—how to _run,_ in fact—came back to her in a green flash of nausea; a set of precise orders on what to do next accompanied the revelation, as did an extremely graphic image of what would happen if she didn’t hurry.

She hurried.

Somewhere in the middle of bringing up what felt like everything she’d ever eaten, Ami noticed a gentle hand patting her back, heard a soft, angelic voice murmuring half-heard words of sympathy and encouragement. The unhesitating support was so touching that she could have cried—but she was too busy.

An eternity later, when there was finally nothing left to come up, Ami reached up for the flush handle in a slow, rather mechanical fashion—the fashion of a mechanism badly in need of a tune-up. The mate to that gentle hand beat her to it, and Ami, feeling another rush of boundless gratitude, turned and buried her face in the nearest available shoulder.

“Mako-chan,” she whispered tearfully, the rawness of her throat making the words difficult, “you’re my only friend.” *Not like the rest of those traitors, who go off to school and leave me here to suffer. Not like that smug, heartless, inhuman beast Ryo, who _says_ he loves me and then disappears for weeks at a time without so much as a phonecall to tell whether or not I’m even ALIVE.*

Ami tried to get up, but her legs felt like the muscles had liquefied, like her knees had been fused to the tiled floor. Again, the hands came to her rescue, helping her stand and walk—stagger—to the sink to clean her face and get a glass of water to wash that taste out of her mouth. That awful, burning, acidic vile bitterhothalfdigested... oh god.

# 

Ami looked around carefully. The precise, geometric landscape of the realm greeted her gaze in every direction, everything laid out on a grid of black and white squares around the central keep. The knights of the realm, arrayed on horseback, dipped their pennant-strewn lances in salute as her eyes passed; the bishops and generals lowered their gazes deferentially, respecting her proven strategic ability far more than any inherited right of command; even the lowly foot soldiers paused in their ceaseless drilling to salute smartly, with a ready willingness to obey that bordered on reverence.

All appeared to be as it should, yet she knew the seeming peace was a false one. The hated enemy, the dread menace, the Black Army, was on the move once again, pushing all resistance before them and leaving destruction in their wake; it fell to her, as it had many times in the past and would again in the future, to rally the force which would turn back their advance. No airy ballrooms or sparkling gardens for this queen, no lacy dresses or glowing jewels. Her gowns were of steel, her crown a battle-scarred helmet; her only ball was the grand dance of move and ploy and countermove, her only garden, the garden of war.

Her only love, a participant of that dance, a white bloom in that deadly, thorn-riddled garden where all was black despair and red fury.

Peerless in battle but gentle as a soft summer wind, a mind that rivaled her own and yet remained truer than the most faithful hunting hound, wise beyond his years and with courage enough for ten men, the White Knight rode at the head of her armies in every battle. He bore her standard into the field, carried her voice to the warriors, held her heart in his hand. It was said that young maidens across the land wept at the memory of his deep, reflective eyes and calm, serious face—wept once for the beauty of the man, whom any one of them would have traded her soul to have as her own, and then again for the pain mirrored in those eyes, the enduring knowledge that the one he truly loved was forever denied to him.

“Let our queen marry,” the people cried. “Let her have a king at last.”

“Not while there is still danger to the land,” she always replied. “Not until the Black Army is forever defeated can I set down weapons of war.”

“Let us take up the burden in your place,” her allies said. “The armies of red and gold, of green and silver, will hold back the darkness. Let the warriors of the Blue Queen rejoice with their loved ones, as the land shares in the happiness of its queen.”

“You need me,” she always reminded them. “I will not abandon you.”

*Let me be free,* her heart whispered.

*I have a duty,* she whispered back. *It must be followed.*

Duty pulled her one way, desire, another; love pulled equally alongside each.

Stalemate.

# 

“Ryo.”

Makoto sighed, removed the cotton cloth, and carefully laid the back of her hand against Ami’s forehead. Feeling the dull heat beyond the dry flesh, she replaced the original cloth with a fresh one, cool and damp. Ami stirred slightly, making a wordless, mewling noise in the back of her throat. Again, Makoto sighed.

Of the last twenty-four hours, Ami had been semiconscious or totally unconscious for perhaps fourteen. Almost none of that had been sleep—not the restful kind, anyway, not with that fever—and much of the rest of the time, she was getting sick.

Makoto did not like problems she couldn’t solve, and she was not emotionally constructed to handle waiting or reflection very well. Hers was a competitive nature, sometimes—frequently—to the point of aggression; her head knew that ‘losing’ was different from ‘not winning’ or ‘not winning just yet,’ but somebody had apparently neglected to pass that on to the rest of her. Long used to being physically strong almost to point of invincibility, at least among mere mortals, Makoto had little concept of being physically helpless. But when she was confronted by a problem that main strength—strength of body or strength of will, it was all the same in the end—couldn’t solve, then she got an idea of what the feeling was like.

She didn’t like it. Helplessness made her frustrated, and frustration made her angry. And when she got angry, the fights started.

Right now, Makoto felt helpless, _and_ frustrated, _and_ angry. And more than anything, she felt scared.

“Come on, Ami,” she said softly, taking her friend’s hand.

# 

Setsuna felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin.

Ikuko hadn’t lied about the store; it was quite close, quite small, and aside from the two of them, its cashier, and a handful of intermittent customers, quite empty. The fact that the city’s youth were still in school, and most of its adults still at work, meant that the streets and sidewalks were almost—but not entirely—empty while they walked to the store.

Even so, just getting beyond the front yard was something of a victory for Setsuna. It hadn’t helped that some maniac with a heavy foot on the gas had started squealing their tires the moment she started to step past the gate. Or that, halfway down the block, the biggest dog she could remember seeing got up and started barking at them through a gate that suddenly seemed much too low and flimsy and not nearly locked enough. Or that the sky, which until about ten seconds ago had been bright and clear, suddenly looked like it was gearing up for another snowstorm. Or that...

Setsuna shook her head, banishing the imagined worries. Ikuko was right; she’d been cooped up inside—first at the hospital, then at the Tsukino home—for too long. She knew she was going to have enough of a fight keeping her fear of crowds under rein; she didn’t need to pile a case of agoraphobia on top of it.

She looked up from the half-full basket she carried; apparently, this place was too small to rate actual shopping carts. “What else did we need?”

“Another jar of peanut butter, two cartons of milk, and of course, a box or two of that lemon tea you liked so much,” Ikuko said, shifting her own basket. “I’ll get the rest if you get the milk.”

“Freezer?” Setsuna asked. Like almost everything else, shopping was a new experience for her. Setsuna found that she was rather enjoying it, although a part of her felt a little guilty that she was living on someone else’s generosity.

Ikuko smiled. “See how easy it is?”

“Yes. A couple more trips like this, and I’ll be ready for the mall.” Setsuna tried to laugh, but it came out a little shaky, and Ikuko noticed easily.

“Don’t push yourself too hard, dear. One thing at a time.”

Setsuna nodded and went in search of the milk. She was on her way back from the freezer section at the rear of the store when it occurred to her that she had crossed the length of the place on her own without once stopping to worry about running into someone. And she realized that there were three or four people besides Ikuko that she might have run into—total strangers.

*I _knew_ they were there,* she realized, *and it didn’t bother me.* A tiny smile of triumph worked its way onto her lips. *Maybe I’m doing better than I thought.*

A very Minako-esque cry of victory formed in her mind. *Malls of the world, beware!*

# 

The others had decided it would be best to arrive at Makoto’s place in a group, so they were gathering at Usagi’s to drop off their books and other unnecessary weight, and to pick up Setsuna; ChibiUsa was getting a lift with the Outers. It would have been very nice to think that all this organization was out of concern for Ami, but in reality, there was some serious Senshi business that needed to be discussed where everyone could hear it, and soon—and this afterschool visit was as good a time as any.

It was a simple plan, a good plan—as Minako had put it, the plan gave ‘something to everyone for double or nothing’—and of course, since it was Usagi’s idea in the first place, everyone seemed to be conspiring against her to ruin it.

The first indication of trouble had arisen the night before, when she’d called to tell the Outers to be there, and received a vague reply of ‘we’ll stop by if we have the time,’ from Haruka. At first, Usagi had figured Haruka was just being difficult to tease her, but in light of later events, she was strongly inclined to reconsider.

Item Two on the Let’s Ruin Usagi’s Idea list was when Luna failed to appear during the entire walk home, even though Artemis appeared on schedule, hopping up to his favorite perch on Minako’s shoulders.

Something had been not quite right ever since the battle at the skyscraper. Luna, it seemed, wanted to forget that yesterday had ever happened, to imagine that the glitch in Ami’s computer and the huge moss-thing were all figments of shared imagination. Despite the impact of the previous day, Luna absolutely refused to talk to Usagi about it, and had raised the most astonishing ruckus of protest when she found out about the meeting. Usagi wasn’t sure what half of the words Luna had thrown at her meant, but if the other half were anything to go by, she was better off not knowing. Curiously, some of the untranslatables sounded familiar, in that half-remembered fashion which suggested to Usagi that the words and phrases were of Moon Kingdom origin.

Usagi didn’t know which part shocked her more: the fact that such words even existed during what was supposed to have been the highest point of human culture; the fact that Luna seemed to know them backwards and forwards; or the fact that she herself could recognize, _from prior experience,_ a mass of words and expressions that princesses aren’t supposed to know. Usagi suspected that Luna’s uncharacteristic refusal to discuss things she ordinarily wouldn’t have shut up about—to say nothing of her sudden fit of lunar profanities—had something to do with the security lockout that had appeared on the screen of the Mercury Computer, and the line of thought this eventually led her down was even more depressing.

Item Three came when Rei failed to meet them at the same street corner where the walking distance between Juuban High and T*A was least, and Item Four was when a now thoroughly-disgruntled Usagi, a blissfully cheery Minako, one nervous Artemis, and a Ryo whose silence absolutely _screamed_ the need to see Ami arrived at the Tsukino household and found it utterly, totally empty of any life larger than bacteria. A Post-It note slapped to the fridge, a place Usagi was guaranteed to look, told them that Ikuko and Setsuna were still out shopping.

And Item Five was the long, slow waiting for people—and cats—to start returning. By the time Ikuko and Setsuna appeared, side-by-side and each carrying a shopping bag, Usagi had twisted her ring so many times and with such force that the base of that finger was raw and red and probably in real danger of bruising.

“Welcome home,” she snapped tartly.

Ikuko smiled as if nothing was wrong. “Good afternoon, dear. How was school?” Not waiting for an answer, Ikuko glanced into the living room, receiving an enthusiastic smile-and-wave combo from Minako, a polite nod from Ryo. “Hello, Mina-chan. Hello, Urawa-san. Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Tsukino-san. Do you need a hand with any of that?”

“No, that’s all right; we’ve got it.” Ikuko headed into the kitchen to unpack; after nodding her own greeting to Minako, Ryo, and Artemis, Setsuna followed. “Usagi, are your brother or cousin home yet?”

“Haven’t seen either of them,” Usagi replied. “ChibiUsa was going over to Hotaru-chan’s, remember?”

“And they’ll meet you at Mako-chan’s; yes, I remember.” Over the sound of a box of something being set down, they heard Ikuko say, “Where _has_ that boy gotten himself to?”

“Someplace dark and crawling with bugs, I hope,” Usagi muttered before raising her voice. “Mom, did you let Luna out when you left? I’ve looked all over, and she doesn’t seem to be around.”

There was a pause in the shuffling of groceries. “No,” Ikuko said, sounding faintly puzzled, “now that you mention it, I’m quite sure Luna was still inside when we went out. Did you look under the beds and in the closets?”

Several minutes later, a housewide sweep had turned up no more sign of Luna than a few stray hairs.

“I always said Luna was a smart cat,” Ikuko said, “I guess I never realized just how smart. I can’t imagine how she got out of here.”

Seated on the living room couch, Artemis made a faint coughing sound, a not-so-subtle suggestion that _he_ could probably come up with a few ideas. Setsuna and the girls ignored him on principle, Ikuko asked Minako briefly if Artemis had a problem with hairballs, and Ryo just shook his head.

There was a knock at the door. Ikuko was the closest, so she answered it, and found Rei standing on the doorstep.

“Hello, Rei-chan. By any chance, have you seen Luna? She seems to have run off and hidden somewhere.”

“Sorry, no,” Rei replied. “I haven’t seen Luna at all today. But I did find something else that belongs to you, Tsukino-san.” Rei reached to her left and hauled the something—make that, the someone—into view. Shingo’s hair was more unruly than usual, and his clothes were damp and slightly muddy from a tumble through some snowbank or other.

“Who have you been fighting with?” Ikuko said flatly.

“Hi, mom.” Shingo grinned sheepishly. “A couple of the guys thought it might be funny to set up a snowball ambush in the schoolyard after last bell today. I guess things got a little out of control. It’s nothing, really.” Shingo tried to sell the story with his best smile, but Ikuko obviously wasn’t buying it.

“Go get cleaned up,” she ordered. “You can finish unpacking the groceries for me when you get back down, and then, young man, we are going to have a long talk about this sort of thing.”

Shingo knew better than to argue with his mother. Sighing bitterly in a futile attempt to earn sympathy points, he left his boots outside; Ikuko would see to it that he scraped every last fleck of mud off before she allowed those boots back in the house. Then Shingo put away his winter jacket, hung his head, and slunk upstairs. He was rather good at slinking by now; with the equivalent of three sisters in the house and a half-dozen more wandering the city, it was a rare day indeed when Shingo could get in trouble _without_ getting in trouble.

Usagi ignored the opportunity to nag her brother in favor of an even better opportunity to nag Rei for being late. On some level, a part of Usagi realized that she had to get this building moodiness out of her system before they saw Ami, and fighting with Rei was the perfect means to do that. Besides, after all the times Rei had chewed Usagi out for not getting to meetings on time, she richly deserved it.

“Where have you been?”

“I got held up at a school council meeting,” Rei said. “I _do_ have a life at school that involves more than eating, falling asleep, and getting in trouble -unlike some people I could name.”

“And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Would you like me to spell it out? I’ll even use small words, just for you.”

They were well into the dagger eyes and flaming auras part of the argument when the others herded them out of the house. Setsuna was halfway out the door when Ikuko stopped her.

“Remember what I said, Setsuna-chan. One thing at a time.”

“I remember. It helps when there are people I know around.” Setsuna smiled. “I’ll be fine... Ikuko-mama.”

Startled, Ikuko blinked. Then she started to laugh. “Oh no you don’t. I already have three children in this house, thank you very much, and you’re too old to start being the fourth.”

Setsuna shrugged. “Had to try. Is ‘Ikuko-chan’ better?”

“Much.” Ikuko hugged the younger woman. “Now get going.”

# 

Minako knocked on the door, the others crowding around her. There was a long wait, and then the door slid quietly open. Minako opened her mouth to gush her usual cheery greeting, and the words died on her lips.

“Mako-chan,” she said instead, “you look like hell.”

Makoto smiled wearily and ushered them in, looking a little less worn out. But only a little. It wasn’t simply that her clothes were rumpled and stained, or that several strands of hair had pulled loose from her trademark ponytail, or even that her face looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. There was a kind of exhaustion in how she moved, slower and less certain than usual, that was even more disturbing than the lack of neatness. Ami might be the one who was sick, but her illness was taking its toll on Makoto as well.

“Bad day?” Rei asked quietly.

“You don’t want to know,” Makoto said. She absently brushed some of those strands of hair out of her eyes, seeming not to notice when they fell right back down. “I was just about to make some tea and a little chicken soup for when Ami-chan wakes up. Did anybody want any?”

“We don’t want to spoil our dinners,” Rei said quickly, noticing the gleam in Usagi’s eyes that the mention of food always set off, “but some tea would be nice. Did you need any help?”

“No, I can get it. Make yourselves at home, but keep the noise down.” She looked quite pointedly at Usagi and Rei, the sort of gaze that spoke eloquently of pain. “I mean it.”

Heeding Makoto’s advice, the others kept quiet as they made their way into the living room. From Ryo’s vision, they expected to find Ami resting on the couch, but she wasn’t there.

“Bedroom,” Ryo mumbled cryptically, turning to head down the hall to Ami’s room when Makoto’s voice drifted in from the kitchen.

“And stay out of her room, all of you.” Again, there was that unspoken implication that anybody who disobeyed was going to get hurt. Ryo paused in midstep, wrestling internally with a number of conflicting impulses. Evidently, love won out over self-preservation, as he shook his head and continued down the hall.

For once, his prescient ability seemed to be working in his favor, giving him all the information he wanted. Ryo stepped over a floorboard that would have creaked, another that would have groaned, and turned the handle on Ami’s door very slowly to avoid the squeaky rattle. The hinges were well-oiled, fortunately, and the door swung open soundlessly; Ryo closed it behind him, carefully settling the wood to avoid a slam, and releasing the doorknob as slowly as he had turned it. Then he paused for a moment to consult with his gift, received a vision of Makoto serving tea to the others, and grinned in triumph. Safe! Then he turned to Ami.

His earlier vision had shown a very sick girl; this one appeared to have recovered a little. Her face was a great deal paler than Ryo could ever remember seeing it, to the point where even her lips seemed a bit white; Ami’s pallor and peaceful expression brought to mind the old fairy tales of princesses locked in glass coffins or spells of sleeping death, waiting a kiss to waken them.

Thinking about that, it occurred to Ryo that, in two years of what he hoped was at least a moderately serious relationship, he and Ami hadn’t actually kissed. He supposed the long-distance aspect of their relationship was to blame; both of them were somewhat reserved, and the fact that they saw each other maybe twice a month made things go even slower. Not that he’d minded waiting—well, maybe a little. Maybe a lot, in fact, but in Ryo’s opinion, the wait was worth it. And he suspected that Ami was just as glad not to have a romance to divide her attention whenever Senshi business came up.

*We missed a lot of opportunities just because we’re both a little shy about this sort of thing,* Ryo thought, *and we lost more chances because I wasn’t here, or because she had to help save the world—again. But I’m here _now._ Maybe this’ll give us a chance to make up for lost time... guess we’ll have to wait and see.*

Kneeling next to mattress, Ryo realized that this was another of those ’opportunities,’ but for one thing, he didn’t see much point in trying to kiss Ami if she wasn’t awake. Too easy. And she looked so perfect just sleeping there—*Blue pajamas,* Ryo noted, smiling. *Of course.*—that he couldn’t bring himself to spoil the image. Oh well.

Perfection shifted slightly, yawning and opening her eyes to examine the room. She had been having the most unusual dreams, and it was hard to tell whether this was reality or just a fever-inspired hallucination. “Ryo-kun? Is that you?”

“I think so. But then again, I might also be a figment of your imagination that just happens to look like your handsome, talented, loving, bril...”

Even though her own experience in these matters was admittedly limited, years of listening to her friends talk about boys, and of watching how Usagi dealt with Mamoru, told Ami exactly what to do in this situation. She brought a pillow around and whacked the ‘figment’ soundly across the head in the middle of the word ‘brilliant.’ It was a nice, down-filled pillow, soft and fluffy and surprisingly heavy.

“Patient,” Ryo added, earning another whack.

“...modest...” WHACK.

“...mmph-phmmph...” WHACK.

“...pheh, that tastes aw...” WHACK.

“Hey, what was that...” WHACK.

“Cut that out!” WHOOSH. “Ha! You mis...” WHACK. THUNK.

Ami leaned forward to regard the figure lying on the floor. “Had enough?” she inquired politely, holding the pillow at the ready.

“Just for that,” Ryo groaned, “I don’t think I’m going to kiss you after all.” Ami raised an eyebrow and hefted the pillow again, and Ryo quickly waved his hands to fend off the attack. “Okay, okay!” Then he looked up. “Does that mean you _want_ me to kiss you?”

Ami thought about it. “It’s probably better if you don’t,” she admitted. “I don’t feel very kissable right now.”

“You _look_ kissable.” He said it with such sincerity that Ami blushed.

There was a moment of silence, and then Ami looked around. “Could you hand me that dressing gown?”

Ryo retrieved it. “It’s not _that_ cold.”

“Tell that to Mako-chan,” Ami said dryly, throwing the thing on over her pajamas and tying it shut. She got to her feet, but quickly sat back down again as her brain tried to settle into her stomach, which in turn tried to... she pushed the image out of her mind and waved Ryo away. “I can do this. Just give me a minute.”

“Not a chance,” Ryo said, helping her stand. “I see you walking down _that_ hall in _that_ dressing gown, and leaning substantially on a shoulder that I’m rather attached to.” Ami glared at him, and Ryo shrugged. “We can go now, or we can wait for the next ten minutes while you stagger around, Ami-chan, but like it or not, you’re not leaving this room completely under your own power.”

There wasn’t much she could say to that. Although Ryo sometimes misinterpreted or misplaced the timing of the events in his visions, anything he actually _saw_ happening would happen just as he saw it. As long as he stuck purely to that, he was always right; it was when he tried to predict what would happen after the events shown in the vision that Ryo started getting into trouble. Ami had argued him out of a few such misconceptions before, but she really didn’t feel up to it just now, so she gave in and let him help her out of the room.

*This is kind of nice,* she admitted to herself. Not that she wanted to make a habit of being too weak to stand, but having Ryo help her for a change, instead of the other way around, was sort of... pleasant. A little distracting, too, since their proximity was telling Ami some _very_ interesting things about Ryo as they walked. *I didn’t think his shoulders were so... I mean, his hands are very... oh bother.* She was blushing again.

“Ami-chan? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lied. Well, half-lied. “What are you asking me for, anyway? Didn’t your vision tell you whether we’d reach the living room without me falling over?”

“Oh, well, uh...” For some reason, Ryo was suddenly trying to look away. “That is, it...”

Something suspicious flashed through Ami’s mind. “You didn’t actually have a vision, did you? You just let me _think_ that you did, didn’t you?”

“Uh, well, um, you see, I...” Ryo tried backing up, but Ami was advancing on him at the same time, and it really is very hard to get away from someone whose shoulders you happen to have one arm around. Then his heel caught on the edge of a slightly elevated floorboard; in trying to back away from Ami while helping her stand, Ryo was too far off-balance to catch himself, and he fell over backwards. With a yelp of surprise, Ami fell with him.

Drawn by the yelp and the successive thud, a number of heads poked around the corner at the end of the hall, looking on in shared confusion at the scene on the floor. Ryo was pinned beneath Ami, desperately trying to breathe between explosive bouts of laughter as he attempted to fend off her fingers, which were poking him repeatedly in every sensitive spot Ami could think of—which was quite a few—while she called him some extremely complicated names.

“Are they always this friendly?” ChibiUsa asked curiously. Ami looked up, and so did Ryo—only upside-down. On seeing the rest of the Senshi gathered at the end of the hall, watching with a variety of expressions, both of them turned absolutely scarlet.

“Not usually,” Minako replied. “I’m sure we’re going to love hearing their excuse. At least, I know _I_ am.”

If it was at all possible, Ami turned even redder.

# 

The excuse took about fifteen minutes, and the light soup which Makoto and Michiru insisted that Ami eat took about seven more. And then there were the bowls of Jello that Makoto had made for the rest of them to snack on. Then they got down to business. Or tried to. With Luna absent, they had to fall back on Artemis for information, and there were some serious doubts as to whether or not the usually happy-go-lucky furball could deliver.

For once, he surprised them.

“A mana nexus isn’t a machine in the modern sense of the word. It doesn’t contain any mechanisms, and it doesn’t operate according to the laws of science. Not as you know them, anyway.” Artemis paused. “I guess the best way to describe a nexus is as the magical equivalent of a nuclear reactor; very complex, provides a lot of power, and has some very nasty consequences attached if it ever blows up.”

“How does it work?” Michiru asked.

“I don’t know the exact details, but it’s sort of like... no, actually, it’s more like... do you know what ley lines are?” There was a round of headshakes and confused looks, but Ami, Michiru, and Haruka were frowning thoughtfully.

“When she was telling us how to shut that thing down,” Haruka said slowly, “Luna said to visualize lines of energy. I saw a few at first, but then a lot more than I was thinking of started to appear. They were coming up out of the ground and down from the air. Is that what you mean?”

“That’s them,” Artemis confirmed. “The ley lines are conduits of elemental energy, and they extend all over the world; if you tap into that energy, you can use it. That’s what you’re doing when you use your powers as Senshi; you take a little of your own energy and link into the greater energy of the ley lines. That’s why Mars can summon fire out of thin air, for example; the energy is generated in other places—forest fires, volcanoes, sunlight, even the body heat of animals and people—but the ley lines carry it all over the world, waiting for somebody to use it.” Artemis frowned. “Of course, it’s also the presence of high concentrations of energy that cause or create things like fires in the first place, and the whole process sort of loops in on itself to... oh, never mind. You don’t need to know all that right now. The ley lines carry energy, and the untapped energy is referred to as ‘mana.’”

“And how does this fit in with a mana nexus?” Michiru asked.

“Well, the _original_ meaning for ‘mana nexus’ was a place in the natural world where a number of ley lines came very close together—they don’t actually ever touch—giving the surrounding area was a major boost of available magic energy. The more lines there were in a nexus, the more places you could reach to gain energy. Originally, only intelligent beings with a certain kind of training could tap into the ley lines, but somebody eventually figured out how to build a device which could draw out mana energy without any effort. The best place to build those devices was over a nexus, so they were named accordingly.” Artemis scratched behind his ear.

“I don’t get it,” Makoto objected. “Why would Luna get so worked up over something like this? Somebody bad wants to collect a lot of energy; so what? We’ve been there before.”

“Not like this, you haven’t. You see, you may _use_ elemental power as Senshi, but the basic part of your powers comes from _you,_ not the world around you. You need the right combination of spiritual, mental, and physical discipline in order to tap into mana in the first place; as you increase your own energy, you can do more with the power you’re able to harness, but the power doesn’t need _you._ It’s always there, whether you are or not. No direction, no intent, no morality; just raw force. That’s why it was so hard for the three of you to shut down that nexus. You weren’t fighting its mind or programming, because it doesn’t have either; you were fighting the basic elemental force that was running the thing.”

“Is that why I feel so...?” Ami asked, not bothering to finish the question.

Artemis nodded. “You were dealing with more undirected power than you were used to. Haruka and Michiru handled it better because they’re older, with more accumulated strength and internal energy, and because they had their Talismans to help focus and direct the power.”

“And my whole body _still_ feels like one giant bruise,” Haruka chuckled ruefully.

“All of this is very interesting,” Minako said, in a tone which wasn’t even remotely interested, “but it still doesn’t explain why Luna tripped out on us.”

“‘Skipped’ out,” Artemis grumbled, “and I was getting to that, if you’ll just wait. Mana nexi were in common use for a long time, well before the Silver Millennium, because the power they generated could be used for all sorts of things. Set up one nexus to harness electrical energy, and you could power a modern city; set up another to harness fire, and you could keep it warm.”

“Or use wind and water to control the weather,” Rei noted.

“Exactly. Dozens of different variations were created, but the basic design remained the same; take mana energy from the environment and put it into use. Nobody ever thought there’d be a problem, because all they were doing was tapping what was naturally present, and nothing was being damaged. At least, that’s what everyone thought.” Artemis sighed. “One mana nexus by itself isn’t a problem. Even ten, or a hundred, are reasonably safe, because the power they draw off has time to diffuse into the environment and be cycled back into the ley lines, where it can be used again. But when you have a hundred thousand nexi running at full power, all the time, all over the planet, there just isn’t enough power to go around. Things just started to shut down.”

“How do you ‘shut down’ a planet?” Makoto asked, frowning.

“Think about it,” Ami said. “Water energy is being drained off, so lakes and oceans start to dry up. Earth energy that should be sustaining plants is instead being used to prevent earthquakes, so forests and all the animals in them start to die. Fire energy is being used to heat cities while the rest of the world gets colder, and air energy that should be circulating fresh air is being used to prevent storm winds, so the atmosphere starts to stagnate.” *It’s not even a remotely scientific explanation,* she admitted to herself, *but then, this isn’t science.*

“And the energy of the planet’s magnetic field is being used to power those cities,” Artemis added, “so the field itself fluctuates, and lethal doses of solar radiation start to get through. Of course, this is assuming that the drain on earth and fire energies doesn’t shut down the movement of the molten core which creates that field in the meantime. Without power to maintain themselves, the ley lines fall apart, which means there’s nowhere for the energy to return, so it gets concentrated into small areas that keep on shrinking, consuming themselves from the inside. And eventually, when the last bit of power is used up, the last ley lines vanish, and all the power that would normally seep back into them just sort of drifts off into eternity instead, leaving a dead planet behind. That’s not even the worst of it, though.”

“It gets _worse?_” Usagi protested.

“Considerably. Do you remember what I said on New Year’s? About how there were other civilizations on Earth a long time before the Moon Kingdom and all the other ones we knew about?”

“I remember,” Rei said. “You mentioned something about ruins left behind in other parts of the solar system.”

Artemis nodded. “When the ley lines began to fade out, it got harder to use magic in certain areas of the world, and in some places, it was downright impossible. That meant that existing magic, whether spells, abilities, or devices, stopped working in those areas. And when that happened, people found out that those lost civilizations had left behind other things besides ruins. ‘Imprisoned’ is probably a better term than ‘left behind,’ but the ‘things’ part is pretty accurate. They were sealed beneath the surface in cells that were virtually indestructible—virtually, because they were powered by magic. When magic started to fade, the cells began to fail, and some of those things got loose.”

“What sort of ‘things’ are we talking about, here?” Michiru asked.

“You really don’t want to know, believe me.” Artemis shuddered. “I saw a picture of one once, and that was enough to give me nightmares for a month. Suffice to say, they were big, ugly, and powerful, and they were _extremely_ cranky about having been locked up for who knows how long, so they took out their frustration on whatever happened to be handy. Eventually, they were all either destroyed or sealed back up.”

“And people stopped using mana nexi?” Ami guessed.

“No. At the time, everyone thought the monsters had been the cause of the drain. It was a handy excuse so they wouldn’t have to consider the possibility that their own inventions were the problem, and the fact that the planet started to recover afterwards made it seem like they were right.” Artemis shook his head. “What was actually going on was that so many people had died, and so many nexi had been destroyed, that the drain on the ley lines was low enough for them to actually recover. It took centuries of rebuilding before the drain increased to the danger point again, but when it did, one of the old beasts got loose and went on the usual rampage. After it had been stopped, some people started putting two and two together without getting five.” Artemis stopped suddenly and looked suspiciously at Minako.

“What? What did I do?”

“I’ve been hanging around you too long,” Artemis said sourly. “I’m starting to talk like you do.” He shook his head. “At any rate, once the connection between the nexi and the global drain was realized, it was inevitable that they’d be removed, but the change took a long time, because a lot of people never admitted the problem, and others didn’t want to give up the comfort a nexus could afford. When the Moon Kingdom was founded, the original Serenity passed a decree prohibiting the construction or use of mana nexi, and it was during the reign of Serenity VII that the last nexus was destroyed. The designs for them were classified by the Silver Council in the early years of what was eventually to become the Silver Millennium, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“That was quite a story,” Setsuna murmured. “But why would Luna be so upset about it?”

“It hardly sounded like you let any state secrets slip,” Minako added.

“I didn’t, but she would have. You see, Luna had better security clearance than I did because she worked with the Queen and the Princess more closely. Part of the security measures put in place for things like mana nexi was a geas not to-”

“A what?” Haruka asked.

“Geas. It’s a type of magic, sort of like a really powerful post-hypnotic suggestion. In this case, people with high-level clearance were spelled so they literally _couldn’t_ talk about what they knew except under very specific circumstances—meetings of the Silver Council or really extreme emergencies, for the most part. I didn’t have that kind of clearance.”

“Then how did you know all this?” Hotaru asked.

“He’s a Grade-A sneak,” Minako said, “that’s how.”

“Basically true,” Artemis admitted, totally unashamed. “I had enough clearance to know a few things, and I heard other things from time to time that I wasn’t really supposed to. And the library in the Royal Palace had a _lot_ of books, let me tell you. After a while, it all just jelled together.”

“Speaking of things jelling,” Hotaru asked, looking up at Makoto. “Is there any of that Jello left?”

“Help yourself.”

Hotaru grinned. “I intend to.”

Hotaru was trying to decide whether she wanted lime or strawberry when she heard a faint knock at the door. Glancing into the living room, she saw that the others were arguing about something and hadn’t heard the knock, so she headed for the front door.

There was a stranger standing on the doorstep, a fellow of about medium height whom she didn’t recognize. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but his grey eyes were sort of striking, and his hair—also grey—made him seem older than his face might have suggested. He had a black cat curled up in his arm, a cat who-

“Luna!” Luna made a faint meow, and Hotaru looked up at the man.

“Tsukino Usagi?” he asked.

“No, I’m Tomoe Hotaru. Usagi-chan’s inside. Where did... I mean, how did you...”

He smiled faintly and indicated the Department of Animal Control insignia on his jacket. “I found her getting chased by a rather nasty dog in the park.” He tapped Luna’s black collar, half-hidden under her fur, which had Usagi’s address and phone number on it. “When I called, a lady named Ikuko answered, and when I told her where I was, she told me that her daughter was visiting a friend in the area. It was on my way home, so I offered to drop the cat off. I understand Usagi-san has been worried about her.”

“She has, and she’ll be glad to see her,” Hotaru said, taking Luna. “Thank you very much.”

“All part of the job, Tomoe-san. Have a nice day.” The fellow tipped his hat and headed back down the stairs, whistling an odd tune Hotaru didn’t recognize.

“Where have you been?” Hotaru asked as soon as she was sure the grey-haired man was out of earshot.

“Getting chased by a pitbull the size of a bear,” Luna said. “Could you tell me if... has Artemis... did he...”

“He told us,” Hotaru said, surprised by just how difficult it was for Luna to ask. Evidently, that was one whammy of a spell.

“Where have you been?” Usagi asked a moment later.

“I already asked that,” Hotaru said. “A man from Animal Control found her in the park, being chased by a dog. He called your place, your mother told him where you were, and he swung by.”

“That was nice of him,” Minako noted. “Was he cute, too?”

“He was a little too old for you, Mina-chan. At least,” Hotaru amended, “I think he was. It was sort of hard to tell; he had grey hair, but he wasn’t that old.”

Haruka looked up sharply, her eyes narrowing as the image of the mysteriously helpful airline attendant in Berlin floated out of the back of her mind.

“Well,” Usagi was saying, “Artemis explained about why you couldn’t tell us anything, so I guess I can forgive you. But why did you take off like that? You could have just sat here and kept quiet.”

“Actually, I couldn’t. Part of the geas is... the nature of the spell...” Luna was once again fighting to get the words out.

“It’s one of the conditions of the geas,” Artemis said quickly. “Compulsion to avoid situations where the blocked topic is being discussed.” Luna exhaled and gave him a grateful look.

“I think we’re going to have to do something about that,” Ami said. “We can’t really afford to have you start stuttering in the middle of a battle.”

“Good point,” Rei agreed. “Is there any way to remove the geas?” She barely stumbled over the word at all.

Artemis shook his head. “The geas was designed to stand up to every sort of mental probing known. There are ways to get by its defenses and remove the whole thing, but I don’t know what they are.”

“And I can’t tell you what they are,” Luna added. “Besides, this level of geas is the equivalent of a royal decree; it takes another royal decree to countermand it.”

“I could do that,” Usagi said.

“No, you couldn’t. You may be a queen in another thousand years, but that’s Crystal Tokyo; as far as the Moon Kingdom is concerned, you’ll always be a princess. That goes for their magic, too.”

“Oh.” Usagi frowned, then sighed. “Well, I guess there’s only one solution; we’re going to have to go to the Moon.”

“Exactly,” Luna said, “there’s no way to...” She broke off in mid-sentence with a curious kind of choked snort when she realized what Usagi had said. “Excuse me?!”

“Oh, come on,” Usagi said. “It’s not like it’d be the first time. And Queen Serenity’s still up there, remember?”

“You’re in no condition to...” Luna started to say.

“Oh, bother that.” ‘Bother’ wasn’t actually the word Usagi used. “We already know that we can teleport with a few passengers, and ChibiUsa can fill in for me. And if we bring the Outers along as well, there’ll be plenty of extra power. I won’t have to _do_ anything.”

“That’s not the point,” Luna said, although it was in fact the point she had been about to make. “Teleporting is _dangerous,_ Usagi. You break every molecule in your body down into energy, shoot it somewhere else, then reassemble it. Your baby’s still growing right now, and if something gets misplaced in the teleport...”

“Actually,” ChibiUsa broke in, “she’ll be fine. We will, I mean. What I mean to say is...” She stopped and took a breath before trying again. “Teleporting isn’t any more dangerous for a pregnant woman than for anybody else, as long as nothing interferes with the trip.”

“How do you know that?” Luna asked.

“Well, there was this time about... two years ago, I think, when M-mmph!” She clapped her hands over her mouth, cutting off the name at the last possible second.

“Good recovery,” Hotaru said dryly, nudging her friend in the ribs. Then she leaned towards the others and, in an intentionally loud whisper, said, “It’s one of those things she’s not supposed to tell us about.”

“We sort of guessed that,” Setsuna whispered back. “ChibiUsa?”

“Mmph?”

“I take it you were going to say that one of us had, or rather, _will_ have, the occasion to teleport while she is... expecting? And nothing bad happens as a result?” ChibiUsa nodded, making a nonverbal sound of agreement. “Good.”

“Well,” Usagi said triumphantly. “Problem solved. Do we leave right now or wait until after dinner?”

# 

It took them almost an hour to actually get underway.

The first delay was due to the fact that, for a variety of reasons, Setsuna hadn’t transformed into Pluto once since her arrival; as they had coached her through the change from her Senshi self into her civilian identity, so too now did the girls have to lead Setsuna through the process of the transformation. As Haruka pointed out—before Michiru smacked her across the back of the head—it went a lot easier if you didn’t stop to consider that, magic or not, what you were effectively doing was taking off all your clothes in public. Naturally, this not only made things even more difficult for Setsuna, but it made some of the other girls stop in the middle of transforming.

Ryo left the room rather quickly at that point, and after several moments of being stared at, Artemis followed him.

The second delay was when Ami tried to transform and nearly blacked out, dropping her pen and the magic swirling around it as a sharp pain lanced through her head. The energy dissipated in a most unexpected way when it hit the floor, leaving everything in the room dusted with a light layer of frost. Makoto—or Jupiter, by that point—was understandably not too thrilled about what the sudden burst of cold was going to do to her plants, but they were all more immediately concerned about Ami.

“You’re still recovering from the overload,” Luna explained. “I was afraid this might happen, but there was no way to be sure just how bad it was until you actually tried to transform. You’ll still be able to become Mercury,” she added quickly, seeing the horrified expression that was starting to build on Ami’s face. “It’ll just take a few days for your body to get its strength back and cycle the con... the infe...” Again, the geas intruded. “It’ll pass,” Luna finished lamely.

“Can we teleport without Mercury?” Mars asked.

Luna looked at Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Pluto, and ChibiMoon. “I think you’ll manage.”

There was yet another delay when ChibiUsa transformed. Venus had said to Mars, during their search of the airport some weeks before, that she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that their time-traveling friend could turn into a full-fledged Sailor Moon rather than the cutesy and essentially useless ChibiMoon they all remembered. This more or less proved to be the case, as ChibiUsa disappeared and was replaced by someone with pink hair, red eyes, and an almost exact replica of the original Sailor Moon fuku—right down to the specifics of the flashy light show and the post-transformation pose.

The other Senshi expected that Usagi, who was fiercely protective of her alter-ego and everything that went with it, would explode on learning about this ’impostor.’ They were more than a little surprised when, instead of going up in a mushroom cloud of righteous indignation, Usagi calmly complimented ‘Sailor Moon’ on her outfit, and then asked whether she had her tiara throw down or not.

“Luna keeps telling me I drift a little to the left in practice drills,” she admitted with a grimace.

“I had the same problem,” Usagi commiserated. “It’s hard to get that thing to go where you want, isn’t it?”

“I _know._ And when you’ve got to take airspeed and direction and all that into account...”

“Oh, don’t get me started. There was this one time that I...”

“IF you two don’t mind,” Luna interrupted.

“She’s right,” Usagi said. “We can compare notes later.”

“Right.”

They called Ryo and Artemis back in and did their best to gather into something that loosely resembled the usual circle of five the Inner Senshi used when group-teleporting. It was necessary to make some adjustments to account for the increased number of travelers, of course, and a few more to account for the rather limited space in the living room. And there was one more little delay.

“Will you STOP doing that?” Mars demanded of Venus, who had discovered that it was possible for her to go from one Senshi identity to the other simply by touching the index fingers of both hands to the gemstone in her tiara. Sailor V’s mask would then flow out from under the tiara while the rest of her uniform underwent the various cosmetic changes—symbols, stitching, and so on—that distinguished Sailor Venus from the ‘new and improved Sailor V.’ The problem was that Venus seemed unable to stick with one guise, and was switching her appearance around every twenty seconds or so—and it was _really_ getting on Mars’ nerves.

“I just want to look my best,” Sailor V said. “We _are_ going to visit a queen, after all.”

“Uh, V,” Jupiter said, “I don’t think there are going to be many of your fans on the Moon.”

Sailor V frowned. “I guess you’re right. Nuts.” And she shifted back to Venus.

They all closed their eyes—the Senshi because it helped them concentrate, the rest because, as Artemis said, you _really_ didn’t want to see what the rest of the universe looked like while you were being turned inside out and backwards.

Makoto’s apartment filled with multicolored light...

# 

In a room that was several blocks away and a few stories down from the apartment, a man fell off his chair as alarms began to go wild all around him. A dozen monitors were showing sine-wave patterns the size of mountains while devices similar to odometers—similar in appearance, if not actual function—racked up several thousand ‘miles’ in a few seconds of operation.

The man grabbed a telephone from his desk and pushed one of only three buttons on it before shouting into the receiver. “This is monitor six to control! Control, come in!”

“This is control, what... Monitor six, what’s going on? It sounds like you’ve got a whole fire brigade in there!”

“The detection system just picked up a whopper of a power spike, control. Multiple source signals, energy vectors all over the charts... I don’t think we’ve got anything like this on record.”

“Hang on, monitor six. We’re sending a team up. Keep the system recording as long as you can.”

“Will do, control.”

# 

Proteus was not much better prepared for the energy surge than ‘monitor six.’ Those of its sensory clusters located near the source curled up and blacked out from the energy overload, and its entire network shorted out.

Around the city, eight men and women with little star-shaped devices stuck to their necks—devices made of green, mosslike matter—suddenly stumbled and looked around as if waking up from a dream. The moment of confusion passed as Proteus restored the functioning of its network, and what had been a roar of pain in their minds returned to the quiet presence it had been since New Year’s Eve.

# 

The spell-constructed image hovering in the air before her wavered suddenly. The girl half-turned as a sense of... something... brushed against the edges of the defensive spells Archon had taught her, spells which wrapped her home in layers of enshrouding energy and allowed her to practice in secret.

The sudden feeling had something to do with magic, of that she was certain, but not hers. It had been too brief a sensation for her to identify the source, but somehow, she knew that Archon was not responsible. If he were to test her, there would not be that feeling of... leaving?

That bothered her. Someone was using magic. But if not her, or her teacher, then who?

# 

Anon looked up at the dimming sky. It was going to be a pretty night, he suspected; the stars were beginning to appear, and the moon, though a few days past full waxing, was still bright in the sky. And with the color panorama being provided by the setting sun, well...

He blinked as a streak of light cut across the heavens, something VERY bright and moving VERY fast. There was an old superstition that shooting stars were omens of disaster, but somehow, looking at this one, Anon didn’t feel the slightest bit afraid. He watched the comet—it had to be a comet, since it was moving away, not falling down and burning up in the atmosphere—for a minute or so before it disappeared into the light of the low-hanging moon.

Anon was on his way back inside when he recalled something from a science class taken a number of years ago; regardless of which way they are moving, comets’ tails always project _away_ from the sun, whose heat and solar wind are what create them in the first place.

This comet’s tail had been pointing in the wrong direction.

# 

Ryo had, in his admittedly short lifetime, spent many hours dealing with the sensation of space and time intruding itself upon his awareness. He had once been briefly metamorphosed into something with a body the size of a tank and a heart colder than ice, and had also been imprisoned alongside four other people and one cat in a chunk of crystal less than half the size of his hand.

Even with all that, being disassembled into his component atoms, then having said atoms shot through a void of about 385,000 kilometers, to be reassembled on the surface of a celestial body where the specter of explosive decompression raised its ugly head—well, this was a new experience for him, and his body had to find some way of expressing its reaction.

He sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” Venus said from across the circle.

Ryo sneezed a second time. “You can say that again.”

“I don’t think I can, actually.” Venus looked around as Ryo sneezed a third time. “Do you suppose he’s allergic to moon dust?”

“If he is, he’s in big trouble.” Jupiter made a meaningful sort of nod at the surrounding dust plain.

Ryo took a seat on a nearby boulder and concentrated on the twitch in his nostrils—specifically, on getting it to go away. At some point, he noticed that there were grooves in the boulder, grooves which felt unusually even and regular. Looking down, Ryo saw he was actually sitting on a piece of a toppled column, first cousin of the pillars he had seen in Greece. Looking up, and then around, he saw quite a few other bits of debris decorating what should have been a completely empty landscape.

“Can somebody explain to me why no astronomers or astronauts have ever thrown a fit about finding thousand year-old ruins on the Moon?”

“They didn’t see them,” Luna replied. “See that haze in the sky?” They looked up—Ryo noted that, unlike images from the various moon landings, the lunar sky in this area was a faint blue rather than pitch black, but he let it pass without comment—and saw what Luna was talking about; the distant Earth seemed a little blurry around the edges, and a similar sort of rainbow-shift distortion appeared when they looked out at the line along the horizon where the endless sky touched the dusty lunar surface.

“What’s left of the royal palace is surrounded by a force field,” Artemis explained. “It’s a combination of atmospheric shield and what modern techno-babble would refer to as a cloaking device; it lets _us_ move around freely up here and keeps everyone else on Earth from seeing things they’re not ready to deal with just yet.”

“Ah.” Ryo glanced around with something close to devious twinkling in his eye. “Isn’t there supposed to be a rabbit up here somewhere?”

“You just never mind about the rabbit,” Usagi warned him, walking off towards the largest concentration of rubble.

“I tried that one the last time we were here,” Jupiter explained.

They followed Usagi into what had once been the heart of the longest age of peace in human history. The Inner Senshi had been here once before, and very little had changed from what they remembered; as Ami could have explained, the lack of weather, plant life, or geological activity means that the Moon doesn’t change much when left to itself. The toppled pillars and shattered blocks were still covered with the same layer of fine dust, no more and no less, but they did not find their own footprints; nobody except Ami and Luna stopped to wonder about that, and they both realized that this was another, admittedly minor result of that annoying time loop.

They were all fairly quiet as they walked. There was something about this place that was reminiscent of the air in an empty church, something equal parts peace, sanctity, and the faint sense of being watched. The Senshi and the two cats were also reliving flashes of their former lives, brief bursts of bittersweet recognition for this or that upright column or misplaced stone rising up in their minds, wistful ghosts that almost seemed to reconstruct the ruined splendor of a time long since past. Pluto and ChibiMoon were not experiencing this reverie—the one because she could not remember, the other because she had never belonged to the age from which the ruins and their attending phantoms dated—but they also felt a kinship with the dead land.

Ryo was also quiet, but for different reasons. Rather than peace, he felt unease; he felt the sanctity of this place not as he would on walking into a church, but as if he were violating a grave, and the sensation of watchful eyes was not that of the gaze of a benevolent spirit, but of a thousand creeping things hiding among the shadows.

Up ahead, Usagi stopped, standing before a relatively dust-free section of floor, on which a large and intricate image had been carved. “We’re here,” she announced.

“What is that?” Neptune asked, pointing at the symbol. “It looks familiar.”

Luna said a word that wasn’t Japanese or English or any other language any of them could speak, but which sounded familiar. “That’s what we called them; there isn’t a word today which could describe them completely. They were sort of like phone booths, information desks, and public Internet access all in one; if you were in a hurry and had the right clearance, you could use them to teleport, too.” Luna stood over the symbol and said another word. The raised lines briefly glowed with blue-white light, but nothing else happened.

“Let me try,” Usagi said, moving into the circle with Luna. “Do I have to say anything?”

“The computer won’t give you access unless you use the correct commands,” Luna admitted, “but we’re not trying to talk to the computer here. Just call Queen Serenity; she’ll recognize you even if the computer doesn’t.”

Usagi nodded. “Queen Serenity.” There was a pause, but nothing happened. “Hello?” Another silence. Usagi thought for a moment, then smiled. “Mother.”

That got a few raised eyebrows, but it worked. The symbol glowed again, more brightly than when Luna had activated it, and a pillar of light and shadow rose up into the air. There was a sudden flash, and everyone averted their eyes. When they looked back, there was a silence.

Usagi and Luna had vanished.

# 

They were standing in a room which appeared to be made entirely of crystals and light. The floor on which they stood was a raised balcony, glossy smooth panels of shimmering white surrounded by a low wall of blunted crystal prongs, from which they looked out into the cavernous main chamber. The balcony was the only level space; everywhere else was glowing, multicolored masses of crystal, some larger than Usagi, others smaller than her little finger, all of them protruding from the walls and ceiling at odd angles. Arcs of energy danced between certain of the gleaming structures, and a faint hum filled the air.

“Where are we?” Usagi asked, somewhat nervously. She blinked as she realized that her voice sounded different; after a moment, she also realized that her everyday clothes had been replaced by the flowing white gown of her alter ego, the Moon Princess. *So much for not transforming,* she thought absently. Worried, she touched one hand to the swell of her belly, but in the same instant she knew that, somehow, everything was all right.

“Do not be afraid, dear one,” a familiar voice said behind her. Usagi/Serenity turned.

“Hello, mother.” She/they were still nervous, but for entirely different reasons. Two entirely separate lives were coiling around each other in the same head, one the life of a not-so-ordinary teenage schoolgirl, the other the life of a long-dead princess; the situation which faced her/them now evoked very similar and yet very different responses.

Usagi was a little nervous about speaking to someone who was most definitely, but not quite completely, dead. Moreover, it was never easy for her to deal with the fact that this dead woman was, or had been, her mother; to Usagi, mother had always been Ikuko, the housewife. She was uncomfortable appearing before such a flawlessly beautiful woman in her current condition—at five months, there was no hiding the obvious, not even in the loosely-gathered gown she was wearing—and just a touch scared about being whisked away from her friends to some place she didn’t recognize.

Serenity, on the other hand, had no trouble dealing with the fact that this was her mother, or that she was dead; being technically dead herself, the Moon Princess held a different view on the matter than the latest incarnation of her spirit. The room that Usagi found strange and unfamiliar, Serenity recognized immediately as being somewhere in the vast computer complex buried beneath the palace; the humming crystals and dancing energy all around were the mechanisms and memory banks of that very device. What bothered Serenity was that there were very strict rules for princesses, and her current condition violated more than one of those rules. She was terribly afraid that her mother would be disappointed in her.

There was no disappointment evident on the dead Queen’s face, just the same gentle smile she always seemed to have—’always’ being a grand total of two times ‘in the flesh,’ plus a few half-complete dreams and other bits of memory.

“Do not be afraid,” Serenity repeated gently. “You are safe here.” The Queen looked down. “Hello, Luna.”

“Your Majesty,” Luna replied, bowing her head. “If I may ask, why did you not respond when I accessed the computer? And why bring us here?”

“The computer detected a source of negative energy in your vicinity,” Serenity replied. “I couldn’t be sure whether it was safe to speak to you all or not.” She turned to Usagi. “I knew you would speak to me when Luna failed; that gave me the opportunity to bring you here, where the faculties of the computer and what powers I have left are at their strongest. When you passed through the transit beam, I was able to access your memories and determine why you had come.” The smile took on a hint of understanding. “You should know by now, dear one, there is nothing you could ever do that will make me ashamed of you.”

Usagi/Serenity felt her/their heart leap. Before she/they could think, she/they were moving forward to wrap her/their arms around the Queen. It occurred to both sides at the last second that the Queen was just a disembodied spirit inhabiting a projected image of her long-dead body; there would be nothing to hug.

Imagine her/their surprise when Queen Serenity turned out to be as solid and as warm as anyone still breathing, and returned the embrace.

“I told you,” the Queen said, responding to the question before it could be asked, “this is where I have the most power. The computer has enough energy to project a solid hologram when there is need. And there was a need,” Serenity added in a thick voice. “I have missed you, little moonchild.”

“Mother,” Usagi/Serenity said, both sides fully comfortable with the word, both on the verge of tears.

Luna looked away, brushing aside tears of her own.

After a very long time, mother and daughter pulled apart. “As much as I might wish otherwise,” Serenity said, “time moves ahead without pause. And we have a great deal to do.”

Usagi nodded. Somewhere during that hug, the barriers between schoolgirl and princess had gone away; ‘they’ were ‘she’ now. “You said something about negative energy.”

“The one you call Ryo.”

Usagi and Luna both blinked. “Ryo? But he’s not... I mean, he _was,_ but I...”

“I know. The computer was not programmed to discern between passive and active forms of dark energy; it picked up the last traces of the shadow within your friend and assumed him to be a threat. An error which I was, fortunately, able to correct before any harm came to him.” The Queen smiled ruefully. “Some of the defenses of this place are still in operation, even after all this time, and they might have reacted against the young man. That will not happen, now.”

“Ami will be glad to hear that.”

Serenity smiled. “I imagine so. Now, as to the matter which brought you here...” She turned and passed one hand over a nearby podium. Several crystals near the ceiling resonated a higher note than their neighbors, at which point several of the panels in the floor began to rise. When the column was at a height slightly more than Serenity’s, one side vanished in a haze of lines, leaving behind a human-shaped space. “This is something I should have done a long time ago,” Serenity admitted. “Luna, step into it.”

Usagi glanced at the space, which could have held some monsters she’d met and still have room to spare. “Isn’t it a bit big for a cat?”

“Yes, it is. But that’s not a problem, since Luna can...” Serenity stopped short, looking first at her daughter, then down at her former advisor with something very close to chagrin written across her normally unruffled features. “Oh dear. You don’t remember, do you?”

Luna affected a look of injured pride. “My memory, Majesty, is as impeccable now as it has ever been.”

“Yeah, right.” Usagi glanced wryly at Serenity. “This from the furball who invented Sailor Moon because she couldn’t remember who I really was.”

“U-SA-GI...”

“Prolonged cold sleep can do odd things to long-term memory,” Serenity said. “Just a moment.” She tapped several facets of a different crystal console, producing a much lower hum from somewhere in the vast chamber. Serenity glanced at Luna out of the corner of one eye. “Don’t move.”

“What...” Three whitish beams slammed into each other overhead and were funneled downwards as a single flow of energy, which swept down around Luna before she had a chance to look up or finish the word, let alone the question. When beams terminated a second later, Usagi’s jaw hit the floor.

A young, beautiful girl stood where Luna had been, wrapped in a blue and silver gown of a strange design. Her hair was very dark and very long, reaching down her back almost to her knees. Usagi knew from personal experience that long hair, while potentially glamorous, is also heavy; and yet, when the girl moved her head, it was as if her hair had no weight to it at all. The girl’s skin, in contrast to her hair, was pale and unblemished; except for the golden crescent on her forehead, its soft, porcelain-white hue was suffused pink with a faint glow of vitality. Wide, expressive eyes nearly as dark as her hair were currently engaged in a startled examination of her upraised hands; those eyes were too old and wise for that young face, and yet they belonged there. There was also something unmistakably feline in the shape of her eyes and half-hidden ears, in the grace with which she moved.

“Oh my.” She touched her face, exploring the shape of cheeks, chin, and lips. “Oh dear.”

Usagi turned to Serenity. “How did you do that? It took the Grail to transform Luna the last time, and Mistress Nine _broke_ it afterwards.”

Serenity smiled. “Shapeshifting magic is not so difficult, dear one, and it does not require the power of something like the Grail. As for it _breaking,_ the Grail cannot be destroyed so easily. It came to you because the world needed you, and you needed its power; it left you because you also had to be free to grow into your own strength. As for the transformation... do you remember your lessons?”

Usagi frowned. Serenity was trying to recall something; it was on the edge of her thoughts, the tip of her tongue...

Seeing her daughter at a loss, the Queen explained. “Luna’s people, the Nekoron, are a race of shapeshifters. Their natural form is that of the small cat, but they may freely choose the form which best suits their needs, feline or humanoid.” Serenity crossed the chamber and took Luna’s hands between her own, pulling them away from the frightened girl’s face.

“Please,” Luna said. Usagi was shocked to see her friend was actually crying. “Change me back. I can’t... I don’t...”

“I will change you back,” Serenity promised. “But you have to wear this shape for a few minutes.”

“I... I can’t!”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Usagi observed, trying not to be jealous. It was hard to see how there could be anything _less_ wrong with Luna’s form.

“You don’t understand,” Luna whispered. “This isn’t me.”

“No, Luna,” Serenity corrected firmly, “this _is_ you. As much as are fur and whiskers and claws, this also is a part of you. The ability is in your blood, and even if you cannot remember how to make the change now, it _will_ come back to you. You can choose not to look like this, if that is what you want, but don’t ignore it. Don’t ever ignore it.” The stern gaze melted into a gentle smile. “Some of the happiest times I can remember were when you wore this form. Do you remember the dances at the Harvest Festival, the year we first met? That poor captain who danced six turns straight to keep you all to himself?”

“He couldn’t even dance that well,” Luna noted absently. “But I’m surprised you noticed me at all; as I recall, you spent most of the evening draped on the arm of that...” Luna stopped speaking and looked up sharply. “I can... I can remember.”

“I think,” Serenity said, “that because you were locked in one form for so long, and because you therefore assumed that you had never been anything else but a cat, your memories of times when you were most definitely not a cat were suppressed or altered. Now that you know the truth...” She trailed off and smiled. “Is it so bad, now?”

“N-no,” Luna stammered, managing a return smile which became reminiscent as more memories flooded into her mind, clearer and brighter now than they had been on the surface. She looked down at the gown she was wearing and sighed. “This is one of yours, isn’t it? I remember you wearing it for that Midsummer Ball, when Lord Europa’s oldest boy got drunk and crashed into the chandelier while trying to fly around the room.”

“The Europas always did know how to have a party. And he was even cute when they picked him out of the wreckage. Loud, too.” Both women giggled—Usagi blinked; Luna _never_ giggled—recalling a shared memory.

“Whose arm?” Usagi asked curiously.

Serenity seemed startled. “What?”

“Whose arm was it? The one that you spent the evening on, I mean.”

Usagi had never imagined that someone like Queen Serenity could ever look embarrassed, but the proof was right there in front of her, big as life and twice as red. Luna hid a smile.

“Never mind,” she mumbled. “The geas, remember?”

As Luna stepped into the aperture, it occurred to Usagi that her friend and her mother had been more than just subject and ruler; to judge by the giggling, they had been friends.

*Of course,* the whispering voice of her past self told her. *Mother was a princess once, too, and a princess’s closest friends are most often her ladies- in-waiting and handmaidens. Luna came to the Moon as the daughter of the ambassador of Mau, and stayed as one of Mother’s attendants. She was a year or two younger than Mother then, I think, but they were always very close.* Serenity looked out through Usagi’s eyes and sighed. *This must be difficult for her. For Mother, too, but she’s had time to grow used to it. Luna isn’t so lucky.*

*We’ll look after her,* Usagi whispered back.

There was silence as the closet-device did its work, noiseless arcs of energy flicking out from its sides to touch Luna’s head. After a time, the lights died, and Luna stepped out of the space; the pillar began to sink back into the floor.

“It is done,” Serenity said simply. “Are you sure you want me to turn you back, Luna?”

“Yes,” Luna replied. “I’m... I’m just not ready for this.” She made an all-inclusive motion with her hands, indicating not only the human shape, but everything that went with it. Then she smiled—smirked, actually. “Besides, I like the idea of leaving Artemis completely in the dark for a while.”

“You’re terrible,” Serenity laughed, embracing Luna. Then she sighed. “And now it is time for you two to go back, before the Senshi start digging to find you or do something equally foolish.”

“So soon?” Usagi asked.

“Yes.” The dead Queen brushed a lock of hair out of her daughter’s face before hugging her again. Her tears were only simulations of the real thing, copies made of light and shadow, but the emotion behind them was real enough. Her voice, though, revealed no hint of just how much this was hurting her. “I do not know what is coming, dear one, but I know that it will be very dangerous, for you personally, for your Senshi, and for many others. The best I can do to help you is to help them, but I am not sure if it will be enough.”

“It is,” Usagi said. “It will be.” The world was disappearing into white light, taking Queen Serenity with it; Usagi could feel the outline of the woman fading... faded... gone... “Mother?”

“I’m right here, dear one,” the Queen’s voice whispered. “I told you once, I will always be where you can find me when you need me.”

“I remember,” Usagi said. The voice was growing fainter as the light carried her up. Back to the surface, to her friends. “Good-bye, Mother. I love you.”

“I love you, too... Usagi.”

 

# 

_(Artemis is alone on the set.)_

**Artemis**   _(teary-eyed)_ : Geez, I’m so choked up over that last act... if Luna sees me like this, I’m never going to hear the end of it.  _(blows his nose)_  Oh, hi. Ahem. Excuse me. Okay, I’m better now. Right. Usagi’s not doing this because... well, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea why. Anyway, the moral for this episode is... uh... I had it a second ago...

_(Spotlight falls on him, Jeopardy music playing the background.)_

**Artemis** : A-ha!  _(80’s pop band appears on screen, replacing the Jeopardy theme with a few bars of ‘Take On Me.’ Artemis ignores them.)_  Today’s moral is a lesson in family. What makes a family? Is it just a question of birth and blood, or can sweat and tears play a part as well? (pauses) I have _really_ got to spend some time away from Minako...

_(Luna pops up, in feline form.)_

**Luna** : The concept my linguistically challenged counterpart is blundering his way towards is that ‘family’ can mean many things. It doesn’t just have to be people you’re related to; indeed, there are plenty of people you could ask who wouldn’t include all their relatives into their idea of what a family is. Friends are as much—if not more—a part of family as people you’re just related to, and even enemies can be considered ‘family;’ their impact on your life shapes you as much as the influence of your friends and relations, and sometimes even more.

**Artemis** : And that impact’s usually traveling at sonic speed... but we’ll save that one for another day.

_(The author walks in from stage left, apparently imitating Tuxedo Kamen, sans cape and mask.)_

**Artemis** : What’s with you?

**the Judge** : Believe it or not, I’ve got a date.

**Artemis** : Who with?  _(Luna blushes and looks away for some reason, but Artemis fails to notice)_

**the Judge** : Somebody worth the effort. I might introduce you. At some point.  _(Luna quickly trots off screen)_  Well, I have to go, or I’ll be late. Thanks for filling in for Usagi.

**Artemis** : Anytime.  _(the author leaves)_  That’s weird; where’d Luna go?

14/05/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_And before you say it, no, I don’t actually have a date with Luna. Mind you, I wouldn’t complain if it actually happened. All that and looks, too... quite a girl... I mean, cat... I mean..._

_Where was I?_

_Oh yes. This one made quite the little foray into Kleenex territory towards the end, didn’t it? That was at least semi-intentional; Sailor Moon was the first animated series that actually managed to inspire some deeply serious emotion in me. Even in dub, watching Naru bawl over Nephrite was _painful;_ I shudder to think of what that must have done to some of the Japanese viewers the first time the episode aired. And then there was the one where Usagi and Mamoru split up, and she goes and just _dies_ in that phonebooth... yikes._

_Well, up next:_   
_-Some answers, but also some new questions;_   
_-The start of the obligatory ‘power-up’ part of the story—I know, I know, but whatcha gonna do about it?_

_I don’t _think_ you’ll need Kleenex for the next one, but if you found it necessary this time, it might be a good idea to lay in a store for future episodes._

_And kudos to anyone who knows the joke about the rabbit. Ciao._


	8. Shadows of the Past, Seeds of the Future

# 

Ami and Ryo were sitting together on a cool, smooth slab of ancient Moon masonry, looking up at the stars. They were about as close as either of them was comfortable with, considering that Jupiter and Artemis were not far away, though perhaps not as close as they might have chosen, had they been alone. The other Senshi were out among the tiny brick hills and forests of ancient pillars; Jupiter leaned against a relatively upright column and occasionally asked questions of Artemis as she watched a different region of sky. Every so often, she glanced sidelong at her friends, or at the half-buried section of floor with its complex carving, from where Usagi and Luna had vanished and had yet to return.

“Ryo-kun,” Ami asked, keeping her voice low so Jupiter wouldn’t hear, “is something wrong? You’ve been quiet since we got here.”

“Wrong? No, nothing’s...” Ryo made the mistake of trying to look her in the face while he spoke; it was just too difficult for him to lie to those eyes. “Yes,” he sighed, “there is.”

“What?” Ami said, gently pushing for an answer. There was a long silence before she got it.

“It’s this place,” Ryo said at last. “I’ve seen it before. And not in a vision of the future. I never told you this, but I can remember what happened after Zoicite transformed me into that youma. A lot of that is what the thing was thinking or remembering while it fought you, and some of the clearest images were of this place. They weren’t very pleasant,” he said bleakly. “There were fires, explosions. People running out of burning buildings, running out into the streets, and then the swords find them, and...”

“It wasn’t you,” Ami said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“I know that,” Ryo sighed. “You know that. _They_ don’t.”

“They who? The other Senshi...”

“Not them. _Them._” Ryo motioned towards the broken buildings. “A lot of people died here, Ami, and even if _I_ wasn’t responsible for it, I’m carrying around a piece of the thing that _was._ Bringing it here again, knowing that in spite of all the horrible things it did, this monster survived while all sorts of good people died... it feels like I’m spitting on their graves.”

Ami sighed. Ryo was serious and a deep thinker; she liked that about him, but those traits occasionally led him down depressing avenues of thought. Once he got a gloomy notion in his head, it tended to stick and get progressively worse the more he thought about it. She could argue him into seeing sense, of course, but it would take awhile—and in this case, she wasn’t entirely sure that arguing would help. She settled instead for giving his hand an affectionate squeeze, leaving it linked with her own. After several minutes, she realized that her free hand was tracing symbols on the back of Ryo’s hand—very specific symbols.

*I’m probably the only girl in the world who writes out math equations on the back of her boyfriend’s hand,* Ami thought wryly.

“You forgot to carry the three,” Ryo said absently. Ami blinked, rechecked the formula in her mind, realized he was right, then growled and punched him in the shoulder. “What?” Ryo asked. “How is this _my_ fault?”

“It just is.”

Ryo sighed dramatically, but he was smiling as he did so, and he gently squeezed Ami’s hand in return. The ghosts didn’t seem quite so oppressive now.

Behind them, unnoticed, the intricate stone carving began to glow, projecting a pale column of light.

As the light faded, Usagi opened her eyes. She was back to her normal, everyday self, as was Luna, nestled in the crook of her left arm. Usagi looked down, at her friend, at the fading symbol beneath her feet, and sighed. It was not an entirely unhappy sound.

*She called me Usagi.*

“Heads up,” Jupiter said, having spotted the brief glow and the rematerialization of the two absentees. “They’re back.”

Artemis bounded up. “What happened, Luna?”

“There was a problem with security,” Luna said. “And the Queen wanted to talk to Usagi privately for a few minutes.”

“Oh. Everything’s all right, then?”

“That depends,” Luna replied, hopping down and looking around. “Where is everyone?”

“Off poking through what’s left of the ruins and getting lost down memory lane, probably.” Artemis shook his head. “ChibiMoon and Mars both kind of freaked when you disappeared.”

“Kind of?” Jupiter snorted. “They wanted Saturn to break out the Silence Glaive and start blasting until we either found you or blew out the other side of the Moon trying.”

“I’m glad you talked them out of it,” Luna said. “Queen Serenity told us some of the defenses are still up and running; I don’t think the computer would have appreciated having a tunnel blasted through it.”

“Rei—Mars, I mean—didn’t take to the idea of just waiting around very well,” Ryo chuckled nervously. “And she _really_ didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t find out where you’d gone or when you’d get back. Venus dragged her off before she could set fire to anything; she was saying something about fools for the fire, but I didn’t catch all of it.”

“Be thankful for small blessings,” Artemis told him wryly.

“Anyway,” Ryo went on, “Pluto wanted to look around a bit and see if she could recognize anything, so Saturn offered to show her around; they took ChibiMoon with them.”

“Saturn. Offered to show her around,” Usagi repeated.

“Uh-huh. I heard a bit of what she was telling Pluto as they left,” Artemis said. “She seemed to remember it pretty clearly.”

“I thought so, too,” Ami agreed. Looking in the direction of three sets of boot prints, she shook her head as if she had been about to say one thing, and instead said another. “Neptune and Uranus wandered off a little after that. I might be wrong, but Neptune seemed sad for some reason.”

“Probably the oceans,” Luna guessed with a sigh.

“What oceans?” Jupiter asked, confused.

“The oceans of the old Moon,” Luna explained. “I’ll admit that calling them ‘oceans’ is being generous, considering that they weren’t that deep, but even the small ones were quite a bit larger than your average lake. They were destroyed with everything else in Metallia’s attack, but this is the first time Neptune’s been on the Moon since the Silver Millennium, and regardless of what her mind knows, her spirit sees this as a place where there should be water.”

“There should be plants, too.” They all looked at Jupiter, who had her eyes closed as she spoke. “Low rows of sunleaf bushes with their little gold flowers along the main roads, and silverbirch in the avenues and on the corners, shading the nightbloom vines and beds of firemoss that provided light at night, and when we moved into eclipse behind Earth. And the royal gardens, with plants from all over the system: star lilies from Venus; Martian dustblossom; Jovian stormseed, always trying to drift away on the currents no matter what we anchored them down with; even that one rosebush Endymion brought for your birthday, Serenity.”

The second Jupiter finished speaking, Usagi felt a push from the corner of her mind where the Moon Princess usually seemed to reside. Maybe it was Jupiter’s dreamy, half-remembered use of the old names, but the world seemed to change around her in an instant; instead of the ruined, dust-choked surface of a dead Moon, Usagi was standing in a vast, beautifully decorated chamber...

# 

The Great Hall of the palace was a grand and glittering place even on ordinary days. On days of state ceremony, it became even more so, and now it was filled with many people who were similarly great and glittering—or who believed they were—the lords and ladies of a dozen worlds, gathered to celebrate the day of her birth. The recent fashion among the ladies leaned heavily in the direction of bright silks and brighter jewels, as if to make the wearer outshine the stars themselves; the lords were similarly outfitted, if less brilliant than their ladies, the planets orbiting their respective stars.

She, the guest of honor, wore no such dress. While some of the ornate costumes were simply ridiculous, and others, rather beautiful, they were all on the showy side. And tradition—and Luna—had a very narrow tolerance for anything that was stylish, flashy, or even remotely ‘improper.’ Never mind that ‘proper’ dresses always took all the fun out of things; she was a Princess, she had to set an example, blah, blah, blah.

So she wore a more elaborate version of her customary day-to-day attire, the back of which was loosely gathered below the shoulders, and the front of which—thanks to some last-minute adjustments by one of her maids, when Luna wasn’t looking—was perhaps a little lower and tighter than tradition would be comfortable with. It was a decent dress—and despite the silver necklace, it looked positively plain next to some of the designs making the rounds this night. Standing at the foot of the great staircase, greeting the nobles as they arrived and being forced to endure the sight of one stunning masterpiece of needle and thread and fabric after another, she sighed.

“It’s not that bad a dress, Serenity,” a nearby voice said, responding to the most recent in a series of envious sighs.

“Easy for you to say, Amma,” the Princess retorted under her breath, glancing sidelong at her ‘shadow’ for the evening, the Lady Amalthea—and, more importantly, at the girl’s choice of attire. Like most of her gowns, it was a vibrant green, close-fitting and without sleeves. Unlike most of her gowns, this one had slits in the skirt which showed off Amalthea’s legs; and being a Jovian -which made her the tallest of the Princess’s guards despite also being the youngest—she had quite a lot to show in that regard. There was a narrow neckline that divided the upper half of the gown—a neckline that, in all honesty, came much closer to being a waistline—giving Amalthea’s other... assets... a similar degree of exposure as her legs. A belt of woven gold rode on her hips, while a matched necklace served as the collar with the dangerously important task of keeping the fabric of the front of the gown where it was supposed to be. From that same necklace, a cape of translucent green silk hung down to conceal—almost—her otherwise bare back, and emeralds flashed on her ears. “How in the name of the nine planets did you smuggle that outfit past Luna? She’d have a heart attack if she saw you.”

“She was busy,” Amalthea said with an indifferent shrug, gaining the undivided attention of a number of nearby lords in the process. “She had some objections to what Ishtar was planning to wear, so I snuck off and changed while they were arguing.”

“So _that_ was what all the yelling was about,” Serenity mused, recalling the tremendous racket somewhere down the hall which had given her maid the opportunity to fix the dress. “Was it really that bad? Ishtar’s dress, I mean.”

“Calling it a dress would be generous,” Amalthea chuckled. “Ishtar said it was the customary form of attire for celebrations like this, but... well, you know how the Venusians are.”

Serenity shook her head; the whole galaxy knew how the Venusians were. The tree-dwelling people of the second planet shared their world’s reputation for great beauty, and they were undeniably one of the friendliest races—human or otherwise—known to exist, but they also had this little cultural quirk about ‘excessive’ amounts of clothing. It had to do with an article of their religion, a passage which said something about honesty and openness, and as with everything else they did, the Venusians had taken that concept to a good-natured extreme. Ishtar’s mother was one of the planet’s highest-ranking priestesses, and had raised her daughter to adhere to their religion’s teachings with an almost militant fervor. Given that the rest of the galaxy tended to regard that particular religion as hedonistic, at best, Ishtar had caused more than her share of waves in the royal court.

And speaking of waves, one that had nothing to do with Ishtar was going through the assembled dignitaries at this moment, a ripple of turning heads and murmured words as the court herald struck his staff of office against the marble floor, clearing his throat to announce the late arrival of another guest. Some of the murmurs turned to muttering as the identity of the guest became obvious.

“Prince Endymion of Earth,” the herald announced in a clear, neutral tone, the same tone in which he had proclaimed the arrival of every other guest this evening. “And escorts,” the white-haired old man added, “Jadeite and Nephrite, of the Elite.”

The crowd parted before the three Earthmen as they made their way to the stairs at the far end of the Hall, where Serenity and Amalthea stood; given the length of the Hall, the Princess had ample time to examine each of them.

If the ladies of the court were stars and the lords planets, then the two Elite were asteroids, their traditional uniforms devoid of any decoration beyond the blood-red stones on the shoulders of Nephrite’s jacket. Their faces were equally austere, and though they remained looking forward, their eyes seemed to be everywhere at once, gauging the mood of the crowd for possible threats, noting potential routes through which danger might strike or be escaped. Both men were undeniably handsome, but their reputations—as individuals, as members of the highly trained, highly skilled Elite, and as Earthmen—made many of the women of the court look away when one of the two guardians glanced in their direction. Serenity hardly noticed the two warriors, but then, she only had eyes for the dark-haired man leading them.

It was no secret that many of the noble houses felt that a Prince of Earth had no business being anywhere near a Princess of the Moon, for Earth, the cradle of human civilization, the Blue Jewel of the planets whose beauty rivaled that of Venus, was also the only world where men still made war on other men. The soldiers of the Moon and the other planetary kingdoms had their share of battle, dealing with starfaring pirates, marauding alien beasts, and the occasional incursion by dark beings from the void between worlds, but such threats were a distant, uncommon occurrence. Violence and the death that went with it were little more than an unpleasant notion of history to most; on Earth, they were an almost daily reality.

Hence the broad-shouldered, silver-enameled black armor Endymion always wore, and the straight-backed, military bearing with which he carried both the weight of that armor and other, far heavier duties. Though his guards were not visibly armed, the Prince himself carried sufficient rank to be permitted to keep his weapon, and his hand never strayed far from the hilt. He was not the only armed man in the room; many of the lords also carried blades in one form or another, and there were the palace guardsmen stationed at regular points throughout the Hall, but Endymion’s sword—a heavy-bladed, unadorned broadsword— made the jeweled daggers and light fencing swords favored by the noblemen appear like the gaudy toys they were. There was, moreover, a seriousness on his face and in his eyes—eyes that, at twenty, had seen things many gathered here could never begin to believe—which only his own guards and the oldest and most battle-hardened of the lunar soldiers could match. This Prince was a true warrior, and he took the responsibilities of his hereditary office very seriously.

Serenity supposed that was one of the things she loved about him. As if his eyes weren’t enough on their own, or his face, or the way he moved...

The Princess realized she was staring and broke off, blushing. Still some distance away, Endymion nonetheless appeared to notice and smiled that knowing half-smile of his, the smile that made all the lines of worry fade, the smile that was reflected in his eyes, the smile that made her heart start to...

*He’s doing it to me AGAIN!* Serenity screamed in silent frustration, glaring at her beloved Prince through her own smile of welcoming. Endymion merely lifted an eyebrow in response; it made her want to scream. Just once, _why_ couldn’t she get some sign that _she_ had the same effect on _him_ that _he_ always had on _her?_

“Men show their feelings differently, dear one,” her mother’s voice said from her other side. “You just have to figure out what to look for.” The Queen had descended the stairs in silence with her four guards while her daughter had been absorbed in watching the Prince. The dark-haired, dark-eyed Lady Vestia, Senshi of Mars—attired, as ever, in a very proper dress of fiery scarlet—was with her. Vestia frowned as she looked at Amalthea, but did not comment on her clothing, believing it improper to scold a fellow Senshi in public view; she’d do it later. There was still no sign of Ishtar—who was probably still fighting with Luna—or of Mercury, though she was very likely hidden somewhere in crowd; you never could tell, with Nereids, where one might decide to appear next.

This was not the first—nor the last—time that Queen Serenity had answered a question before her daughter could put it to words. It was a useful, if slightly annoying gift which the Queen possessed, and she put it to work on everyone. Serenity had wondered time and again if her mother was telepathic, or just very, very good at reading people. *And why,* the Princess added, glancing sidelong at her mother, *does _she_ get to wear whatever dress she chooses while _I_ get stuck wearing copies of the same old thing?*

“Privilege of rank,” the Queen murmured. Knowing it would irritate her daughter, she smoothed a line from her gown; it was one of the variations on her own usual attire, this night, but that was completely by her own choice, not because of tradition or Luna.

Endymion and his escorts had reached the foot of the stairs before Serenity could think up a suitable retort. The Prince bowed, one hand holding the hilt of his sword steady while the other swept his trailing cape to one side; the two Elite saluted, right hands clenched over their hearts in the Earther style, before bowing in turn.

“Rise, and be welcome,” Queen Serenity greeted the three men.

Endymion smiled. “Thank you, Your Majesty. My father sends his apologies for being unable to attend, but urgent matters at home required his personal attention.” He turned to Serenity. “Greetings, Princess.”

“Hello, En—I mean, Your Highness. Thank you for accepting our invitation.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” Endymion looked back as Nephrite coughed at that pronouncement; finding only a collected, questioning look on the long-haired Elite’s face, the Prince narrowed his eyes suspiciously before he turned back to the ladies. As soon as his Prince’s back was turned, Nephrite smiled crookedly. Amalthea smiled as well; Nephrite noticed, gave her a long, considering look, then winked. Beside him, Jadeite rolled his eyes.

They engaged in the customary small talk for several minutes, asking about the health of various individuals and the other harmless tidbits such discussions tend to include. Nephrite coughed at least three times during the exchange of meaningless pleasantries.

“My apologies,” Vestia finally interrupted, “but is the good Elite coming down with something?”

“Only a severe case of heartbreak,” Nephrite replied, “brought on by being in the presence of four such dazzling beauties.”

Endymion drummed his fingers on the hilt of his weapon while he besought strength from someone beyond the ceiling. “No, my Lady, it’s merely his clumsy way of reminding me that I haven’t presented the Princess with her birthday gift yet. Jadeite, if you would?”

“Of course, My Prince.” The blond Elite turned and nodded to a pair of palace servants who had trailed behind, carrying a light, wooden chest between them. As the pair stepped forward and opened the chest, Amalthea glanced at it in an odd way, her head tilted as if she were listening to something.

Serenity gasped as the servants lifted out the gift, a small but healthy-looking bush of blood-red blossoms against dark green leaves, set in a soil-filled pot of opaque crystal. Some of the gathered nobles dismissed the plant with a sniff and a triumphant smirk, knowing their presents had been far more costly, more worthy of a Princess than some simple Earthly weed. A few of the older nobles, however, including the Queen, were looking at the Prince and the flowers in amazement.

“They’re beautiful,” Serenity said earnestly, “but I’ve never seen flowers like that before. Amma?” she asked, turning to her friend, whose knowledge of plants was unmatched.

Amalthea took a quick look around before answering; half the court was listening. “They’re roses, Serenity.”

The silence was absolute. “Impossible,” one young lord muttered, astonished.

Amalthea glared at him. “Are you calling me a liar, sir?”

“No,” the lord said hastily, waving his hands, “but... that is... what I mean to say is... roses?” he finished weakly.

“Roses,” Amalthea said firmly.

The young lord’s shock was somewhat understandable. The rose had long been one of the ultimate symbols of love; in the modern culture, there was no stronger declaration of devotion. But roses did not grow on the Moon. For some reason, the plants grew only on Earth, defying even the most magical attempts to transplant them to other worlds. Obtaining even a few roses was a difficult and expensive undertaking, and they did not travel well, so the great lovers of the other worlds made do with other species of plants, and sometimes gems carved into the likeness of the fabled flower. Everyone knew of the rose, had seen pictures or carvings or even the occasional rare, half-wilted specimen, but none of these could truly compare with the sight of a living rose. Serenity extended one hand in wonder, brushing the soft petals of the plant.

“Ouch!”

“Be careful of the thorns,” Endymion said, a second too late, grimacing ruefully.

“Very typical of Earth,” another young lord drawled in a high, superior voice. “Even the most beautiful things there can’t seem to get along without drawing blood.”

Forgetting for the moment that he was not armed, Jadeite’s hand went to his hip, in search of a sword that was not there.

“Calm yourself, Jadeite,” Endymion said softly, turning to face the nobleman. “You find fault with my choice of a gift, sir?”

“Not the gift itself,” the man replied smoothly, “but how it was given. A single rose is a thing of rare beauty, and two or three together are a wonder, but this many at once is pretentious, at best, good Prince. A simple bouquet would have served the same purpose, and without this admittedly mild injury to Her Highness.”

“Ah, but to create such a bouquet, I would have been forced to kill several of the most beautiful blossoms; I know you consider we of Earth to be somewhat barbarous, but really, my Lord, even we have our limits. After all, if you kill everything one day, what will be left for tomorrow?” There were a few chuckles as Endymion went on. “The rose is considered a symbol of love because it is the color of the heart, and of the blood that flows through it. Perhaps, my Lord, you’ve heard the old superstition that the rose, being the color of blood, needs blood to live? That it can only grow on Earth because our world is the only one whose fields have paid the price for this beauty?”

“I had not heard that,” the man admitted.

“Then your day has not been a total loss; you’ve learned something new.” There was more muted laughter. “I chose to present her Highness with a living rosebush rather than dead and withering blossoms, hoping that the flower might, for once, grow outside its normal bounds. The unfortunate injury to her person was unexpected, but if it bothers you so much...”

Nobody was quite prepared to see Endymion draw a silver-bladed dagger from somewhere on his person, slash it across his own palm, and then clench the wounded hand into a fist, squeezing several large drops of blood onto the rosebush and the dirt beneath.

“There,” the Prince said, driving the small dagger into the soil to clean away the blood before sheathing it. “The injury to the Princess has been repaid tenfold.” He smiled faintly at Serenity. “Perhaps the flowers will grow, now that their price has been paid.”

# 

Usagi came back to the present in a blur and a blink. She remembered that she had ordered the rosebush planted, pot and all, in the section of the royal gardens nearest her quarters. She also recalled sneaking out that same night, accompanied by Ishtar—who had eventually shown up at the party in her traditional Venusian ‘dress,’ despite all of Luna’s objections—on a quiet mission. With a little help from her love-fostering ally and a small, sharp knife, the Princess had added a few drops of her own blood to the dark Earthly soil around the roses; her Prince had done this for her, and she could do no less for him. And it seemed to have worked; from that day until the day when Metallia had arisen and destroyed everything, the solitary rosebush in the royal gardens had grown and bloomed, the only one of its kind off of Earth.

“Usagi?” Mercury—no, Ami—asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just sort of remembered that rosebush Jupiter was just talking about. Vividly.”

“Yeah,” Jupiter said. “I know what you mean. I don’t usually get lost in my own mind that easily. What gives?”

“It’s the sun.” Artemis shrugged. “When you’re living on a world where ‘dawn’ lasts upwards of thirty regular hours, and where night falls one day and doesn’t leave for the better part of the next month... suffice to say, it gets to you after a while. Even ten centuries later.”

“So a thousand years of interplanetary peace was due to a chronic combination case of sunstroke and oversleeping,” Ryo mused. “I’ve heard worse ideas.”

Jupiter chuckled. “Speaking of interplanetary peace, we’d better call the others back if we want to maintain it.”

While Jupiter sent out that call, Usagi looked at Ryo and Ami. “And what was so fascinating that you two didn’t notice me appear out of thin air right behind you?”

Usagi expected one or both of them to blush and blurt out a denial that anything had been going on, especially in light of the fact that they were still holding hands. Ryo’s quiet explanation of the unsettling feeling that had been dogging him since their arrival startled her, and Usagi looked down at Luna.

“What?” Ami asked, catching the look.

Usagi sighed and repeated what Queen Serenity had told her about the computer’s reaction to Ryo. “But it’s all taken care of,” she finished reassuringly.

“Well, good.” Ryo couldn’t avoid making a quick sweep of the area with his eyes, just to be certain there weren’t any... he admitted that he had no idea _what_ these so-called ‘defenses’ looked like, but he suspected he’d know one if he saw it. And he didn’t know or see one, so he relaxed—a little—wondering if the sense of oppression had been caused by the attention of this subterranean computer rather than a guilty conscience. “Do you think maybe you could leave that part out of whatever you tell the others?”

Usagi blinked. “Why?”

“It’s not really that important, is it? And besides,” Ryo added, “I’d sort of rather not let Neptune and Uranus know that I used to be one of the bad guys. Not that I don’t trust them,” he said quickly, “it’s just that... um... well, they’re a little...”

“Intimidating?” Luna asked.

“Scary?” Usagi supplied.

“Driven?” Ami prompted.

“Obsessive?” Jupiter suggested, earning a few sidelong glances from her friends which suggested that _she_ was hardly in a position to call other people ’obsessive.’

“Implacable?” Artemis finished, earning a few glances of his own; since when did _he_ even know what words that large meant?

Ryo was nodding. “Exactly.”

“Not a problem,” Usagi said. “But if you happen to get that nervous feeling again, let us know, okay?”

Ryo nodded.

“Good.” Usagi looked out into the ruins. “There they are,” she said, waving at the other Senshi as they returned. She flinched at their reply, seven voices shouting four words in unison:

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

# 

Once Mars and ChibiMoon had been calmed down, Usagi explained her brief trip, omitting only the details of Luna’s brief transformation and, as requested, what Serenity had said about Ryo.

“So it worked?” ChibiMoon asked.

Usagi nodded. “Oh, and Ami, your computer won’t give you any more problems; Mother unlocked the security codes for it, and...” Usagi trailed off. “How did I know that, Luna?”

“Do you remember what the Queen said about examining your thoughts while we were in the beam? She could also use it to send information directly into your mind, much more quickly and completely than telling you the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Usagi thought it over and realized that Luna was right; there was a great deal of information in her head all of a sudden, silent lessons and instructions from Queen Serenity, months of study imparted in a few seconds. She grinned. “That’s a handy sort of trick. Do you suppose we can come back right before exams?”

Luna facefaulted.

“Did she... say anything else?” Pluto asked quietly.

Usagi’s grin died. Pluto had been looking at the carved symbol on the floor with a fixed, almost hungry intensity ever since Usagi mentioned what Serenity had done for Luna and herself, and it didn’t take someone with Ami’s or Neptune’s intellect to figure out why.

“I’m sorry, Setsuna,” Usagi said. “She can’t help you.”

Pluto looked at her for a moment, something indecipherable in her eyes. Then she sighed and nodded.

Uranus cleared her throat, dispelling some of the awkwardness of the moment. “I guess we can leave, then.”

“Not just yet,” Usagi disagreed, the implanted information tugging at her thoughts. “There’s something else we need to do. This way.”

The Senshi exchanged glances as they followed their leader into a different part of the ruins. When Usagi stopped, they were standing in front of a fire-blackened pile of stones, with the shattered bases of two columns to each side. Pieces of displaced floor tile poked up out of the dust. Again, as they looked at the tumbled ruin, there was a sense of recognition.

“We need to clear some of this out,” Usagi said.

“I’ve got it.” Saturn stepped up, raising her Glaive. “Everybody give me some room, okay? This might be a little imprecise.”

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Neptune told her immediately. Saturn smiled, nodding as the others backed up a few steps. Then she lowered the head of the Glaive until it was almost touching the rubble, closed her eyes, and began.

There was no light show, no chanted words; only Saturn’s intense expression of concentration and the faint, violet-dark glow of the Silence Glaive indicated that anything was happening. After a moment, however, the pile of shattered stone was noticeably less than it had been—and it was getting smaller. No fuss, no noise; just the steady disintegration of the thousand year- old debris. And as the old stones vanished, a surprisingly intact stairwell was revealed beneath them.

Saturn jumped slightly as the remaining stones, deprived of the supporting weight of their now-vanished neighbors, collapsed into that stairwell with a loud clatter and a spray of dust. Its mistress’s concentration broken, the violet light of the Glaive flickered and then faded away.

“Thank you, Saturn,” Usagi said. “Uranus, would you please clear away the dust? The chamber below has been sealed since Metallia’s attack; the air is bound to be bad after so long.”

Uranus arched an eyebrow but did as she was asked, holding one hand in the air, palm forward and fingers slightly curled. Concentrating as Saturn had concentrated, she slowly drew that arm back, her fingers wobbling as if they were trying very hard to hold onto something. A great plume of dust erupted from the mouth of the stairs and flew high into the bubble of artificial atmosphere, spreading out to fall in a wide ring about the Senshi. After the dust came a low whistle of rushing air and a stale, musty odor.

It never occurred to her to wonder at how she knew how to manipulate her power like this; the strange, half-remembered nature of this place had filled her mind—all their minds—with whispers and faded images of how things used to be. The part of Uranus that was Tennou Haruka had no idea how to call wind like this, but the part of her which had lived and died such a very long time ago knew exactly what was happening, and why, and how. Uranus suspected that she could have asked it for an explanation, but she chose not to; as long as somebody she could trust understood what was going on, that was enough.

While the others were still watching the dust fall, Uranus suddenly reversed the original motion, driving her arm forward as if pushing something. With the change in motion by her hand, there came a blast of wind from all sides, a wall of air which ruffled hair and clothes alike as it contracted in on itself before shooting down into the stairwell and whatever lay below. The breeze continued until Uranus relaxed and let her arm fall.

“Thank you, Uranus. All of you, follow me.”

They followed, and without comment or complaint; Usagi’s voice and manner were slightly more formal than usual, suggesting that perhaps her Princess self was speaking.

The stairs led down at a steady angle, each large enough for two rows of three people to stand on and still have room; Mars and Jupiter followed just behind Usagi and the cats, with Ami, Ryo, and Pluto next, and then Uranus and Neptune. Venus and Saturn brought up the rear.

Crystal globes set into the walls began to glow with faint blue light as Usagi passed. The crystals—perhaps a little too large to hold easily in one hand if they were removed from the walls—were fixed into the marble at about eye level; some were shattered, and others flickered feebly, but there was still more than enough light to see by.

Not that there was much to see. The walls, steps, and ceiling were all made of the same smooth marble, heavy and unadorned and with no sign of cutting or separation; it was as if the entire place were a single piece of stone. Aside from the glowing gems, placed above every third step, the only breaks in the monotony were jagged cracks and the occasional pile of dust. Not the most reassuring sight when you’re somewhere underground and going deeper, but the further they went, the less apparent the damage became.

Most of the Senshi started counting steps; the cats didn’t, since they already knew how many there would be, while Venus confused the actual number of stairs with the steps she was taking, and was well past one hundred before she realized her mistake and gave up. The others quit after fifty or so, but Ami and Neptune both kept at it and got eighty-one when they reached the bottom. And with each stair wide enough that it took two or three steps to reach the next, that put them quite a ways down.

The chamber here was much like the stairs, but it actually held things. A massive set of bronze double doors was set into the far wall, with the crescent insignia of the Moon Kingdom as their only adornment; there weren’t even any locks or handles. Two marble statues flanked the doors, imposing, slightly larger than life-sized warriors in full plate mail, with crescent-marked shields in their left hands and long pikes in their right. Six identical statues stood at regular intervals along the walls, one on either side of the arch through which the Senshi now entered, the other four where they would have also flanked doors, had any existed in the side walls.

“I’d hate to have to fight this bunch,” Jupiter said slowly.

“Palace guards,” Luna identified the statues as Usagi walked towards the doors. “Or at least, statues of them. And if you don’t keep quiet, Jupiter, you _will_ have to fight them.”

Jupiter was about to protest that statement when they all heard the grating slither of stone sliding against stone, looked up, and saw the stone helms of the two statues turning towards Usagi. A muffled yelp from Saturn indicated that the statues behind them were showing a similar degree of animation.

“No one move!” Luna hissed, even as most of the group got ready for a fight. “Just stand still and wait!”

Usagi was saying something in that hauntingly familiar tongue the other humans couldn’t quite recall. It was a very musical language, all the words flowing into one another; none of it made any sense, but it appeared to satisfy the statues. Eight male voices—it was hard to tell whether they were different voices which sounded somewhat alike, or if just one voice was speaking from eight different locations—said something back in a united chant before the assorted helmets rotated back to their original positions.

As the booming echoes of the stone voices faded, the doors opened soundlessly, each sliding back along the wall behind one of the statues. The chamber beyond was much larger and far more interesting than this guard chamber; pillars taller than Uranus and Jupiter and Pluto combined held up the high roof, while the walls were covered with intricate carvings of marble, gold, and crystal.

As the Senshi walked into the room, their eyes were drawn to its main feature; atop a dais at the far end stood a statue of a woman in a flowing gown, a woman whose features, though not identical, were immediately recognizable as being kin to Usagi and ChibiMoon. Her hair, despite being stone, was the same style, the tails hanging down almost to the floor. Angelic wings of marble spread from her back, each wing almost as long as the statue was tall, their tips nearly touching the walls. A crown which somehow managed to give the appearance of being light even when fashioned from marble rested on the woman’s head; she held a stone scepter in her left hand, and a marble chalice which reminded them all of the vanished Grail in her right. The stone double of a familiar crystal was fixed over her heart, and her face was at once stern and gentle. At her feet, a gold stand held up a large book made not of stone, but of ancient leather and paper—or perhaps parchment. It was closed, a wide, heavy band of what appeared to be silver folded over and around the cover. And in the dais before both book and statue was a stone sword, life-sized, perhaps half the length of its blade driven into the floor.

“Serenity the First,” Artemis said, sounding almost reverent. “The founder of the Moon Kingdom and architect of the Silver Millennium.”

“Just how many of them were there, anyway?” Uranus asked. “With the name Serenity, I mean?”

“Twenty-nine, counting the one we know now as Usagi,” Luna replied. “A line unbroken from mother to daughter for over fourteen hundred years.”

“You’d think,” Ryo noted clinically, “that in all that time, they’d have changed the hair at least once.”

Ami, still looking up at the statue, elbowed him in the ribs.

“I don’t get it,” Jupiter said. “Why all the security for a statue, a sword, and a book?”

“There’s something else here.” Mars had her eyes half-closed, her hands slightly raised as if to feel the air around her. “Not just a statue, a sword, and a...” She broke off suddenly, opening her eyes all the way to stare at the book.

The book from her dream, the book that had been made of fire and lightning. Usagi was reaching for it. Mars didn’t even stop to think.

“Usagi! Don’t touch it!” Usagi—or was it Serenity just then?—turned, startled, as Mars raced up and pulled her away from the silver-bound book.

“Mars,” Luna demanded, “what are you doing?”

“It’s all right, Luna.” Usagi looked back to Mars. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

“I had a dream,” Mars replied uneasily, still not entirely certain who she was addressing. “The night of the storm. I saw myself reading a book of fire.”

Usagi smiled. “I thought it might be you, Rei,” she said softly, touching one hand to her friend’s face before turning back to the sealed book. “Can you read the words on the cover?”

Recalling the dream-fire that had threatened to destroy her eyes and her mind if she read so much as a letter, it took a moment before Mars could bring herself to examine the book. The ‘words’ were a series of very peculiar symbols which seemed to change as she looked at them. This is not to say that they moved around, or grew lighter or darker, or experienced any physical change at all; rather, parts of the various marks would begin to seem very similar to forms of writing she was familiar with: Japanese kanji here, here, and over there; Romanic letters here and here; something which might have been an Egyptian hieroglyph, here. And quite suddenly, she realized that she could understand some of it.

She said a very long word—or perhaps several words—in the same language Usagi had used a moment before, then frowned. “I think that means ‘the Book of Ages.’”

“And a few other things besides, but that will do.” Usagi picked up the book. “It’s called that because it’s been around for a very long time, though nobody was ever really sure just how old. It contains information on life and magic and science, past and present and future, all of it interwoven together so that you can—supposedly—find the answer to any question. IF you look closely enough.”

“Sort of like a User’s Manual to the Universe?” Ryo suggested.

“Only written in a foreign language,” Usagi added. “A very difficult, magical one. If you can read the language and are patient enough to untangle the other defensive powers of the Book, it can tell you anything: the cure for cancer, the secret of cold fusion, even how to program a VCR.” She smiled faintly.

“And the catch?” Uranus asked immediately.

“The catch,” Usagi replied, “is that the Book is, despite all its defenses, still just a book. It only contains the secrets; it does not dictate who will find them. Once the information is out, it is up to humans to decide whether to use it for good or evil. In the hands of a good person who could read it, the Book could literally save the world; in the hands of an evil person, it would become a terrible instrument of darkness. So it was sealed away down here, and only consulted in times of the most urgent need. To minimize the risk, no one person was ever entrusted with sole guardianship. Until now.” And with that, she extended her arms, holding the Book out to Mars.

“Keep that thing away from me,” Mars said, backing up a step.

“It won’t hurt you, Mars.” Usagi took a step forward. “And we’ll need its help before this is all over.”

“So? Just open it now and find what you want so we can get out of here.”

“It’s not that simple. Even if we didn’t need the Book, it still has to be kept safe, and the defenses here are just too weak to do that anymore; we have to take it with us.”

“Then give it to Ami,” Mars said, backing up again. “Or Neptune.”

“It has to go with you,” Usagi insisted. “Mars, look at the Book. At the lock. What do you see?”

Mars looked, and frowned. The silver band was solid and unbroken, with no sign of catches or releases or keyholes. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she objected. “How are we supposed to get it open if the lock’s all one piece?”

“I don’t know,” Usagi admitted. “Once the Book is locked, only someone who can read its language can open it again—and the language on the cover changes every time the thing is sealed, so even those who can read what’s _inside_ can’t open it. Nobody knows why, let alone how, but there are a few people born in every generation who can read the cover, who can read the Book no matter what condition it or they are in; you’re one of them, and you’re a Senshi. Even if we _could_ find someone else who could read the Book, how could we be sure that we could trust them with it? How would they protect it if someone or something came looking for it? Rei,” Usagi said, her voice dropping to just above a whisper, “if _I_ can understand how important this is, I know you must realize it, too. Why won’t you just take the Book?”

Mars hesitated. “If I do take it,” she whispered softly, not meeting Usagi’s gaze, “I’ll have to protect it. And that means I won’t be able to protect _you._”

Usagi smiled. “So protect me, then: take the Book, figure out how to get it open so we can find out what we need to know, _find_ what we need to know, and don’t let anyone take it and misuse it.” She reached out again and turned Mars’ face towards her. “Rei, any one of you can fight off monsters; _you’re_ the only one who can read the Book.”

They looked at each other for a long time. Then Mars put out her hands and mutely accepted the Book. Despite the fact that it was larger than a telephone directory, it felt very light.

“Is that it?” Uranus asked impatiently, earning a swat to the back of the head from Neptune.

“No,” Usagi replied, turning back to the statue of her ancestor and placing both hands on the hilt of the stone sword in front of it and pulling up. The sword moved perhaps an inch before she had to let it go. “Jupiter,” she said, “I need some help with this.”

“Sure.” Jupiter took hold of the grip, one-handed, and pulled, grunting in surprise as the full weight of the sword became evident. In its resting position, the weapon had extended about three feet up from the top of the dais, and almost half that length was taken up by the grip and the hilt; once Jupiter had pulled it free, the thing was revealed in its full glory, five feet from the tip of the broad blade to the crescent-inscribed pommel. Larger crescents adorned the crossguard, which itself curved slightly towards the double-edged blade; a trail of the symbols Luna had identified as ‘the Silver Script’ ran the length of the stone blade, which gleamed no less brightly than it would have had it been made of metal.

Uranus whistled appreciatively. “Nice sword.”

“Gladius,” Artemis told them. “The traditional weapon of the captain of the royal guards. The stone it’s made from is harder than diamond, and magic insures that the blade stays sharp and whole, no matter how much punishment it takes.” He glanced at Usagi. “You’re sure you want to bring it with us?”

“It’s probably not a bad idea,” Luna said. “Anybody who can build a mana nexus could probably analyze the sword if they ever got their hands on it. These fungus-creatures have been a problem, but I’d rather worry about them than the possibility of having to face an army of creatures made from nearly indestructible stone.”

“Amen to that,” Artemis agreed fervently. “Is that everything, then?”

Usagi nodded. “The armories were all destroyed in Metallia’s attack; of what’s left, these and the computer are the only things that could be dangerous. And anything that tries to go after the computer will have to get through about three miles of solid rock _and_ Mother to reach it.”

“Then I guess it’s time to go,” Venus said, looking around and sighing. The others nodded, their faces showing the same reluctance to leave even as they formed the circle.

Just as the world began to disappear into the flash of light, Usagi looked up at the face of her long-dead ancestor. It was strange, but in the bright light, the statue seemed to be smiling.

# 

The darkened monitoring room now had upwards of a dozen men and women in and around it, all of them checking connections, evaluating readouts, and comparing records in an attempt to figure out what had happened. Their city-wide detection network, designed to track and trace the weird energy involved in the movements of these equally weird creatures, was still in its early infancy. Not all of the bugs had been shaken out of the system, and the last thing it had needed was a sudden, over-the-top surge of energy.

But that was what the system had gotten, and now half of its component computers and detection devices had been left shorted out by the overload. Now they faced the unenviable task of determining what still worked, what had to be replaced, and what could just be given a swift kick to get it up and running again.

The second surge neatly solved that imbalance; by the time it had passed, _all_ the detection systems were fried.

After the alarms had shut down or blown themselves out, the man whose office earned him the title of Monitor Six checked the second readout and compared it with the first.

“Well?” one of the others asked.

“Looks like the same group of signals, with a couple of extra passengers. Some sort of return trip, I’d guess.”

“Any idea where they were headed?”

Monitor Six checked a different readout, one of the few still functioning properly. “Looks like somewhere in the Juuban district, but the system can’t narrow it down any further; too many sensors are out in that area from the original surge.”

“What about the point of origin?”

“Just a sec... we got a partial trajectory reading from sector eight before the whole array crashed... looks like...” Monitor Six blinked.

“Well? Where did it come from?”

“The network’s long-range capacity is pretty limited, but based on that trajectory, the nearest possible point of origin is... the Moon.”

There was a long silence, in which several of the people in the room looked at each other. Finally, one of them spoke.

“Get the Director.”

# 

Archon’s head snapped up at the same instant as his apprentice felt the unfamiliar ripple of power. It was not precisely the same as before, carrying with it a sense of something that was steadily drawing closer, and it was somehow larger than the first time, but she was certain it was the work of the same individual or group.

“You were wise to summon me,” Archon congratulated the girl, referring to her decision to invoke her teacher’s awareness and half-real image following the original disturbance. “That was most definitely not something I or any other Atlantean was responsible for.”

“What was it?”

“A teleportation magic of some sort,” the master mage replied, narrowing his eyes as he looked off in the direction from which the power had seemed to originate. “I am too far from you to be certain who or how many were involved, but there is something about it... something familiar... I will have to consult my records and compare them with the watcher’s analysis before I can be certain of anything.” After another moment of consideration, Archon shook his head. “No matter. How proceeds your work, apprentice?”

The girl demonstrated by calling up a three-dimensional image of the city in the air between them. It was, of necessity, a small image, with even the largest clusters of skyscrapers reduced to shapes smaller than her own littlest finger, but she knew that with a word and a gesture, she could zoom in on any given area of the illusory map and see a clear and precise image. It was not just a picture conjured up from her own memory or imagination, but an exact duplication of every building, street, object, and person in Tokyo, accurate down to the smallest possible detail. If she were to zoom in on her own room, she would find images of herself and Archon within the larger illusion.

“Excellent,” Archon remarked. The illusion of his body tested her illusion of the city with one of its hazy fingers, nodding in approval when the clash of energies did not distort the map in any way. He floated to a different area, tested it a second time, and again nodded mutely. “Most impressive. And the tracking spell?”

She arranged her thoughts, spoke a few syllables in the complex Atlantean tongue, then released the magic with a negligible nod of her head. This was something Archon had been insistent on; while it was true that magic tended to involve a gestures as an aid to concentration, a clever wizard would always look into developing alternate forms of common spells, ones which did not require the drawn-out and obvious twisting of fingers. It improved the chances of working magic while remaining anonymous to the world at large—and anonymity was, for her, a most important asset.

The spell complete, the floating map glowed brightly, then began to change as the point of view moved in. Vague blotches of color became recognizable as city blocks, which in turn became clear enough for individual buildings to be picked out, which in turn grew large enough for specific windows and the like to be discerned. The map had been reduced to the image of a single apartment complex, but before it could zoom in further, the entire thing shattered, sending shards of light raining out in all directions to fade away in mid-air.

“I still can’t get it to focus on her,” the girl said, halfway between exasperation and anger.

“Patience, my dear. As you surmised before, the one you are attempting to target with your magic is under some form of protection. I have seen such things before; with time and practice, you will eventually be able to breach that defense, whatever its nature.”

“You mean you don’t know what it might be?”

“On the contrary; I know of nearly a hundred possibilities. But this is _your_ vendetta, apprentice, and any interference by my hand will only lessen your enjoyment when it is finally realized. And I would hate to deprive you of that particular pleasure.” Archon smiled, a chilling smile which somehow reassured the girl before him.

“I appreciate that.”

“I thought you might. Take heart,” Archon added. “Simply because you are unable to reveal your enemy by magic does not mean that your more powerful or indirect spells will also be foiled.” The girl looked up sharply, but Archon acted as if he had not noticed. “I fear I must leave you now, apprentice. My own duties call. Until our next lesson.”

As his image faded, Archon smiled inwardly. In his long years of studying magic and training students, he had learned to judge those he worked with. He had no idea who this girl was, or what she had done to earn such tremendous enmity from his student—she hadn’t even told him the name, and he hadn’t asked—but seldom in his life had he seen such a degree of loathing in a single person. His apprentice would seize any chance to strike at the object of her spite—and his seemingly casual mention of indirect spells was just such an opportunity.

*Time to see how she handles the feel of blood on her hands,* Archon decided as his awareness raced back across the miles to Atlantis. *If she succeeds in this, I think she will be ready to be presented before the Lords.*

One innocent, unknown life, in exchange for the rise of another to power and importance.

In Archon’s mind, a fair bargain.

# 

Proteus was a little better prepared for the second overload than others. Either that, or the destruction of its more sensitive and outlying receptors had the effect of blunting the amount of power it picked up on, thus sparing the remaining portion of its substance a similar experience.

It gritted its equivalent of teeth, tensed every last molecule of itself, and withstood the surge of energy with only minimal additional damage. Then it went to work in an attempt to repair itself.

Surveying the extent of the damage, Proteus was forced to admit it had found a serious weakness in itself. While its mind had continued to expand from the half-aware program of its origin, its physical substance remained as primitive now as it had been upon its arrival. There was simply more of it, and as the damage from the energy surge proved, more was not always better.

Study of information gained from the humans and their machines had explained the nature of evolution to Proteus, and it understood that it was in many respects an endangered... perhaps not a species, but most certainly an endangered form of life. If it were to survive, then inevitably, it would have to change.

The arrival of the new units at the trap sites gave it some most excellent basis material on what it might evolve into, and the entity’s ongoing study of science and magic could easily provide the ‘how’ of that evolution. The ‘why’ had already been proven, which left only when, and where.

*And perhaps,* Proteus thought in a flash of inspiration, *’who.’*

# 

While Makoto and Setsuna prepared dinner, the others listened as Rei recounted her dream from the night of the blizzard. She included the fairy-tale opening, but left out the disturbing search through the boxes at the end; somehow, that part felt intensely personal, and Rei knew it would be a while yet before she could talk about it with anyone, even Usagi.

More than once as they ate, the question of what to do with Gladius came up. The Book was no problem—it would fit right in with all the scrolls and sacred texts at Hikawa—but a five-foot stone broadsword would definitely attract some comment. Nor was it just something they could stuff in a back closet somewhere and forget about. As Luna and Artemis explained, Gladius had certain... quirks. Much like Usagi’s crystal, the stone sword possessed a sort of awareness; nothing so complex or powerful as the ginzuishou, of course, but it was still there. Given the right conditions, it was entirely possible that the thing might ‘wake up’ and go off on its own. Only Usagi and the two cats had any idea of how to deal with such a development, and since there was simply too much traffic in the Tsukino household to hide something the size of the sword for very long, it went to Minako by default.

“What am _I_ supposed to do with this thing?” she protested. “I can barely lift it!” That was true. As Venus—or Sailor V—she could carry the massive weapon without too much trouble, but plain old Minako did not have the magical strength of her alter egos.

“Just keep it somewhere out of sight,” Usagi told her. “But not so far that Artemis can’t get to it if it starts doing something weird.”

“And how do you suggest I get it home in the first place?”

“Wait about half an hour,” Makoto suggested. “It’ll be dark enough by then that you can leave as Venus.”

Minako gave Makoto a wounded look. “I’m _terribly_ disappointed in you, Mako-chan.” She sighed dramatically, throwing her hands in the air. “Fine, I give up, I’ll take the stupid sword. But I want one thing clear right now; if anything goes wrong, it is _not_ my fault. Got it?”

“Sure,” Usagi agreed. “Just blame Artemis.”

“Hey!”

“Oh,” Usagi added, ignoring the indignant white cat, “don’t cut yourself on the blade, either; the stone’s poisonous if it gets into your bloodstream.”

Minako looked at the sword, then somehow managed to glare at Usagi and the two cats together. “Got any other good news you wanted to share with me?”

For a moment, Usagi was tempted to start telling Minako about herself—her old self, Ishtar. Then she thought better of it; some of what she remembered about the Venusian incarnation of her friend was amusing, but there was always the chance that once Minako knew, she might start to act like her old self. Something like this had happened to Usagi after Serenity had been reawakened, little bits of Princessly behavior slipping across the gaps of time and space and spirit to change Usagi, so it was very likely that the same could hold true for any of the others.

Life and Minako both were crazy enough already without setting Ishtar—or anyone else from the past—loose again.

# 

After Archon’s disappearance, she had wasted no time in setting up for a summoning ritual.

It was a much longer rite than the original one which had backfired and brought Archon to her. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that the original summoning had been much shorter; the spell she was weaving now had the correct intonations and commands, the proper gestures to insure her total control over what would eventually manifest itself, whereas her first attempt had been a dangerous and nearly disastrous failure.

Then too, there were differences in her objective. That first attempt had been made when she was angry, so driven to see HER suffer, but also so consumed by her emotions that the specific details of the magic had escaped her. The creature unleashed by such a spell would have struck fast, and struck to kill; that, she now realized, would have been too easy.

No, tonight’s endeavor was an experiment. A test, to examine her own control over the magic, and the limitations imposed upon it by whatever unnamed force was protecting HER. The creature she called tonight would not be as powerful as the first one, and it would be very tightly bound. Tonight, her goal was fear—that, and a little bit of pain.

The sun had gone down by the time she was done, which only seemed appropriate as the magic took shape within the warding circle. The patch of floor within the slender silver chain she had laid out grew dark and distorted before seeming to vanish altogether; what was left behind was not a hole—for a hole in the floor would have revealed the apartment below hers—but rather, a breach. An impossibility in the order of the natural world, given shape by magic to form one end of what could, in a certain sense, be considered a tunnel. A tunnel from the familiar, visible world to a world unseen, a world infinitely far away and at the same time, impossibly close to this one. It was an evil, alien place, hostile to all things not of itself, cruel and destructive beyond human understanding of the words.

And now something from that place was coming through.

It was, in a word, dark. No definite physical substance or shape, only a patch of shifting blackness which radiated a cold aura of awareness. A shiver ran through her as the edge of that awareness brushed against her own mind and the defenses surrounding it, pushing at the chains of magic which bound it, searching for a weakness that could earn freedom—and finding no such break. The spell was complete; the creature withdrew its probe, knowing it must serve.

-Why do you call me?—The voice was disembodied, every bit as chilling as the touch of this being’s mind, but instead of fear, it provoked a small thrill of satisfaction. Dark and otherworldly and dangerous it might be—but it was hers to command.

“I have a little job for you.”

# 

Hotaru looked up from the television screen, feeling a sudden chill wash over her. It was, she realized with a flash of worry, a very familiar sensation, something she had experienced both directly and indirectly, something she had prayed desperately would never happen again. The first time had been a simple mistake; the last, a deliberate catastrophe. And in between, dozens of intentional mistakes. None of it should ever have happened, but it had. And now it felt like it was about to happen again.

Someone had unleashed a daimon.

Old, bad memories drifted out of the shadows of her mind. The accident in her father’s lab... pain, followed by a brief, peaceful nothingness, then a kind of light that was somehow dark, and a voice so incredibly cold... and then, years of existence that were not really living, forced to share her body with the thing that had killed her and then brought her back. Day by day, she had seen her father and his assistants gradually twisted into dark mockeries of the good people they had been, their work perverted and used to create hideous, unnatural things. Each night, she had dreamed dreams that were not her own and then woken up screaming when she saw the world die and heard a part of herself laughing, rejoicing in the death, the cold, the Silence...

“Ami! Get your computer out, now!”

Everyone in the room blinked and then stared. “What...” Michiru started to say.

“DO IT!” Hotaru screamed.

Ami hesitated a moment longer, partly out of shock, partly because she remembered her failed attempt to transform and wondered if it also applied to accessing her computer. Then she reached into that other place where the computer went when she wasn’t using it... and drew it out. The little device was scanning the instant she flipped it open, and before she had a chance to ask Hotaru what was going on, the computer’s powerful sensors picked up something. Something which set off a warning alarm and returned a readout Ami hadn’t seen in almost two years.

“It’s a... I’m reading... there’s a daimon out there.”

“That’s impossible,” Haruka said flatly.

“Isn’t it?” ChibiUsa added nervously. “I mean, Mistress Nine, the Pharaoh 90... they’re dead, aren’t they? Luna? Artemis?”

“I know _I_ sure thought so,” Artemis mumbled. “Luna?”

Luna didn’t answer for a moment. Something unpleasant was pushing forward from her refreshed memories. “It... it might just be another monster... but...”

“Whatever it is,” Ami interrupted, “it’s getting closer.”

“Not for long,” Hotaru said darkly. She was across the room and halfway out the door before she even started to transform.

“Hotaru!” Michiru shouted. “What are you doing?”

Saturn turned, and most of them felt their stomachs flip over slightly at the expression on her childlike face. “I’m going to kill it, Michiru-mama.” Her voice was cold, and the child’s term of affection only made the statement that much more disturbing. Then she was gone.

“Wait up!” ChibiUsa called, following her friend out the door.

“Michiru, Haruka,” Usagi said immediately, “go after them. Ami can guide you from here. Everyone else stays put.”

“But...” Makoto started to object.

“No arguments.” Usagi looked up at the older girls. “What are you two waiting for? Get going!”

# 

The daimon coursed through the night air, reveling in the sensation of being free in this world of weak beings. For any creature whose nature was rooted in hate and spite, an opportunity like this—to walk in the world of mortals, to torment and terrorize beings without the power to fight back—was sweet beyond compare. The only bitterness it tasted came from the fact that this freedom was, like all others, destined to be short, and rigidly enforced by the power of the one that had summoned it. So be it; even a little freedom was better than none at all.

The longer it remained in this world, the more the daimon felt its body changing to conform with the rules and substance surrounding it. Where before there had been only a patch of floating darkness, there was now a lean, powerful body, set atop double-jointed legs which ended in wide, taloned feet. Long arms dragged down past its bizarre, newly-formed knees, arms upon which broad, many-fingered hands ended in razor sharp claws. Burning red eyes took shape in a gruesome face crowned by back-curling horns that reached almost to its broad shoulders, while dozens of glittering fangs decorated the distended, slime-drooling maw below those eyes. A long mane of fiery hair erupted from the unhealthy green-grey flesh of skull and shoulders and back, followed by solitary tufts on the forearms and legs. In its chest, as something that served the same general purpose as the muscle humans called a heart began to beat, the daimon felt a wild exhilaration. And as its awareness settled into a newly-solidified form, it recalled a word, a name the human-things had given it on its last foray, so very long ago.

“BEASTALUS!” The daimon threw back its almost-human head and roared its name to the stars.

# 

Saturn heard the howl of inhuman exaltation and changed direction to close with the source. An ordinary human would have been half-blind in the blend of night darkness and city lights, but her eyes—Senshi eyes—could see fine in almost any weather, any condition of light or dark.

Those eyes glowed dark violet now, seeing not only the light and dark and the shadows in between, but the life and death all around. Through walls and ceilings, around corners, in all directions, she could see the bright glow of life; human, animal, even the vitality of the plants as they slept away the winter months.

And there, up ahead, was a reverse light, a life that was death, a being not of this world. The daimon.

Pieces of those grim memories flashed in front of her eyes: her father, his face twisted into a cold, inhuman smile; her nightmares—or Mistress Nine’s dreams—of a Silenced world; her friend, ChibiUsa, laying cold and still and almost dead...

*Not again,* she swore. *Never again.*

She ran faster.

# 

The daimon paused in its advance. The unseen chains placed on it by the ritual of summons tried to pull it ahead, but something in its own nature held the terrible creature steady as its newly-acquired senses detected a presence.

A figure touched down on the other end of the roof upon which Beastalus stood. The daimon extended its senses and felt a strange anomaly in this thing which stood in the shadow of a wall. Physical senses of sight and scent told it this was another female human-thing, but without the protection of the magic of the one that had called it. Other senses, though, senses rooted not in the daimon’s earthly body but in its supernatural essence and otherworldly origin, told it that something far different from a human stood before it. It was surrounded by a field of dark force, a power much like its own. Another daimon, perhaps?

Beastalus snarled. It did not want to share the pleasure of this mission with another. Roaring a challenge to this interloper, Beastalus lowered its horned head and charged.

Seconds later, cement and brick exploded as the daimon’s thick skull burst through the wall behind its enemy. Not even dazed from the impact, Beastalus tore itself free with another roar and a shower of dust, seeking the other being. It was on the other side of the roof, now, waiting.

The daimon essence was very clever, but in assuming solid form, it had been forced to expend much of its mental energy into projecting the power and savagery of Beastalus. This left the creature with little in the way of an actual intellect, but what brain power it still possessed was bright enough to suspect that another charge would probably fail as well. So instead, it turned, seized the edge of the hole in the wall, and pulled, monstrous muscles rippling as a great chunk of brick was torn away. Hefting the jagged slab of plaster and concrete with ease and a toothy grin even a shark might envy, Beastalus hurled the crude projectile at the other being.

The human-thing moved, waving something in its hand, and the mass of brick vanished in mid-flight, swallowed up by a weird ripple in the air. Beastalus paused, fairly certain that this was not what was supposed to happen.

“WORLD SHAKING!”

Beastalus had hardly begun to turn when it was blown off its feet and then clear through the wall by some half-seen attack. Roaring furiously as it tore its way back onto the battlefield, the daimon looked in the direction from which the attack had originated. Three more female human-things that its other senses said were somehow more than human stood atop the next roof. These did not feel like daimons.

The smallest of the human-things began to speak. “All right, dog face, you’ve had your fun; now it’s time to go back to the kennel! I am Sailor ChibiMoon, and in the name of the Moon, I’ll punish you!”

*She’s her mother’s daughter, all right,* Uranus thought, trying not to laugh.

After a moment of confusion, Beastalus roared and leapt to the attack. The three Senshi scattered as the creature’s heavy claws sank through the roof where they had been standing. Neptune came out of a backwards jump with the words to her Deep Submerge attack already forming, and Beastalus was blasted from the roof by the surging force of the water. Uranus hit the monster while it was still in the air, jumping up from beneath and driving one elbow into its belly as she brought one knee up into its back. Beastalus roared again as it fell, this time in pain.

“Uranus!” ChibiMoon shouted. “Get clear!” Looking down, the Outer Senshi saw that the younger girl had removed her tiara and now held a golden disc of energy. Never having seen the infamous Moon tiara in action, Uranus had no idea what the kid was up to, but she got clear anyway, giving Beastalus a well-placed kick to the ribs in the process.

“It’s all yours!”

“Okay,” ChibiMoon said to herself. “Remember what Usagi said: hold on the fingertips, not in the hand; balance on the opposite foot; throw from the shoulder... here goes... MOON TIARA ACTION!”

In the middle of hauling itself back to its misshapen feet, Beastalus heard a high-pitched, whistling buzz. It whirled about, blood-red eyes widening in surprise as the deadly projectile shot in and sank deeply into—through—its torso.

“HHHHHRRRRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!”

“I _got_ it? I GOT IT!” ChibiMoon jumped into the air with a cheer. “Yes, yes, YES! Did you see it?! I GOT IT! Oh, wait ‘till Diana hears about this! I actually...”

“HHHHHRRRRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!” The second earsplitting roar destroyed ChibiMoon’s moment of jubilation. Beastalus was still standing, one taloned hand covering a gaping wound in its belly, a wound which not only bled a vile, greenish substance that smoked when it hit the roof, but which also spit forth twisting coils of black energy. The monster’s thick mane was sticking up as if its entire body were charged with electricity, and when it opened its mouth again, it was not to roar, but to spit forth a crackling beam of energy. Off- balance from her throw, ChibiMoon tried to jump, tripped over her own feet, and fell backwards, the hostile energy practically in her face...

“SILENT WALL.”

At what felt like the last possible second, the daimon’s blazing attack was swallowed up by a shield of violet-dark energy. Through that shield, ChibiMoon could see the monster blink in surprise and turn to face Saturn. The thing’s head turned slightly as the other two Senshi landed behind it.

“SPACE SWORD BLASTER!”

“DEEP SUBMERGE!”

The attacks of any Senshi needed only a heartbeat to take shape and play themselves out, but as fast as her adoptive family were, Saturn was even faster. The shield which had just saved ChibiMoon from the daimon’s attack now shifted shape and size and center, becoming a dome which encircled Beastalus and Saturn and swallowed the incoming attacks like they had never been.

“Wait!” ChibiMoon called, scrambling to her feet. “What are you doing? Why...” A hand came down on her shoulder, stopping her, and ChibiMoon looked up at Neptune, who quietly shook her head before turning her attention to the sealed-off area.

“ChibiMoon?” Ami’s voice came from the communicator. “Neptune? Uranus? What’s going on?”

“Not sure,” Uranus reported back. “Hang on.”

Within the dome, Beastalus narrowed its eyes, puzzled. Another daimon would not have protected it like this, but neither would one of the human- things. Turning to the strange not-daimon, more-than-human creature, Beastalus looked closely with every sense at its disposal, trying to figure out what this being was. A moment later, it took a step backwards, singeing the ends of its heavy mane on the inner edge of the shield.

“Ssssat-urrrrn,” the daimon hissed, showing real fear for the first time as it recognized its opponent and understood just how much trouble it was in.

Eyes blazing like dark suns, Saturn nodded. “I thought you might recognize me. Are you one of Pharaoh 90’s spawn?”

Beastalus snarled but did not reply. Saturn frowned, and cords of energy shot out of the dome, wrapping around the daimon. Where the cords touched, the daimon began to cease to exist, but the energy pulled away so quickly that the monster’s unnatural healing repaired the damage before it became critical. And then the cords touched down again, not burning or tearing, but _erasing_ strips of hide and flesh.

Beastalus screamed.

“Answer me!” Saturn shouted. “Did you work for Pharaoh 90?”

“No!” Beastalus shrieked, its distorted mouth mangling the words. “Beastalussss not of Pharrrraoh! Pharrrraoh dead! All dead! Beastalussss sssserrrrvessss othhhher! Othhhher!”

“Who, then? Answer!” The cords bit deeper, and the monster howled with new intensity.

“Ghrim-Bane! Ghrim-Bane! Beastalussss serves Ghrim-Bane!”

Saturn let the cords loosen. “Did this... Ghrim-Bane... send you?”

“No! Beastalussss wassss ssssummoned! Human-thing callssss Beastalussss!” In its eagerness to avoid the flaying touch of the dark cords, the daimon could hardly speak fast enough. “Ssssendssss Beastalussss to hunt female human-thing. Not find!” the daimon added hastily, seeing the cold fires in Saturn’s eyes roar up at the mention of a human victim. “Not find!”

“Who? Who called you? Who were they sending you after?”

“Beastalussss doessss not know! No name! No name!”

“Tell me!” Saturn demanded, bringing the cords down again.

“Not know!” Beastalus shrieked, collapsing into a pile on the rooftop in a vain effort to shield itself.

“You’re lying!” Saturn half-screamed. When it made no reply, she turned up the intensity; the daimon’s howl was terrible.

“Saturn!” Neptune shouted. “Stop it! Let it go!” Neptune had never thought she would feel sorry for one of these monsters, but what this thing was being forced to endure was ghastly; worse, though, was the chill indifference with which Saturn conducted the interrogation.

Saturn looked at Neptune, and for a moment, did not appear to recognize her. Then the fire in her eyes went down, and the cutting energy disappeared, leaving a wretched, whimpering hulk huddled on the rooftop, slashed and bleeding and surrounded by streamers of smoke as its corrosive blood melted into the cement.

“Listen to me very carefully,” Saturn said, squeezing her eyes shut as she addressed the daimon. “I want you to deliver a message to the rest of your kind. Tell them—all of them, wherever it is that you things come from—that if even one more of you comes here, I’ll come after all of you. Do you understand me? LEAVE. US. ALONE.”

“Beastalussss... undersssstandssss...”

Saturn looked at the cowering thing a moment longer, then let the shield down and began to walk unsteadily towards her friends.

The daimon moved faster than should have been possible. Its body was ragged; great tears in the skin and muscle, pieces of horn missing, weird lines cut through its thick mane. But many of its teeth were intact, and it still had most of its claws—and these it extended as it leapt for Saturn’s unprotected back with a howl of triumph.

Before anyone else could move, there was a muffled explosion, and then Beastalus staggered backwards, staring stupidly at the razor-sharp head of the Silence Glaive, which protruded from its broad chest. Its body already beginning to dissolve into lifeless dust, the daimon looked up at Saturn, whose face was once again emotionless.

“Give my regards to Mistress Nine,” she said coldly. Then the last spark of its unnatural life fled, severed and swallowed up by the gleaming blade, and Beastalus ceased to exist. The Silence Glaive clanged as it fell, leaving Saturn to stare at it and the fading pile of dust around it for a long time.

Neptune stepped forward in silence. “Saturn?”

She blinked and looked up when Neptune touched her arm. “M-Michiru? I didn’t... I didn’t mean to... to hurt it like that, I just wanted to... I needed to know if...”

“Shhhh,” Neptune said, drawing the younger girl into a gentle embrace.

“I’m not like them,” Saturn whispered fiercely. “I won’t be like them. I can’t let them make me be like them.” She repeated these words over and over again. Being forced to wield the power of death and destruction was a heavy burden on its own, but the thought that she might begin to delve into the darker applications of that power, that she might _enjoy_ the horrible things it would allow her to do, was one of Saturn’s worst nightmares. This was not the first time Neptune had heard such a frightened prayer. She suspected it would not be the last.

“I know, Firefly. I know.” Even the use of the familiar nickname failed to calm Saturn; she did not cry, but her entire body shook, and she clung to her foster-mother like a rock in a storm.

“All I know,” ChibiMoon said after a minute, looking at her tiara with a mix of disgust and disappointment, “is that either somebody’s been buying second-hand tiaras, or Luna and Mama lied to me when they described what this thing could do.”

Neptune could have smacked the girl, but the comment made Saturn laugh weakly.

“It’s not funny!” ChibiMoon protested, although a faint glitter in her eye suggested this was exactly what she had hoped would happen. “I could have been seriously hurt because of substandard merchandise! I’ll sue! I don’t know who and I don’t know how, but in the name of the Moon, _somebody_ is going to pay for this!” She looked up into the sky. “Do you hear me?”

Saturn was spluttering and probably would have fallen over if Neptune hadn’t been holding her up. Neptune sighed and glanced over at Uranus, whose features were locked in the same rueful exasperation she knew to be covering her own face.

Evidently, they still had a lot to learn about being parents.

# 

The daimon’s last anguished howl trailed away into eternity as the fabric of the spell unraveled. The girl staggered backwards at the stinging lash of power as the portal to the daimon’s home realm snapped shut.

She screamed, furious. She had followed the daimon’s progress with the tracking illusion, watching it cross the city and draw ever closer to her selected target. And then, still blocks from its objective, the creature had stopped, and the entire tracking spell had failed! And now the creature was dead; not just defeated and driven back to its own realm, but dead!

All that she had to guess the identity of whatever had slain the creature were vague thoughts, lifted from the daimon’s mind via a tenuous mental link her spell had established between them. That part of the magic, she was still having problems with; otherwise, she would have been able to see what the daimon saw, hear what it heard, and direct it as clearly from a distance as if she were right next to it. No such clarity had been formed, but from the daimon’s crude and simplistic thoughts of ‘female human-things’ that were somehow more than human, she had a pretty good idea as to what had interfered.

*Make that ‘who,’* she decided grimly. *This could be a problem.*

# 

“So where did it come from, then?” Minako asked.

The Senshi were once again gathered in Makoto’s living room. Hotaru sat on the larger couch, hugging her knees up under her chin, with Michiru to her right and ChibiUsa to her left. Haruka was sitting on the armrest beyond Michiru, while Setsuna had taken the footstool. Usagi sat in the armchair, Rei on the floor at her feet, and Ami and Ryo shared the smaller couch. Minako was pacing back and forth in front of the balcony. Luna and Artemis shared the table—she sitting upright, he curled up and half-asleep—Gladius was leaning against the wall in one corner, and the Book of Ages was on the floor next to Rei. Makoto was standing in the doorway between living room and kitchen, listening to the others while keeping an eye on supper.

“I’d like to know that myself,” Michiru agreed. “We went back through the Death Busters’ place and destroyed every daimon egg we could find, along with all the equipment and notes they used to create the things in the first place.” She glanced at Setsuna, then added, “Pluto said that we’d gotten all of them, and _that_ was almost two years ago. If that thing was lying, if it _was_ one of theirs, how could it have survived this long without us knowing about it? And if it wasn’t lying, then who or what else could have possibly created it?”

“You’re assuming that daimons are created at all, Michiru,” Luna pointed out. “They’re not. Not like the rest of the creatures you’ve fought, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

Luna took a deep breath. “The Dark Kingdom created youma by twisting the life energy of humans, plants, and animals, and the lemures of the Dead Moon Circus were similar. The alien cardians and the Black Moon droids were all created from inanimate objects, infused with energy of one kind or another to give them a semblance of life, and Galaxia’s animamates were evil versions of people that could have—who _should_ have—been our allies. The daimons were different; their bodies were created, but the energy which drove them wasn’t from this world at all.”

“Ail and Ann were aliens,” Usagi countered. “So were Galaxia and her bunch.”

Luna shook her head. “I’m not talking about other planets, Usagi, or even other galaxies. The core essence of the daimons originated from a completely alternate universe, with its own unique rules of existence. Probably not a very pleasant universe, either,” Luna added, “based on what we’ve seen of the natives.”

“Hell?” Haruka asked, sounding a little skeptical.

“It’s as good a name as any, I suppose.” Luna frowned. “I don’t know the specifics, but ancient wizards found ways to push through the barriers which separate our reality from others; they could travel to another universe, or bring its objects and creatures back into ours. Whatever it was that Professor Tomoe was experimenting with originally must have duplicated the effects of an old summoning ritual and let Mistress Nine into our world.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Luna,” Hotaru disagreed. “Sometimes, in her... my dreams, I got a sense of wandering. Through space. Then she saw or felt something in Papa’s experiments, and...”

“I suppose it’s possible she came across on her own,” Luna admitted. “I remember reading about it happening once or twice, a very long time ago.”

“Wait a minute,” Rei objected. “If Mistress Nine was able to come here on her own, then what was all that trouble about the heart crystals and the Grail for? Why didn’t Pharaoh 90 just step across on its own?”

“It couldn’t. Moving from one reality to another is a very difficult thing,” Luna explained. “Lesser creatures like the daimons don’t have enough intelligence or energy to do it, but beings as powerful as Pharaoh 90 have too _much_ power; they’re too much a concentration of the rules and properties of their own universe to leave it behind. _But,_ if someone on _this_ side were to start changing the nature of our universe, making it more like the reality of Pharaoh 90, then the barrier between worlds would have been weakened enough for it to enter our universe.”

“If that was all it needed,” ChibiUsa said, confused, “why didn’t Mistress Nine just...” She made a sort of explosive motion with her hands while silently mouthing the word ‘BOOM.’

“She couldn’t do it on her own,” Hotaru replied softly. “Her natural form couldn’t interact with our reality on the kind of level she needed to call Pharaoh 90. That’s what she needed Papa for... and me.”

“And she needed a very specific power source in order to control the power of Saturn,” Luna added. “But if Mistress Nine had left Hotaru’s body to conduct the search in person, Hotaru would have died, and Saturn would have disappeared for another generation. So she had the Professor design all those devices to locate and steal heart crystals, while binding the spirits of lesser daimons into bodies native to this world. If you girls hadn’t been taking out the daimons as fast as they were being turned loose, eventually there would have been enough of them here to tip the balance of forces and let Pharaoh 90 free even without Saturn.”

“That’s an unpleasant thought,” Minako noted, shivering. “Anyway, we’ve gotten sidewalked here. Luna, you said people used to use magic to call daimons. Since all the Death Busters’ research was trashed, I suppose that means this latest creep was brought here by magic?”

Luna nodded. “It would almost have to have been. Despite the mistakes he made, Professor Tomoe was something of a genius; I don’t think anyone could duplicate his work on their own. The problem, though, is that the kind of magic necessary for that sort of summoning was outlawed a long time ago—just like the designs for a mana nexus.” Luna glanced out the window. “Whoever’s out there now, they know an awful lot about things that were supposed to have been forgotten forever.”

There was a silence. “Speaking of knowing things,” Ami said suddenly, “if that daimon really wasn’t associated with the Death Busters or Pharaoh 90, then how did it recognize Saturn? And for that matter,” she added, looking at Hotaru, “how did you know it was out there in the first place?”

“I’m not sure,” Hotaru admitted.

“You were walking around with Mistress Nine inside you for a long time,” Luna pointed out gently. “You’ve probably built up a sensitivity to her kind of energy because of that. As for the daimon itself... well, that has to do with Saturn. The planet, I mean.”

“Oh?”

Luna looked around. “Did any of you ever stop to wonder why Pluto is the Senshi of Time and Saturn the Senshi of Destruction when their planets are classically associated with each other’s power?”

There were some blank looks. “Greco-Roman mythology,” Ryo said. “The Roman god Saturn was the counterpart to the Greek Titan, Chronos, who is associated with time; Pluto corresponds to Hades, the Greek god of the underworld and the lord of the dead.”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” Haruka said dryly. From his seat, Ryo made a sort of half-bow.

“Knock it off,” Ami muttered. Then she raised her voice. “Go on, Luna. You were saying?”

“Like I said, it has to do with Saturn. More precisely, it has to do with the planet’s location in space and time. It’s directly on top of what you might called an interdimensional intersection, a place where those different realities I mentioned before all brush up against each other, and where their different rules tend to overlap and cancel each other out. Once upon a time, it was possible to use the unique warping of reality to travel to any location, in any dimension, at any time.”

“So what happened?” Minako asked.

“An experiment.” Luna scratched behind her left ear for a moment. “You see, Saturn wasn’t an entirely reliable means of travel. The same blending of rules which made it so useful also made magic, science, and even time tend to act in odd ways; if you entered the warp, you could never be entirely certain where or when you’d come out. A lot of people studied Saturn for a long time, and eventually, they decided they were ready to try and create a smaller, more stable method of moving through space-time.”

“The Time Gate?” half a dozen voices guessed simultaneously.

“Exactly. The effort to create it was focused on Pluto, for three reasons. The first was that Pluto is one of the smallest planets, and the second was its distance from the sun. Both of these factors make local gravity fairly minor and relatively constant in comparison with some of the other planets, which means that the planet’s local curving of space-time is easier to predict and monitor. You see...”

“Uh, Luna?” Ami interrupted.

“What?” Ami glanced meaningfully around the room; Luna followed the look, and noticed that other than Ami, Michiru, Ryo, and—somewhat surprisingly— Setsuna, her audience was starting to get that glazed-eyes look of confusion. She sighed, then summed up: “Pluto is a good place for conducting experiments in time travel.”

“What was the third reason?” Minako asked.

“It’s a stray ball of ice on the far edge of known space,” Luna said. “Nobody ever went there, so it was ideal for secrecy.”

“And if something went wrong and the Gate blew up,” Setsuna added, “nobody would care what happened to the neighborhood.”

“That too,” Luna admitted. “That was why Pluto was associated with death, originally; it’s cold, dark, and completely hostile to life as we know it. And that’s why Senshi Pluto’s primary attack is the Dead Scream; she channels the negative energy that still surrounds the planet.”

“And Saturn?” Hotaru asked.

“I’m getting to that. Obviously, the experiments with the Time Gate worked, but everyone had conveniently forgotten to consider what the creation of a new space-time warp would do to the existing one at Saturn. It basically went crazy.”

“How so?”

“Originally, the blending of realities was a fairly constant thing. It changed from time to time, but only very gradually, so there was a fair degree of safety even if you did get lost. After the Time Gate was built, the warp at Saturn accelerated to the point where the shifting of the various dimensions happened completely at random, too fast to follow. As a result, anyone and anything that gets too close is torn apart and scattered into a million different universes.” Luna’s face was grave. “Naturally, nothing could survive such an experience. And since the power of a Senshi is drawn from her planet, the power of Saturn changed to match the deadly new nature of her world—chaotic and tremendously strong. That was when it was decided to seal the power of Saturn away, not to be used except in times of the most dire emergency. The Time Gate was transported into the mists at the end of time for the same reasons, and the then-current Pluto was given the Time Key and charged with preventing misuse of the Gate.”

“You mean Setsuna wasn’t always Pluto?” ChibiUsa asked in surprise.

“She was during the entire Silver Millennium. I’m not sure who her predecessors were, though, or what happened to them.”

“And how does all that explain how a daimon knew who Saturn was?” Makoto asked.

“One of the few times a Senshi of Saturn was activated was during a massive incursion of daimons around five thousand years ago. She stopped them in our universe and then went after them in their own, using the warp at Saturn.” Luna smiled faintly. “I’d imagine that the survivors made sure their descendants would remember her.”

“Which was part of the reason why Mistress Nine wanted to destroy Earth,” Hotaru said. “Not just because it was here, but for revenge. And getting me to do it would have been the perfect payback for what Saturn did to the daimons.”

“Pretty much.”

“Terrific,” Usagi grumbled, ticking items off on her fingers. “Fungus monsters, annoying letters from beyond, forbidden magical devices, and now daimons, too.” She sighed. “Well, unless somebody knows where we can rent an army on short notice, I’d say about all we can do for now is stay on our toes, keep up the patrols, and wait for the other side to make their next move.”

“Agreed.”

“And now that that’s been decided,” Usagi said, turning to Makoto and grinning, “what’s for dinner?”

 

# 

_(the girls are all sitting or standing around on stage, reading lines and preparing for the last segment)_

**Rei** : Anybody got any idea of what the moral’s supposed to be this time?  _(various negative replies)_  Didn’t think so.

**Minako** : Shouldn’t you be trying to figure out how to get that Book open?

**Rei** : I’ll get around to it, but we need a moral right now.  _(the screen fizzles into static, then comes back)_ What the heck was that? _(another mess of static; Rei looks off to her left)_ Ami, what’s going on?

**Ami**   _(leaning in from the side of the screen, wearing a headset with a microphone attached)_ : Something’s interfering with the signal! I’m trying to track it...  _(static becomes overwhelming, then clears to reveal Queen Serenity in the computer chamber)_

**Queen Serenity** : Is this thing on? Am I getting through? Oh, good. Sorry to hijack the signal like that, but they seemed to be having some trouble. A good possibility for a moral is that the present and the future are profoundly influenced by the past. Young Ryo’s unease on the Moon as a result of the youma memories he retains is one such example; my daughter’s flashback is another, as it and all the other memories she and her friends carry of their former lives will help to shape their actions. The unleashing of the daimon is also such a case, not just because creatures like it have made trouble before and had a profound impact on the lives of the Senshi, but also because of the mysterious young spellcaster’s deep resent of events in her own past, which led her to summon the beast in the first place. The past is, quite simply, too important to ignore. (she smiles ruefully) Although, as Luna has shown, it’s also all too easy to forget.

**Luna**   _(human form, frowning)_ : I heard that, Serenity.

**Queen Serenity** : Good.

_(Usagi storms in)_

**Usagi** : Mother! What are you _doing?!_

**Queen Serenity** : Just passing the time, dear one. You don’t mind if I have a little fun now and then, do you?

**Usagi** : Well, I suppose not... but you could have asked, first.

**Ikuko** : You never do.

_(Usagi freaks)_

**Usagi** : Mom?! How did _you_ get up here?!  _(runs at the camera)_  Hold it! Cut! Cut! Stop filming!  _(camera falls over with a loud crash, screen goes black)_

**Ikuko** : Was she this clumsy when you raised her?

**Queen Serenity** : You have _no_ idea...

02/06/00 (Revised as of 15/08/02)

_I’d imagine most of you want to know why I had to go and drag the daimons back into this. Well, spirits and otherworldly entities are a pretty major part of established fantasy, and since I do have a bunch of evil wizards running around, they’re going to end up summoning things. Of all the monsters, the daimons are the best suited to making a summons-related return; the word is an old Greco-Roman term for a household spirit, sort of a personal mini-god. (I did well in Ancient History. Sue me.)_

_Youma, if I read my Japanese dictionary correctly, means something like ‘undead,’ which is okay, but I’ve always held the opinion that a single daimon could make lunchmeat out of a half-dozen of its Dark Kingdom counterparts. The animamates were people who’d been ‘turned to the dark side,’ while everyone knows that ‘droid’ is short for android, a mechanical being. Now, lemures might have been okay—lemure is Latin for ‘ghost,’ as opposed to lemur, which is a monkey—but the Dead Moon Circus are the biggest bunch of goofy monsters I’ve ever seen, and Nehelenia already came back once anyway. The cardians were a nogo from the start, since that would have involved bringing back Ail and Ann._

_Hope that clears it up._

_In the future:_   
_-Some odd things start happening;_   
_-Our ‘shadow council’ gets a little less shadowy;_   
_-I am going to get to February if it kills me!_


	9. Things That Go 'Bump' in the Night, and at a Lot of Other Inconvenient Times, Too.

# 

Ami opened her eyes very slowly.

They snapped shut again as a brilliant lance of pain invaded the irises, pierced the pupils, cut through the corneas, and ripped apart the retinas to end up lodged somewhere in her brain. She had been feeling much better yesterday evening, even despite the discovery that she couldn’t transform into Mercury for a little while, but now it appeared that the brief bout of near-normal health had used up most of her body’s resources. She was no longer sick, but was instead feeling the aftereffects of illness—namely, weakness, hunger, and fatigue.

*Time to get up,* she thought. Never mind that she was half-blind, dead tired, and ready to beat Usagi’s record of downing the equivalent of three meals in one sitting; there was school to attend. Pushing back the blankets, Ami rose and went in search of the shower. Slowly.

Makoto met her in the hall, already dressed—a welcome change from her usual morning routine—in what she called her ‘work clothes,’ battered old slacks and a loose-fitting top, which she wore so she could cook without fear of getting anything on her school uniform or other, more important outfits. “Good morning, Ami-chan. Sleep well?”

Yawning widely enough to make her jaw creak, Ami nodded. “The last thing I remember is my head hitting the pillow. At least, I think it was a pillow.” Yawning again, she sniffed at the air and detected the aroma of... well, she was in no condition to puzzle out what it was, but SOMEthing was cooking, and her stomach made a point of reminding her that the most solid food she’d been able to keep down in the last two days amounted to a bowl of broth and some Jello. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Whatever’s left after I demolished the fridge to feed the animals last night,” Makoto replied wryly. “And it’s lunch, actually.”

Ami blinked, looked back into her room, and saw 11:19 glowing back at her. “I slept in? Why didn’t you wake me up?!”

“I did wake you up. Twice. Once at 6:45, like you asked me to, and again at quarter after seven. You were asleep again inside of five minutes, so I called the school and let them know you still weren’t better. So, what would you like to eat?”

“Well, some pancakes would...” Ami shook her head. Come to think of it, she did vaguely recall being shaken to something resembling consciousness. She’d turned back over both times and plunged headlong into peaceful slumber—but that wasn’t the point. “Don’t try to change the subject, Mako-chan. You should have woken me up.”

“What for? So you could collapse in the middle of gym class or walk out into traffic?” Makoto gave her a very direct look. “Ami, you may know more than I do about how the body works, but I know enough to realize that yours is a wreck right now. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror? You’re whiter than a sheet, you’ve got bags _over_ your eyes as well as under them, and they’re bloodshot besides.”

Ami started to say something, and Makoto rolled on over it. “Your fever’s gone, but you got maybe two hours of sleep that whole time you were fighting it, and you really need something to eat; you hardly touched anything at dinner last night, and I know for a fact there can’t be anything _else_ in your system. Not after all the time you spent getting sick yesterday. Now,” Makoto continued, looking her over, “you are going to join me in the kitchen, and you are going to eat something if I have to tie you to a chair and feed you by hand.”

“But...” Ami protested, her hand making the beginnings of a motion towards the bathroom before Makoto cut her off.

“You can have a shower later, once you’re all-the-way awake and not dead on your feet; I don’t want you passing out and hitting your head in the tub or on the sink.”

“But...”

“Move, Mizuno.”

# 

Usagi was walking the halls, killing time in the latter half of the lunch break when Ryo appeared alongside her. Minako had gone to an intramural volleyball game in the gym not five minutes before, and Usagi wondered if Ryo was jumping on the bodyguard bandwagon in Minako’s place. How he expected to be any real help in a fight was beyond her; if worst came to worst, she herself _might_ still be able to transform, and even in her everyday guise, she was probably still as strong as Ryo. And she had the ginzuishou looking out for her on top of that. The only thing she could think of was that Ryo intended to foresee trouble and steer her out of its way.

His question dispelled her suspicions a little. “Still out, are they?”

Usagi nodded. “Haruna-sensei told me earlier that Mako-chan called in sick for Ami-chan this morning.” She chuckled.

“Something funny?”

“Oh, just that there were apparently some objections to the story in the office. You know Imono-sensei?”

“The vice-principal? Slightly bald guy, wears suits? Has a stare that could strip paint from a wall at a range of fifty feet?” Usagi nodded, and Ryo nodded back. “Met him yesterday.”

“Well, he handles discipline around here, and he makes it his business to shoot down every absentee excuse the students serve up. From what Haruna said, he didn’t buy Mako-chan’s bit about staying home to look after a sick friend, and he called to threaten her with serious detention time for skipping school.”

“I note she’s still not here.”

“Yeah. Haruna-sensei spotted Mister Discipline just after that phonecall.” Usagi laughed wickedly. “She had no idea what Mako-chan must have said, but Imono-sensei looked white as a sheet when he came out of his office.”

Ryo nodded sagely. “Makoto doesn’t take well to being threatened, I’ve noticed. I just hope she doesn’t get into trouble for whatever she said to him.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go, Usagi-chan; I’ve got a book due back at the library before next period.” He held up a fair-sized book, whose title included a couple of words Usagi doubted she could even pronounce properly.

“You’re here one day and you’re already checking the heavy stuff out of the library,” Usagi said, sighing in mock despair. “Well, I suppose Ami-chan would approve.”

“Hey, nature spent four billion years giving us the cranial capacity and opposable digits necessary to write in the first place; it’d be a shame to waste all that effort, wouldn’t it? Actually, though, it’s a book Ami-chan borrowed last week. She would have asked you or Mina-chan to return it for her, but she wanted it back on time.” Ryo grinned and then glanced around. The only other people in sight were four girls at the near end of the hall, but he lowered his voice out of long habit. “Watch your step when you get upstairs, okay? One of the janitors must have gotten overly generous with the floor wax last night, because there’s a slippery patch near room 204.”

“I appreciate the warning. Any chance you could tell me what the answers on the next math quiz are going to be?”

“Nice try.” Usagi made a face at him, smiled, and walked off; shaking his head, Ryo turned and headed for the library.

Unnoticed in Usagi’s case and forgotten in Ryo’s, the group of girls watched them go. “They’re awfully chummy, aren’t they? You don’t suppose he’s...”

“I doubt it,” one of the other girls said. “He’s kinda cute, but if Tsukino was interested, she would have been making an idiot of herself over him by now.”

The first girl, shorter than the rest and with a green tint in her hair to match her eyes, looked up at the one who had answered. “Do you suppose he’s with one of her friends, then?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” The girl shrugged. None of the four were by any means overweight, but she was noticeably thinner than her friends. Her hair was blonde and her eyes brown, but there was a faded, pale quality to her entire coloration; combined with her more than slender figure, those washed-out tones left her appearance somewhat reminiscent of what you’d expect a ghost to look like. “If the book’s anything to go by, it’d be Mizuno.”

The third girl snorted. She had bright blue eyes and many freckles, but her hair was more brown than it was red. “Yeah, right. Since when has she even looked at a guy?”

“Maybe Kino’s not paying enough attention to her,” the last girl suggested with a wicked smile. Anyone watching would likely have pegged her as the leader; there was a certain air of authority about her, something which suggested that when she talked, she expected people to listen. Blue-black eyes glittered in a pale, more than pretty face framed by long black hair; the smile on her lips was not reflected in those dark eyes as they turned to the pale girl. “Did you get much out of Umino?”

“Some. This Urawa attended the junior high for about two weeks, three years ago. He apparently managed to beat out Mizuno for top marks at the time...”

“I’ll believe that the day the sun comes up blue,” the freckled girl said. The other one went on as if she had not been interrupted.

“...but since his family moved, nobody was ever sure if he really was that smart or if he just lucked out. Umino seemed to think he was genuine. His parents are still together, he doesn’t have any siblings, and he’s back now because his father got a promotion and a transfer. He also suffers from periodic headaches, but whether that’s a medical condition or just the result of hanging around Tsukino too long, I don’t know. That was about all Umino had.”

“I see.” Dark eyes narrowed speculatively as they watched Ryo proceed down the hall. “Keep looking. We need something. And if he does turn out to be with Mizuno, well...” The gaze was on the unfriendly side of neutral as she smiled again.

Even on the opposite end of the hall, Ryo felt someone watching him. He was used to the feeling by now, and suspected it was an outgrowth of his ability to predict the future. Every so often, he could tell when someone he knew was nearby before he had actually seen them; he could walk along a sidewalk, head down, eyes on the pavement, and not once bump into anyone. He almost always knew when someone was looking at him, and could turn and pick out the looker even from across a crowded room. He did that now, looking back down the corridor and spotting the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl.

Their gazes met for just an instant, and the world fell away as another vision impressed itself on Ryo’s field of view. He saw a figure on a gurney being lifted into an ambulance by paramedics, a slight, female figure in torn and dirty clothing. The face, a mass of blackening bruises and bloody cuts, was virtually unrecognizable, and one eye was swollen shut—but the other, staring up at the sky, was the same blue-black shade of the eyes he had just locked gazes with, and the hair was definitely hers as well. The image lasted only a split second, but Ryo caught a glimpse of trees against the evening sky beyond the ambulance. Green trees, in the full bloom of at least late spring.

Reality came back in a flood of white, and Ryo broke off eye contact, turning away before the clenching of teeth and squinting of eyes kicked in, the automatic response to the pain he had learned to live with after more premonitions than he could count. He walked away, legs as steady as if nothing had happened—the vision had been short, so the pain was less, unlike other times, when particularly intense or prolonged foretellings had literally driven him to his knees—but inside, he felt sick.

Each time a vision came, Ryo did more than just see what was going to happen. His other senses seemed to take turns joining in on the experience—a snatch of conversation here, a mixture of peculiar odors there, sensations of heat or cold at other times—and it was frequently as if information were being directly implanted into his head, so that he could ‘remember’ things he had not known prior to the flash, things which had not yet even taken place.

The dark-eyed girl was going to be trouble. How or why, Ryo had no idea; he knew only that it was so. And at some point in the future, by the end of a summer that was still months from even starting, she was going to be terribly injured. Again, the how and why of the matter remained a mystery.

*I’d better warn Ami-chan and the others,* he thought gloomily. *Maybe they’ll be able to catch who—or whatever will be responsible.* He held on to that thought; he didn’t hold out any hope that even the Senshi could prevent the girl from being hurt.

He knew better.

# 

Across the city, dozens of tiny, concealed clusters of springy green fungoid matter erupted with even tinier reddish-orange pods as Proteus opened its eyes and looked upon the world again. It was good to be able to see again; it was just as good that it had recovered so quickly.

Proteus had not expected to be able to repair so much of the damage done to its simplistic, far-flung body in such a short time, but then again, all its knowledge of healing and self-repair was based on what it would have been able to accomplish before its absorption of the humans, when it was essentially the same as the mindless units that hung in readiness at the growing trap sites.

*It seems I have grown in more ways than I realized,* the entity mused, watching—feeling—as blackened and burnt-out sections rippled back into green life. *And yet I must grow even more than this.*

Yes. It was time to begin the first experiment. But carefully, carefully; it would not do at all for this experiment to take place too close to one of the trap sites, for the units might waken prematurely and go in search of the energy Proteus would be using. Or perhaps Archon’s female apprentice would be on hand to witness. Either would tell the master mage that something very peculiar was going on. He would learn of it eventually, of that Proteus had no doubt, but with the proper precautions, even Archon would have difficulty tracking the anomaly back to its source.

*And with luck, by the time he realizes, I will no longer be as I am. What _will_ I be, I wonder?*

After a moment of yearning consideration, Proteus dismissed the question. Not enough information, yet, to form any kind of answer. That was what the experiment—and others, later—would be for.

The entity stilled itself, quelling random thought, suppressing the flow of energy throughout its entire self. Had it possessed lungs, they would have breathed deeply; had it possessed the kind of eyes owned by humans, they would be closed, the brow above them furrowed with concentration. Everything it could muster—thought, will, and most especially energy—was being focused on a single objective. A weird tingling sensation began to build within parts of its body as energy looped in on itself, concentrating and growing.

*Now,* Proteus thought, releasing the gathered force. *Begin.*

In an apartment somewhere in Tokyo, a man named Hiroshi clutched at the back of his neck as a searing pain erupted at the base of his brain and made its agonizing way into the rest of his body. Unable to move even those muscles that would allow him to scream, he fell, every nerve ending feeling frozen and on fire at the same time, a chorus of chaos ringing in the grey matter between his ears.

Beneath Hiroshi’s hand, the controlling device Proteus had implanted nearly a month ago—the green-grey star which had until now been hidden from all sight and scent and touch—reappeared. Reappeared, and grew. Grew from a tiny star to a small blemish on the skin, from a blemish to a green rash, and from the rash into a spreading, creeping second skin. It covered Hiroshi from head to foot, clothes and all, and continued to grow outwards until the shape of the body had been lost within the shape of a pod. And still it grew. Tiny blots appeared on the surface and became the reddish eye-sensors, examining the room from all sides; tiny tufts of green lengthened into creepers, making their way along the floor and walls and ceiling and whatever else they touched in order to reach wall sockets and light fixtures. And the green substance continued to grow.

As power began to trickle into the pod from the electrical system of the building, Proteus ceased the flow of its own power. While part of its awareness studied what was happening to Hiroshi, another part made a fast but thorough examination of the trap sites, the units within them, and the apartment where Archon’s apprentice lived. The units remained dormant; the girl was practicing what appeared to be a spell of levitation or flight. All was well.

Only once it was certain of that did Proteus relax. The effort of compressing the energy needed to begin this experiment into such a fine, short- lived transmission had left the entity experiencing a new sensation; exhaustion. But it was done, and the riskiest part of the project—the burst of broadcast energy, so easy to detect and track—was safely past. All Proteus had to do now was wait and watch, in absolute secrecy, as events progressed.

# 

“So where did it come from?” the harsh-voiced man asked.

The darkened room was once again hosting a meeting. The seven who had been in attendance at the last meeting were here once again. No surprise there; none of the Directors _ever_ missed a meeting, and the only way one of the unseen faces assembled here would change would be if something unpleasant—and probably fatal—had happened to the previous Director.

A smile creased the hidden face of the humorous man who had asked so many questions at the last meeting. *And even _that_ might not be enough to stop some of them from attending.*

The Sciences Director, the woman with the icy voice, was speaking. “Damage to the sensor networks in that area was too extensive to track either the source or the destination of the broadcast. The only reason we picked it up at all was because of the interference it generated in communications. None of the previous energies we’ve recorded have had that kind of effect.”

“Except when communications equipment happened to be damaged or destroyed by said energies,” the dreary-voiced Information Director noted.

That was his cue. “Are my ears playing tricks on me, or did you just make a joke?” There was no reply, but he could feel at least two pairs of eyes fix on him, and probably a couple of sidelong glances from the others for good measure. Without even seeing them, he knew exactly who was looking at him, and how: the direct looks would be from Sciences and Information, and likely the harsh-voiced Security Director as well; the glances would be from Personnel—that woman at least had a sense of humor—and the seldom-speaking Resources Director. And the man at the head of the table, the Political Director, would not have reacted at all.

Not for the first time, he wondered about the faces that went with those voices. After all, his job entailed the concealment of this and many other secrets, and it was only natural that he become curious about what—and who—he was hiding. As Sciences continued to explain what little information they had on the events of the last few days, the curious man toyed with what he knew of the organization and tried to guess who the Directors might be in everyday life.

Security was no problem, of course. His department was, by necessity, of a military nature, with a rigidly defined hierarchy; squadmen answered to their lieutenants, who answered to group captains, who in turn answered to their Director. And as with any military, more often than not, with increased rank went increased age. There wasn’t that much difference between the squadmen and the lieutenants, or between the lieutenants and the captains, but the captains definitely had a few years on the squadmen, just as the Director had a few more on _them._

Sciences was a little harder. Quite a few of the assorted doctors and professors who were included in her department were scattered across the city, working either independently or as part of small groups, and most of those were probably unaware of the fact that they _were_ working for someone. Those who actually worked in the complex itself were a mixed bag, the labcoats who thought up and built things, and the technicians who kept them working. He knew that this Director worked in the complex at least part of the time, and she certainly wasn’t a technician, but there were enough women among the hard-core scientists to make her difficult to pick out. He had a couple of likely candidates in mind, but he’d never heard this icy voice outside of these meetings, so he couldn’t be completely sure one way or the other.

Information, Personnel, and Resources did most of their tasks through long-established networks which enabled them to locate, obtain, and place the necessary data, new employee, or material where they were needed, and when—and then conceal the fact that any of that locating, obtaining, and placement had happened. Between them, the trio oversaw maybe half the number of people either of the other Directors did, but everyone in these three departments tended to be very similar to each other—introverted, intelligent, and hard to track down—so telling who of them were the Directors was tricky. Personnel he knew for certain thanks to her delightful sense of humor, but as with Sciences, Information apparently spoke differently under different circumstances. And Resources hardly spoke at all, which made him just as much of a problem to track down.

And as for Political... who knew who the man might be? He worked alone, bridging the gap between the Directors and those very, very few others who even knew this organization existed: a few members of the Diet, certainly, and perhaps City Hall, working secretly to deal with a concern of the voters; a handful of higher-ups in the corporate world, protecting their business interests by funding this venture; likely someone in the military as well, if the weapons Security was so proud of were all he made them out to be; and perhaps one or two others. And Political could be from any of those camps, or none. Not someone famous, though; he would have been able to tell from the voice if Political were a well-known figure.

“Repairs to the detection system are underway,” Sciences was saying, “both here and in the outlying sections. At the current rate of progress, we should have it back to normal inside another week.”

“And what do we do until then?” Security asked.

“I’ve got portable scanners your patrols and our other field personnel can use,” Sciences replied. “They don’t have the same kind of range as the main system, and the number is limited, but they’re better than going out there blind.”

“Can you make enough to outfit all my teams? And all field agents as well?”

“In time, perhaps.” Sciences paused. “With all the repairs we’re doing to the main system, parts are going to be scarce for a while.”

Resources sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Do it fast,” Information suggested. He pressed a button on his console, and a screen lit up on the far end of the room, opposite from the seat occupied by Political, showing a map of Tokyo. Even with the screen, there wasn’t enough light to make out faces. “Another creature popped up last night, but it wasn’t like the others we’ve seen recently; people reported hearing howling, and a partial trail of claw marks was found along a series of rooftops in the Juuban area.” Part of the map showed a red line.

“And the creature itself?” Sciences asked. Security had moved as if he’d meant to ask the same thing.

“The trail ends at a partially demolished rooftop.” Information pressed another button, and a snapshot of the area appeared over the map. Cracked concrete, smashed bricks, and patches that might have been burned or melted were clearly visible. “From the look of it, the thing ran into one or more of the Senshi.”

“We need to assemble a field team to investigate,” Personnel said. “I’ve got some people who can pose as city maintenance, and if I could get some of those portable scanners, we might be able to backtrack this thing’s path and find out where it came from.”

“I’ll have a technician who knows how to use the scanners deliver them,” Sciences promised. She sounded a little distracted, and seemed to be examining the map.

“Send a security squad along as well,” Political instructed. “Street clothes, but make sure they’ll have access to their weapons if our search crew finds anything. Or if anything finds them.”

“They’ll be there,” Security said.

*Now what prompted that, I wonder?* “Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of us?”

“This operation was established for the sole purpose of protecting the people of Tokyo—mentally as much as physically—and last night’s little light show has raised some serious questions about how well we’re living up to that responsibility. Without the proof of physical bodies or injured bystanders, the authorities can deny the existence of monsters. Mass fainting spells can be attributed to heatstroke or food poisoning, damage to buildings can be passed off as mundane terrorist action, and UFO sightings are dismissed as a matter of course. Giant blazing fireballs making round trips to the Moon aren’t nearly so easy to explain away, especially when they show up on military and civilian radar and then get covered by every major newspaper and television network in the country.”

“That _would_ make plausible deniability a little tricky, wouldn’t it?” That earned more glances and hard looks. “Hey, my people did what they could to downplay the mess, but it’s a little hard to cover up something half the city saw with their own eyes!”

“Are they considering shutting us down?” Personnel asked quietly.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Following a meeting this morning, it was decided that our relatively poor progress is not due to lack of effort, but inadequate resources and manpower. As of 8:29 this morning, our operating budget has effectively been doubled.”

“That was generous of them,” Resources said. “What’s the catch?”

“The catch,” Political replied, “is that our marching orders have been changed. We’re to establish a minimum of three field stations for Security in each district, both to cut down the response time in future incidents and to serve as bases for regular patrols of the city. Until such time as the sensor network is fully operational, the field stations complete, and the patrols outfitted, Sciences is to put all other projects on hold; Resources, Information, and Personnel are similarly ordered to give the supplying of those endeavors top priority. And Security is to have at least one team patrolling each district at all times.”

“About bloody time,” Security rumbled.

*That’s what I thought he’d say.* “And my department, as if I didn’t already know...”

“In light of the fact that the increased number of field personnel raises the likelihood of a direction confrontation, Media is to assign its own teams to each new station in sufficient numbers to accompany each Security patrol.”

Pretty much what he’d expected to hear. His department, Media, was the branch in charge of keeping the existence of this operation secret in a world full of cameras, camcorders, cellphones, and Internet access. To that end, he headed up a group of people who could prevaricate, mislead, misinform, button up, deceive, and just plain lie with the best of them. Media’s task all came down to one word: cover. Cover their eyes, cover up the truth, cover your ass...

Sometimes it still got to him; he hadn’t taken all those journalism courses in university just to make a career out of lying to people. He understood the necessity of keeping this particular field of information out of the public eye, of course; he hadn’t believed in monsters or aliens since he was ten, and learning that both—or things very much like them—really did exist had been the biggest shock of his life. If positive proof that humanity wasn’t alone on its little blue world had gotten out, everyone in the world would have undergone a similar shock, and society was in enough trouble right now without a global panic to make things worse.

A line in an American movie came back to him: ‘A _person_ is smart; _people_ are stupid, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.’

*Too bad Sciences hasn’t figured out how to build a Neuralizer yet,* he thought with an internal chuckle. *That’d make my job a whole hell of a lot easier.*

# 

The meeting was over, and the other Directors had returned to their work. The Director of Sciences, however, remained behind, examining something on the small monitor before her.

“You can come out at any time,” she said to the apparently empty room. After a moment of injured silence, a shadow took shape from the darkness and lowered itself into a seat on the other side of the table, the chair recently vacated by the Director of Information. “Something I can do for you?”

“You seemed distracted after I mentioned last night’s intruder,” the dull-voiced man said without preamble. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Answering that question in full would probably take up the rest of this year,” Sciences replied in a rare flash of humor, “but with regards to that particular incident... do you remember the young lady we discussed a few weeks ago?”

“Meiou Setsuna?”

“Yes. Look at this.” The monitor in front of Information lit up, displaying the map of Tokyo with the red-marked trail he had shown to the other Directors. A second red dot appeared on it, some distance from the spot which marked the site of the battle that had ended both the trail and its maker. “That is the location of the house where our odd young lady has been staying since she left the hospital, a location in no way relevant to the path of last night’s creature. But that’s not where she was last night.”

“Oh?”

“She was here”—a third dot appeared—“visiting a sick friend.” A few keys clicked, and the marked trail began to extend. It went directly through the area marked by the third dot. “Coincidence?”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” Information said.

“You’re half right. Her friends, the ones present at New Year’s, were also in that apartment, and as you’ll recall, each of them has an extensive history of being singled out by these creatures. One—or all—of them could have been the target, and Miss Meiou could simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again.”

Information made a faint sound of neutral agreement. “Even so, we should probably intensify our observation, both of her and her friends. And perhaps others with histories of multiple attacks as well. Whatever it is about these people that drew so many hostiles to them before is likely to keep on earning them unwanted attention; if we have people in place, we might be able to do something about it.”

“Agreed. You’ll have to speak with Personnel about assigning more agents, though. I’ll be up to my ears in details until the network and the field stations are finished.”

“I understand.” Information rose and faded into the darkness. A moment later, his voice drifted back. “By the way, how did you know so much about the girl’s movements?” Though still a little dull, there was a distinct note of curiosity—and perhaps envy—in his voice.

“I have my sources,” Sciences replied coolly. There was no reply, and the sense of Information’s presence in the room was abruptly gone. Sciences smiled faintly; no doubt he’d spend a week trying to track down her ‘sources,’ and probably be tearing out his hair in frustration by the end. It would do him good; people who thought they knew everything always needed the occasional reminder to the contrary.

The Director of Sciences didn’t think she knew everything, not by a longshot—but she _wanted_ to know, if not everything, then as much as was humanly possible. She accepted that there were gaps in her knowledge and then asked questions to fill those gaps. And in the process of asking those questions, she invariably discovered new, previously unknown gaps, which led to more questions, which led to more gaps. An endless cycle of learning. Some people would have found that to be a most depressing revelation; if anything, the knowledge that there would always be more mysteries somewhere around the corner reassured her, gave her the comfort that life, while it could and would be many things, would never be dull.

Right now, she was stuck on the question her colleague had put forward: why? Why did hostiles sometimes attack large numbers of people, and other times focus on individuals? What was it that made a single person more attractive than an entire crowd? What was it that made some of those people attractive enough to be attacked multiple times? Why did it seem as if all those people lived in Tokyo? What was the point, the pattern?

And how did Meiou Setsuna fit into it?

# 

“I don’t know, Ikuko-chan.” Setsuna smoothed the skirt and looked at her reflection. “This one doesn’t seem to fit very well, either.”

The two women were in the bedroom currently shared by Setsuna, Usagi, and ChibiUsa. A number of outfits lay on the beds, some belonging to Setsuna, some belonging to Ikuko; a few showed signs of having been tried on, while others were still looped over hangers.

Ikuko looked at the pale green skirt—one of hers—frowned, and then nodded. “You’re right,” she sighed. “Well, let’s see what else we have left.” She began sorting through the various skirts and dresses, muttering at each she picked up. After one more look in the mirror at the fit of the skirt—the color wasn’t bad, but it was just too tight at the hips—Setsuna sighed.

This moment of fashion-oriented frustration had been building for several weeks. The generosity of the Tsukino family in taking her in was something Setsuna suspected she would never be able to repay in full, but for all the gratitude she felt, she also felt a certain sense of guilt at living off the efforts of others. She had been able to rid herself of some of that uneasiness by helping Ikuko keep up the house, and again, just the day before, by contributing some of the money she had left to help pay for the food she was eating. But looking at how little of that money was left had stirred up the same uncertainties Setsuna felt when she looked at the simple fact that Ikuko—for all her gentle smiles and words of thanks—didn’t need anyone’s help to maintain neatness and order in her home.

What had really helped her make the decision, though, had been the visit to the Moon, and Usagi’s sad-eyed statement that there was nothing to be done for her lost memories. The last tiny hope floating in the back of Setsuna’s mind, the chance that there might be something her extraordinary friends might be able to do, had been neatly extinguished. And strangely enough, that loss of hope didn’t scare her. In a way, it had made her feel almost... content. Setsuna knew she would always regret the loss of her past, but she had cried all her tears for that pain already, and with the past gone, it was high time to start making something out of the present. She wanted—no, she _needed_ to get her life back on track. She needed to carry her own weight, to contribute something to the family who had shown her so much kindness.

In short, she needed a job.

She had explained her feelings to Ikuko while they were cleaning up the wreckage of this morning’s breakfast. The older woman understood completely, had simply asked if she felt she was ready to face the outside world on that level, and after a single wordless nod of confirmation, given Setsuna her total support. They spent most of the morning checking through the newspaper and discussing various possibilities; Ikuko had been a housewife since well before the day Usagi had been born, but she’d gone through her share of jobs before that, and many of her friends worked as well, so she had a considerable store of advice for Setsuna on the requirements of this or that line of work, the realities of working in one job as opposed to what you _thought_ it was like, which jobs were good career opportunities and which were strictly short-term employment, and so on.

Building a resume had taken some time as well, and once it was done, Setsuna supposed she should thank whomever had blanked out her memories for being equally thorough in their ‘adjustment’ of reality; a call to the department of public records had turned up both high-school and university diplomas, things she needed but hadn’t been entirely sure she possessed. The fellow on the other end of the line had been very understanding, and said she could drop to pick up hard copies of those records first thing in the morning if she wanted. A similar call to the university had produced a list of courses she had taken, and another understanding person who had read the specifics in turn. Her diploma credited her with a combined degree in economics and history, but the man at the registrar’s office added minors in literature and languages, and a few extra courses besides. Setsuna went over the information floating around in her head and, after some careful consideration, decided that enough of it matched up with the disciplines her ‘education’ described.

Having done all that was possible until she could get copies of those records in the morning, Setsuna had turned her attention to the question of clothing; which was to say, whether or not she had the right things to wear to an interview or to work. After all, there was no sense in wasting time now that she might not have later. Ikuko had raided her own closet for any possibilities to round out Setsuna’s admittedly limited wardrobe, but the green skirt was the fifth such garment to fail to fit the bill—or Setsuna.

Looking through the spread-out clothes, Setsuna’s eyes fell on the one anomaly in her luggage—the ragged, baggy, threadbare blue jeans. Why, when everything else was either new or in nearly-new condition, had she been given something that hardly looked intact enough to use as dishrags, let alone to be worn? And which was about four sizes too large to boot? Every time she so much as glanced at the jeans, her fingers started to itch. Picking them up now, while Ikuko was busily examining a dark grey dress, Setsuna began to study the tattered jeans, turning them over in her hands, studying the stitching, what parts had worn thin and which were still reasonably intact.

“This is just too ridiculous,” she said, poking a finger through a hole on the outside of the left leg, where the stitching had pulled out. “Ikuko-chan, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to do something about this.” Pausing only long enough to exchange the uncomfortable green skirt for her own pale purple one, Setsuna gathered up the jeans in the arm, her sewing machine in the other, and headed downstairs.

When Usagi arrived home with Minako and Urawa, they found Setsuna sitting at the kitchen table, her sewing machine and the contents of half of its little compartments before her. The jeans were almost unrecognizable as a scattered mass of material, including several small cut-out sections that Setsuna kept moving around, snipping at this bit with scissors, comparing that piece to two others and setting them all aside for a fourth, threading this and pulling out the stitches on that...

Usagi started to ask if Setsuna was going to visit Ami with the rest of them, then thought better of it; if the intensity on her face reflected even a tenth of the determination she had focused on this task, then it was doubtful that Setsuna would even hear her.

“How long has she been at that?” Usagi asked her mother.

“I hadn’t eaten lunch yet when she started,” Ikuko replied, “and she skipped it entirely. You’re going to see Ami again?”

“Yeah. I’ll be back in time for supper, though.” Usagi glanced at Setsuna. “We’re going to be eating in the living room tonight, aren’t we?”

“We may,” Ikuko agreed wryly.

Setsuna continued to work.

# 

Ami listened to Ryo’s recounting of the vision as they sat together on Makoto’s couch, once again drinking tea. Or more precisely, holding cups of tea; Ryo was too busy talking to drink his, and after an afternoon of having to put up with Makoto’s bedside manner, Ami didn’t want to so much as LOOK at anything her roommate might have had a hand in preparing. Makoto herself was absent, having dragged Usagi and Minako off to help her do some emergency shopping once they had seen that Ami was feeling much better. And the cats, as well. That part bugged Ami; she had wanted to talk to Luna about the information her computer had gathered while scanning the mana nexus, the data she could now review thanks to Queen Serenity. There hadn’t been a chance to discuss it last night, with all the fuss kicked up by the appearance of a new daimon, and Makoto’s well-intentioned attempt to give Ami more time alone with Ryo had robbed her of the chance to deal with something important.

As Ryo went on, though, Ami decided it was just as well that Makoto had conscripted the others.

“Dark blue eyes? Black hair, about this long?” She indicated a point just short of her own waist. “A little taller than Usagi?”

“Do you know her?”

Ami’s mouth twisted sourly. “Fuunno Aneiko. Also known, once upon a time, as the Queen Bitch of Juuban Junior High.”

Ryo blinked. Ami cursing was a new one on him; Ami cursing like she meant it was even more of a surprise. Then he frowned. “‘Once upon a time?’”

“Mmmm.” In spite of herself, Ami took a sip of the tea; there was a foul taste in her mouth all of a sudden. Not surprising, given the topic. “Aneiko’s hobby used to be finding out people’s secrets and then blackmailing them into doing what she wanted. She’d make up rumors about people who tried to stand up to her, or about people she didn’t like, and she had a whole little circle of friends to help her. Usagi, Makoto, and I had some... problems... with them while we were fighting the Dark Kingdom.”

“Such as?”

“The usual stuff people say about new kids; I was kicked out of my old school for cheating, Makoto was expelled for fighting, other things. And Usagi got dragged along since she was our friend. It’s not really important anymore.” She shook her head, clearing away bad memories. “The point is, after we fought Beryl and the year reset itself, Aneiko was suddenly not at Juuban anymore. Usagi remembered her a bit from the year before, but it was as if Mako-chan and I had never met her.” Ami frowned, thinking. “My best guess is that the youma attacks must have changed decisions Aneiko and her parents made. Maybe they were going to send her to a boarding school or something and worried when they heard about monsters popping in from other dimensions, so they kept her close to home. But the second time around, with the Dark Kingdom gone...”

“Makes sense,” Ryo agreed. “And now?”

“She transferred back after summer. I saw her one day in September and remembered everything, but I thought she might have changed, so I tried to forget. Then those rumors about Usagi-chan started going around.” Her eyes were icy. “I had a few words with Aneiko about that while Mako-chan was... convincing the others to cut it out.”

“I’m starting to get a pretty good idea of what kind of trouble she’s going to cause.” Ryo sighed.

Ami looked at the teacup in her hands, sloshing the brown liquid around as she thought. “Ryo-kun, I need to ask you a favor.” Ami took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to mention Aneiko, or your vision about her, to anyone else. No one.”

“Why?”

“Think for a minute. You’ve seen that she’s going to get hurt; we know it’ll happen, and there’s nothing we or anyone else can do about it. But if you tell Usagi-chan, she’ll try to stop it and then, when Aneiko gets hurt anyway, think it’s her fault for not trying harder. And if you tell any of the others, Usagi’ll find out about it sooner or later. She’s got enough to worry about with Setsuna and everything else that’s been going on recently.”

“You’ve got a point,” Ryo admitted, obviously not liking it very much. He had the feeling that Ami wasn’t quite telling him everything, and that bothered him. But in the end, he nodded. “Alright. I won’t tell anyone. But you owe me for this, Ami.”

She raised an eyebrow, something from yesterday coming back to her as she set aside the teacup. “I do, do I? Speaking of owing things, I seem to remember you offering to kiss me yesterday; you never did.” Startled, Ryo blinked as she leaned forward slightly, smiling. “Now seems to be as good a time as any, don’t you think?” Maybe it was the last lingering effect of her collapse, but Ami was feeling lightheaded all of a sudden, and a bit tingly. Warm, too, and slightly cool at the same time.

After a moment of indecision—*At a time like THIS?!*—Ryo started to lean towards her. Suppressing an urge to giggle, Ami closed her eyes...

...and nearly jumped out of her skin as the front door banged open. “We’re back!” Minako announced cheerfully, right on top of Makoto, who was telling her to get inside and quit letting the winter in. Makoto was herself speaking over Usagi’s request for help with her share of the load.

For one brief, irrational moment, Ami wanted to strangle the lot of them.

# 

Eyes closed and breath coming in a slow, measured rhythm, Rei knelt before the flames, the locked and sealed Book of Ages laying on the floor in front of her. She had spent two hours last night studying the Book from every angle, reading and re-reading the weird script on the cover, trying to understand—or perhaps remember—what it said. She had given up and gone to bed, but just as her eyes closed, it occurred to her that she might find answers about the Book from the same source that she always turned to for help, the sacred flame. She had been so pleased with herself for thinking of it, so eager to try, that the entire day at school had simply flown past. She had felt a momentary regret for not joining Usagi and the others and visiting Ami, but she’d explained her idea when they met up after school, and everyone had approved of her going straight home to see if it worked.

That, she supposed, should have told her right away that the plan was doomed. Two hours—two!—of meditative focus and clearing of the mind had, for once, done nothing except send her feet to sleep and stiffen up her knees. Even more than failure and the wasted time and effort, that lack of reaction bothered Rei. She always experienced a brief rush as the images she sought appeared, and even when they did not appear, she still got a sense of _knowing_ that there would be no vision. But this time... absolutely nothing.

Sighing, Rei got to her feet, standing on one leg and flexing the other to work out some of the stiffness. She picked up the Book, looked at the dancing flames again, then sighed once more and went outside. After two hours in front of the fire, she was warm enough to stand being out in the cool afternoon air for at least a few minutes. And as she leaned against one of the columns along the walkway, it occurred to her that maybe the cold would inspire her to think faster.

There was a flutter and a blur of black to her left. She didn’t have to turn to see one of her crows standing there, its head tilted so that one glossy black eye pointed straight towards her. Another flutter and blur, and the other appeared to her right, perched on the snow-dusted rim of the podium for the prayer bell. Watching her. Just like they always did.

Under the gaze of those black eyes, Rei remembered a certain unpretty, unpopular little girl of about six or seven, a child who was not specifically ugly but somehow always managed to have skinned knees, chewed fingernails, a dirty face, and tangles in long, black hair that she hated more than anything. A child who sometimes saw or heard things no one else ever noticed, who the other children stayed away from because she was ‘weird.’ A child who wanted her body to be able to soar away like her mind sometimes did, and who came very close to breaking a leg—not to mention her neck—when she jumped from a tree in an attempt to fly.

Blushing in embarrassment at the memory, Rei tried to tell herself that Usagi would fall over laughing if she ever found out about it. She didn’t quite succeed.

There had been a crow in the tree that day, watching her, and when she got home, it or one just like it had been perched on the roof. And every day thereafter, it followed her. It would perch on her shoulder and let her brush its glossy feathers; it took food from her hand and flew away from or bit almost anyone else who tried to get close. Some people had talked about that, muttered that there was something strange and perhaps even unlucky about a child that had a crow following her everywhere. The other children started calling her ‘bird-girl’ and ‘beaknose’ and more names besides, flapping their arms at her like wings, making noises that were supposed to mimic the crow’s rough cawing. A group of boys, angry that the bird wouldn’t let them feed it, threw rocks and tried to catch it. They caught a round of bloody noses instead, and afterwards left the crow alone. Rei thought Makoto would have approved of her solution, but her parents certainly hadn’t, and had sent her to bed without supper that night.

Rei used to think that the crow had come to her because it had somehow known what she was thinking when she fell past it, and had taken pity on her, given up a little of its freedom to stay with a little girl who wanted to fly so badly. She was proud of the names the other children called her, thought that if enough of them called her a bird, she might turn into one and be able to fly for real, fly away with her friend and touch the sky with her entire body, not just her mind.

One night, a year or so after her friend had found her, she was crying in her room when she got the idea to try and fly again. This time she didn’t just want to touch the sky, but to fly all the way to Heaven, to find the only other person besides her that the crow had ever let touch it. She had climbed up to the roof and stood there, ready to fly, imagining flying forever, when another crow had fluttered out of the darkness and perched on the chimney, watching her. Not yet, it seemed to say. Not like this. Another way.

She had come to live with Grandpa, and found that other way, found that it had been part of her all along. As she learned how to control her unusual gift, she stopped dreaming about flying. And although the unpretty, unpopular little girl had grown up and learned that she really was pretty, that she really did have friends, her oldest friends, the crows, continued to stay with her.

Thinking about it, Rei wondered if her feathered friends might not, like Luna and Artemis, be more than they seemed. They were every bit as protective of her as Luna and Artemis were of Usagi and Minako: when she had confronted Jadeite and been swallowed up by a dark vortex, they had stuck by her; when Kaolinite had stolen her heart crystal, the birds had protected her from the Deathbuster and the daimon she had unleashed; they had even tried to fight Lead Crow. They did not speak, and they never showed signs of weird powers—or had they? They had both been hurt protecting her; Lead Crow had come very close to killing both of them, and yet they always seemed to recover. And how old were they? Nine, ten years? How long did crows usually live?

Because they belonged to themselves and not to her, Rei had chosen not to name the birds, but after hearing Ami talk about astronomy, Usagi had nicknamed them Phobos and Deimos. The names of the moons of Mars, but also names for the Greek deities of Fear and Rout; Rei hadn’t cared for the implications of those names at all. Crows had a bad reputation as messengers of ill omen, as noisy, spiteful scavengers, and old legends about the tengu, the ‘crow goblins,’ remained popular even today. Even the proper name for a group of crows—a ’murder’—was grim and menacing, but _her_ crows were none of those things, and the idea that a cowardly, clumsy crybaby could so callously slap an undeserved label on her two oldest friends had hurt her more than a little. And then there was the obvious risk to her secret identity; _somebody_ was bound to put two and two together if they saw a girl who looked a little like Sailor Mars calling two birds by _those_ names.

She had forgiven Usagi a long time ago, and while she nearly never spoke the names aloud, Rei still sometimes found herself thinking them. Because it had been watching her when she fell, when she fought gravity and lost, the larger crow was Deimos; the smaller one, the one that had flown to her on a night when she was scared and crying, was Phobos. She wasn’t a zoologist, but Rei thought Deimos was male, and Phobos, female; whether or not they were mated, she had no idea, but since there had never been any baby crows around, she doubted it.

“Do you two like being called Phobos and Deimos,” Rei asked quietly, “or do you have names of your own? Would you tell me if you did?”

Deimos preened at one of his wings; Phobos fluttered over and perched on Rei’s shoulder, looking at her face. For a moment, Rei actually thought the bird was going to say something, but then the black head tilted to look down towards her hand, and she chuckled.

“No, no food in there.” Rei rapped her knuckles on the Book’s cover. “Even if I could get it open. But I’m not going to give up after just one day,” she added determinedly. “I’ll figure it out.”

Phobos’ caw seemed to approve; either that, or she was hungry. And feeling the slight hollowness in her own stomach that came from skipping dinner, Rei decided that food might not be such a bad idea. She dropped the Book off in her room, retrieved and scattered some feed for her friends, who set to pecking it up with a will, and then headed for the kitchen to see what she could find for herself.

In her room, forgotten for the moment, the Book of Ages lifted itself—or was lifted—from the floor, to drift steadily through the air before it settled neatly on the low table. Outside, Phobos and Deimos looked up from their meal, casting about with their eyes before flapping nervously up to the roof. Coming back a few minutes later with a couple of sandwiches and a glass of milk, Rei didn’t notice that they had left nearly half of their meal untouched—strange behavior for any crow, even this pair—but once in her room, she definitely noticed that the Book had somehow covered six or seven feet of space by itself.

Suddenly, she wasn’t feeling quite so hungry.

# 

“Inhale.” Ami took a deep breath—“Hold.”—held it—“Exhale.”—and let it go. “Roll your eye to the left. To the right. Up. And down. Quack like a duck.” Ami almost started to do that, too, then frowned.

“Very funny, Mother.”

Mrs. Mizuno smiled and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “The patient is stubborn, refuses to follow doctor’s orders.”

“‘The patient’ is tired of being cooped up indoors,” Ami retorted in the same clinical tone. “‘The patient’ would _like_ to get back to her life.”

“Has she been this cranky all day?”

“On and off,” Makoto reported. “She was more than a little upset that I let her sleep in on a school day, and it’s gone downhill from there.”

“Then I’d say she’s feeling better.” Mrs. Mizuno laughed. “Every time she got sick as a child, you could tell that she was feeling better when she got angry.”

“So I can go to school tomorrow, then?”

“Whatever it was you had seems to have cleared up, so as long as you don’t overexert yourself, I don’t see why not. And I trust you _will_ take it slowly?” she added.

Ami sighed. “Yes, Mother.”

“Good. And how are you feeling, Mako-chan? Any fever, dizziness?” Makoto shook her head, and Ami’s mother sighed. “I see.”

“You sound almost disappointed.”

“Stymied, actually. I’m still not sure exactly what this was. The symptoms, the onset, the duration; the only conditions I can think of that fit are all ferociously contagious, but since nobody else has gotten sick... Ami, you didn’t by any chance miss your period this month, did you?”

“No. I. Did. Not.” Ami’s voice had gone flat. She tacked on a belated, “Mother.”

“Just covering all the bases,” Mrs. Mizuno said lightly. “After all, better safe than sorry, especially with a handsome young man around. Wouldn’t you agree, Mako-chan?”

“Oh, definitely. Can’t leave those two unsupervised for a minute without them all over each other.” Makoto’s grin was wicked.

“Makoto!”

“Is that so? Well, Ami, just remember that I’d rather put off being a grandmother for a few more years yet. Having said that, though,” Mrs. Mizuno added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “as long as you’re careful...”

“MOTHER!”

# 

As anticipated, the Tsukinos ate supper in the living room. Ikuko usually insisted they eat at the table, but since that was still being monopolized by Setsuna, she relented for once.

Usagi, eating much more slowly than usual so as not to spill anything on the couch or carpet, wondered about Setsuna’s sudden obsession with sewing, to say nothing of how well she seemed to be going about it; she herself could barely thread a needle without sticking her finger at least twice, and her mother’s expertise was limited to patching holes and tears. And knitting. Ikuko was a very good knitter; the pink scarf with the white bunny on the end that Usagi was so fond of was her mother’s work. Setsuna had at least the air of someone who knew what they were doing; only time would tell if it was just an act, or if she had the skill to back it up.

With everyone being careful about their food and drinks, supper was still some distance from being done when the sounds of sewing machine and scissors finally stopped. Footsteps followed, heading down the hall to the nearest washroom, then came back a few minutes later.

Setsuna entered the room and struck a pose. “What do you think?”

Usagi’s eyes boggled. *Those _can’t_ be the same jeans.* Tattered and oversized had been replaced by intact and snug. More than snug. To be honest, Usagi couldn’t see how Setsuna was able to move; those jeans were tight at the waist, tight at the ankle, and didn’t appear to loosen up at all in between. They were the kind of pants that make onlookers very much aware of the legs beneath, and were in their own way even more revealing than the standard Senshi miniskirt. Usagi couldn’t quite understand how at first, but then she realized that, short as they were, miniskirts were still long enough so that you could at least _walk_ without worrying that everyone was staring at your butt; the jeans, on the other hand, practically invited attention.

“Very nice,” Ikuko said. “How’d you manage to patch them up so neatly?”

“I had to pick out the stitching on the legs, and since they were a bit baggy to begin with, I trimmed some of the extra material before I stitched the legs back up. And the fold between the two halves hides some of the holes on the sides. The knees, now,” Setsuna added with a critical glance, “were a bit trickier to hide.” She blinked, then smiled a bit nervously. “Just don’t ask me how I knew to do it all.”

“Ikuko,” Kenji said after a moment, “do you suppose Hanna and Annah might like to meet Setsuna?”

“I thought about that a few times this afternoon,” Ikuko agreed. Noticing Setsuna’s puzzled look, she explained. “The Sousei sisters, Hanna and Annah, are old friends of mine who own a clothing store at the mall. Hanna sells suits and the like in the left-hand part of the shop, Annah works mostly with dresses in the right, and they’ve got a section in the middle with a lot of off-the-rack items; T-shirts, socks, that sort of thing. They do in-store alterations and take quite a few special orders, and they’re always saying they could use another pair of hands.”

“That might be interesting,” Setsuna admitted. “And I do seem to know at least a little of what I’m doing.” Then she shook her head with a pained expression. “’Hanna’ and ‘Anna?’”

“Annah,” Ikuko corrected, pronouncing the last syllable slightly differently. “Say one sister’s name backwards, and you get the other. It’s a joke they’ve been playing since we were in high school, but they both take it pretty seriously.” She glanced at the clock. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get ahold of them tonight, but I can call them at work tomorrow and see about setting up a meeting for you, if you’d like.”

Setsuna nodded. “I’d appreciate it. Is there any of that chicken left?”

“And some rice. It should still be fairly warm. But make sure you put away your things before you eat,” Ikuko added sternly. Setsuna smiled, turned, and walked—no, _swayed_—back to the kitchen. Usagi wondered if she could get the older girl to teach her how to move like that after ChibiUsa was born and she’d slimmed down again; the imagined look that would produce on Mamoru’s face made her chuckle wickedly.

Usagi frowned and turned back to the living room. A weird sort of choking noise had interrupted her good humor, and her first thought was that either someone’s dinner had gone down the wrong way, or Luna was yacking up a hairball. But Luna was nowhere in the room, her parents were talking, ChibiUsa had gotten up to follow Setsuna to the kitchen, and Shingo was... staring at his plate so intently that she immediately suspected something was up. _Nobody_ looks at something with that kind of focus unless they’re purposely trying _not_ to look at something else. And why would he be blushing?

The answer hit her, and Usagi bit back what could have been either rueful laughter or a shocked spluttering. She had the image of the annoying, runty little brother fixed so firmly in her head that she was sometimes surprised to realize that Shingo was growing up, too, with everything that entailed. And yes, from time to time she’d stopped to consider that he was probably going to develop a crush on at least one of her friends sooner or later. Actually, it was a subject she liked to tease them about, Ami in particular. Considering that time Shingo had saved Ami from one of the Dead Moon Circus’ lemures by baiting the thing into chasing him until the other Senshi arrived, or when _she’d_ saved _him_ with a well-timed application of CPR... suffice to say, Ami got a little defensive whenever somebody suggested there might be more to either incident, and Shingo wasn’t much better. That, Usagi could have dealt with.

But SETSUNA?!

# 

Minako was doing a little reading under the light of her bedside lamp, turning pages with one hand while idly scratching Artemis’ ears and chin with the other; the white cat had long ago thrown dignity aside in an attempt to get her to rub his belly, which had worked beautifully. Luna would have snorted in disgust at the display, called Artemis several unflattering names, and then stuck him with her claws a few times for good measure. Minako probably wouldn’t have noticed the ruckus that hypothetical scratch would have caused; she was perhaps a quarter of the way through the book—the size of which would likely have startled her friends—frowning, and occasionally moving her lips as she read. The title read ‘War and Peace.’

In Minako’s defense, it must be said that reading the book had started out as an assignment from the teacher of the advanced English class at Juuban. Of the four Senshi attending that school, only she and Ami were taking said ’advanced’ course, and Minako was prouder than anything that she was actually getting higher marks than her friend. Slightly higher. Sometimes. But what had begun as an assignment to ‘expose you to the great literary works of the world’ had turned into a personal crusade. They were only supposed to have read a few chapters, just to get a sense of what the story was written like, but once in, she’d gotten hooked and kept on going. The fact that Ami—until she got sick— had been reading the entire book as well had absolutely nothing to do with Minako’s desire to finish the thing. Or so she kept telling herself and Artemis.

The phone rang downstairs, then her mother called up, “Miiinaaa! Telephone!”

“Hang on a sec!” Setting the book aside, Minako reached over, turned her phone on—she shut it off at night so she could sleep even if anyone called; anything important would come over her communicator—and lifted the receiver. “Got it!” When she was certain she’d heard the click of the other phone being hung up, she spoke. “Minako the Magnificent here, how can I brighten your evening?”

“It’s me, Mina-chan,” Rei’s voice said. “Is Artemis there?”

“Hey, Rei-chan. Yes, he’s right here.” Out of habit, she paused to make sure there wasn’t any trace of muffled breathing—her mother was forever trying to listen in on her daughter’s ‘personal calls’—then lowered her voice even though the door to her room was closed. “If this is something to do with Senshi business, I’d feel a little better if you talked to him over the communicator.”

“Usagi might try to listen in if I did, and I don’t want to bother her with this.”

“Oh. Gotcha. It’s for you,” Minako said, holding the phone so she could still listen while Artemis spoke into it.

“Hello?”

“Artemis, it’s about the Book.”

“Did you get it open already?!”

“No, it’s still locked. Actually, I’ve been trying to focus on it for about four hours today, and I haven’t gotten a thing. But that’s not why I called. Artemis... can the Book... can it move by itself?”

Artemis and Minako blinked. “’Move by itself’?” they asked in unison.

“I left it on the floor in my room when I went to get something for supper, right next to the door. When I came back, it was on the table.”

“Uhhh... I’m not sure about that, Rei. I was under the impression that the Book’s only powers were the information it contains, how it keeps that information sealed up, and the fact that it’s supposed to be the next best thing to indestructible.”

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” Rei sighed. “All right. When you see her tomorrow, can you ask Luna to meet me on the way home from T*A? But don’t tell Usagi,” she added. “I don’t want to scare her.”

“Right. But Rei... you be careful tonight, okay?”

“I just spent an hour setting wards up around my room,” she replied wryly. “Kunzite himself couldn’t get in here without leveling the place first.”

Artemis chuckled. “Goodnight, Rei.”

“Goodnight, Artemis. Mina-chan.”

“G’bye.” Minako hung up and switched off the phone, then looked at Artemis. “It moves, huh?”

“Apparently so.”

They held each other’s gazes in silence for a long moment before Minako got out of bed and lifted the top mattress; Gladius remained where she had put it, the only spot in her room she could be reasonably sure her mother wouldn’t go digging into by chance. She’d packed enough extra blankets around the stone sword to prevent the impression of the thing from keeping her awake, and as long as she remembered to make the bed in the mornings, nobody would notice. But of all the things to have tucked away under her bed, this was about the last she would ever have imagined, and that fact alone had made it hard to sleep last night.

“And it can move too?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“And there’s no way to make it smaller?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no.”

“Great.”

# 

Not much happened that night.

Rei maintained a vigil in her room until nearly midnight, but nothing disturbed the protective aura generated by her wards, and the Book did not move again, so she finally called it a night and went to sleep. Towards one o’clock, when she was far into sleep, one of the kanji-marked paper wards stirred as if caught by a brief, passing breeze; even asleep, Rei’s mind sensed the disturbance, and she stirred faintly. When the ward stopped moving, so did Rei, lapsing into dreams where she wandered in a library filled with wind-driven papers.

Minako and Artemis slept soundly and without interruption. Gladius did not so much as twitch, or even flicker, but Minako had an odd dream too, one in which she was holding a sword and chasing Ami across a landscape that was made up entirely out of book pages. Artemis dreamed mostly about tuna.

Elsewhere, Ami and Makoto also slept peacefully. Well, sort of peacefully. Makoto was dreaming about a bright-eyed member of the boys’ soccer team, while Ami was dreaming about forcing Makoto to eat a mountainous pile of pancakes and drink a small lake of tea. Despite the marked differences in the nature of their respective dreams, they were both smiling contentedly for much of the night.

The apartment where Proteus’ victim dwelt remained filled with the greenish substance, all of it glowing a dull red from within as the experiment continued. Proteus did not sleep, but instead carefully observed every tiny detail of its project.

Probably the strangest thing that happened that night was at the Tsukino house. Someone walking down the street at around one-thirty—an unlikely occurrence—might have spotted a humanoid shape standing among the shadows on the second floor balcony, looking in on a room where two young women, one younger girl, and a cat lay in various states of sleep. Saturn smiled faintly; she could hear Usagi and ChibiUsa snoring even through the glass door. Yawning, she decided that she might as well turn in for the night, and after one last look at her friends, she set out for home—where, just to be fair, it can be said that Michiru and Haruka were both well into the middle stages of REM activity. Haruka was dreaming about a grand prix race against every monster she’d ever fought, driving some truly bizarre vehicles, while Michiru’s dream involved Haruka and a large swimming pool, and was just slightly naughty.

Had Saturn hung around on the bedroom balcony a few minutes longer, she might have heard another sound over the snoring, a soft series of sighing chimes and crystalline tinkling coming from somewhere in the room. And even if she hadn’t heard that, she would definitely have noticed a few moments later when the little bird-shaped glass sculpture on the shelf above Usagi’s bed started to glow with a pale, reddish-orange light, casting rainbows of color and shadow across the room.

Under that shattered spectrum, Usagi was dreaming about Mamoru; so was ChibiUsa, though in very different terms. Luna dreamt about herself, in her human form, which did not seem quite so terrible in a dream as it had during her brief transformation the previous evening. And Setsuna saw the same thing that had been in her dreams every night since her arrival, from the moment she slipped into true sleep until the split second when she woke in the mornings.

A tall, ornamented staff shaped rather like a huge key, floating through an infinity of mists and mirrors...

# 

“YEEEE-HAAAH!”

Two of these surprise visits in a week, Michiru decided as she sat up to survey the impact damage, was definitely pushing things. Not for the first time, she considered getting a lock installed on the bedroom door. And also not for the first time, she dismissed the idea; if Saturn really wanted in, it was going to take one truly amazing lock to keep her out.

Hotaru was more or less ignoring Michiru this morning, putting all her attention on Haruka, who was struggling unsuccessfully to escape a storm of little-girl kisses and hugs.

“Off! Off!”

“Happy birthdaaaaay!” With the force of that exuberant congratulations, both Haruka and Hotaru fell over the side of the bed with a pair of startled shouts and a muffled whump. Michiru started giggling, then toppled sideways on the mattress in full-blown hilarity when they both peered over the edge. Haruka looked at Hotaru; Hotaru looked at Haruka. As one, they nodded, then jumped forwards. Michiru was not especially ticklish, but Haruka knew of a few spots even her iron self-control couldn’t stand up to; and Hotaru made up for not knowing those weak points with sheer enthusiasm. Michiru’s laughter took on a note of desperation as she tried and failed to fight off the attack.

“I—mmph!—s-s-surrender—ha!—cut it out you—hoo, ha, ha!” Haruka’s grinning face appeared in Michiru’s field of vision, upside-down and with her nightshirt in some danger of slipping off one shoulder. Smiling, Michiru put one hand on the back of Haruka’s neck and lifted her own head slightly for a light kiss. “Happy birthday, Haruka.” Michiru’s smile didn’t fade in the slightest when she added, “Hotaru, get her.”

Haruka was still blinking when Hotaru jumped on her again. Michiru followed about a second later, and it was the birthday girl’s turn to try and defend herself.

“Off! Haamph! I said—ha!—off! Not the knee—hee, hee, hee! Ha! Quit it!”

# 

Setsuna wondered if she might not have made a mistake.

Ikuko had made that promised phonecall at midmorning, and her friends had proven more than amenable to meeting Setsuna after lunch. She and Ikuko had left the house and caught a bus shortly after that call had ended, headed first to the department of public records. The employee that met them at the front desk turned out to be the same helpful fellow Setsuna had spoken to over the phone, a grey-haired, grey-eyed fellow of average height who was as good as his word, and had copies of all the information she’d been after. In the middle of watching him work, Setsuna had been struck by a very odd feeling, almost like the one Usagi had triggered in her that first night—a sense of recognition, of knowing someone without actually knowing them.

“Excuse me,” she’d asked, “but have we met? You seem... familiar... for some reason.”

The fellow had seemed momentarily startled, but then he just chuckled. “I’m told I have one of those faces. I don’t see it, myself, but that’s what they tell me.”

It wasn’t until ten minutes later, on a bus headed for the mall where the Sousei sisters ran their store, that Setsuna realized the man’s reply had completely failed to answer her question. And ten minutes later, she was too busy meeting Ikuko’s friends to worry about it.

As she had guessed from their names and Ikuko’s descriptions, Hanna and Anna-with-an-’h’-on-the-end were twins. They had the same soft brown hair and eyes, the same above-average height and slender build. As far as beauty went, they were somewhere in the comfortable range between ‘handsome’ and ‘pretty,’ though to look at them side-by-side, Hanna was just a touch sturdier, Annah slightly more delicate. Their voices were indistinguishable, and they were wearing carbon-copies of the same outfit, dark blue vest and skirt over pale white blouse. They were very happy to see Ikuko again, pleased to meet Setsuna, and just a touch put out that she seemed able to tell them apart at a glance.

After several minutes of catching up, Ikuko had fallen silent and stood aside as the sisters proceeded to question Setsuna. ‘Interrogate’ was probably a more accurate description. They asked what she knew about fashion in general and sewing in particular; with information that essentially catalogued the length of recorded history drifting around in her head, Setsuna was more at a loss for where to begin than for something to say. Hanna asked a number of technical questions nobody but a seamstress could have understood, and got equally technical responses; Annah handed over a sketchpad and described an outfit she was working on in only the vaguest possible terms, and blinked when she received the pad back with a complete drawing on the front sheet, along with a few details she had left out. They both asked to see the jeans—technical and artistic skill counting for nothing if Setsuna couldn’t actually thread a needle or stitch a seam—and seemed to try everything in their combined power that might unearth a fault.

In the end, the sisters grudgingly agreed that Setsuna ‘might work out,’ and asked whether she was available to start right away, their faces going from sour and disbelieving to eagerly hopeful so fast that Setsuna did a double-take.

“Just for the rest of the afternoon,” Hanna said immediately. “So you can get an idea of how we work and whether or not you can handle it.” She frowned, then admitted, “We’ve gone through three assistants since this past September, and to be honest, we could really use the help.” Ikuko had no objection to the arrangement and headed home, though only after making Setsuna promise to let Hanna and Annah drive her back instead of trying to catch the bus or a taxi.

Three hours later, Setsuna paused in the middle of measuring off a length of fabric to watch from the corner of one eye as the sisters argued over something. It was the seventh such incident that afternoon, and it was as loud as anything Setsuna had witnessed between Usagi and Rei or Usagi and ChibiUsa. If it was a daily or even weekly thing, she could understand what had driven away three previous workers. Still, life with the Tsukinos had helped her find the trick of tuning out this sort of thing, and she admitted to herself that she was enjoying the work. Even though she didn’t entirely understand why.

Glancing through the door that separated the front of the shop from the working room in the back, Setsuna blinked. What were Michiru and Haruka doing here?

*Stupid question,* she thought a moment later, grinning wryly as Michiru pulled a dark grey coat off the rack and held it consideringly up in front of Haruka.

The opportunity was too good to pass up. Setting down the materials in her hands, Setsuna slipped out through the door and walked up behind the pair. Haruka’s back was to her, and Michiru was going through the rack of suit-coats again; evidently the grey had failed to meet one or both of their standards. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, as a matter of f-AAAH!” Michiru jumped, clutching another coat as if it were a shield. “Don’t DO that!” she snapped, breathing heavily.

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.” Michiru made as if to hit her with one hand, or maybe it was just Setsuna’s imagination playing tricks as the blue-haired girl put the coat she was holding back in its place. One of the two cashiers/salespersons who worked here, a rail-thin young man named Guomo, chuckled audibly; when Michiru spun to confront the source of that sound, she found only a sober, serious expression of innocence. She glared at Guomo, then turned her attention to the other employee, Ifumi, a pretty brunette whose face went wide with surprise at the accusing look.

Haruka was fighting off a smile; she had jumped a bit, too, but not nearly as much. And she definitely hadn’t yelled. “She’s been having a bad day. Hotaru woke us up with one of her little bombing runs this morning, and Michiru’s agent called at around ten with some ideas that really needed to be shot down. That lasted until one, and she hasn’t been fit to live with since.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” Michiru promised.

Setsuna smiled. “So what are you doing here?”

“We could ask you the same thing.”

“As of about three hours ago, I work here.” They both looked at her in surprise, slightly tinged with concern. “I’m fine, really. In fact, I’m better than fine. I haven’t felt quite this... I think the word I want is ‘normal.’ Yes. I haven’t felt this normal since I got here.”

“I never really went for the ‘normal’ lifestyle,” Haruka noted. “Too bland. But if you’re sure...”

“I am. Now, before my new employers let go of each other’s throats long enough to start wondering why I’m not still working on that suit they left with me, is there something you two were after?”

“A birthday suit,” Michiru said. Setsuna blinked, unsure whether she was supposed to laugh, stop short, or just nod her head, but Michiru was already explaining. “Haruka claims to hate surprise birthday parties, so to keep me from throwing one, she lets me make dinner reservations at a restaurant and then pick out a suit for her to wear. I chose a blue dress with gold trim for the occasion this year, and she needs something to match.”

“I see.” The look Setsuna directed her way then made Haruka feel as if she were being stripped naked, weighed and measured, and then hung up for sale somewhere. Then Setsuna turned to the selection of suits. “Black would be too dark, and grey too pale. Brown? No... ah...” She drew out a metallic blue coat and held it up. “I think this would go nicely with her eyes, and since her hair’s already gold, that would match with your dress, wouldn’t it?”

Michiru moved around to stand next to Setsuna and added her own slice-and-dice look, then nodded with a wide, approving smile. Haruka began to get a sickly, sinking feeling in her stomach as the pair hauled her off in search of the rest of the suit.

# 

The experiment continued. What was in the pod, what _had_ been Hiroshi, was now something very different. More, in some ways, and less in others. Proteus had continued to monitor the incubator’s progress throughout the night and into this day, making adjustments where they appeared necessary, recording each and every detail. Soon, now, it would be time to move on to the next phase of the experiment, to...

Something caught the entity’s attention. An unplanned change in the incubator, taking place on a massive scale, too sudden and complete to stop or even slow.

*It is not time!* Proteus shouted at the thing that should have been under its control. *You are not ready yet! _I_ am not ready yet!*

No good; the change accelerated. Chemicals that were not supposed to mix went ahead and did so, wall sockets that should have continued to feed the pod a steady flow of energy surged with power before blowing themselves out, and the physical shape of the thing began to warp and tear. Desperate, Proteus calculated whether or not a second infusion of energy would be sufficient to pacify its awakening creation. The risk of detection from another power burst was considerable, but if the creature were to break loose...

It became a moot point as, with a great ripping noise, the fleshy substance of the incubator parted. A chemical soup spilled onto the carpet, threatening to dissolve it and perhaps the floor beneath until Proteus put forth what little control it had left to spread an absorptive blanket of green over the surface, soaking up the spill before any permanent harm was done. There might still be a chance to avoid detection, so long as it minimized the signs of...

The shape in the apartment threw itself at the nearest wall. Limbs that were not quite arms extended towards the surface, extending digits that were not quite fingers. The incubator, responding to Proteus’ will, lashed out with creepers and tried to halt its offspring, but the misshapen thing responded with creepers of its own, creepers tipped by short hooks of what might have been bone, and sliced free of its ‘parent.’ Proteus commanded more creepers, and still more when those failed. And while the creature’s attention was diverted, Proteus ordered a patch of itself near the apartment balcony to unlock and slide open the door.

When the last of the creepers fell away, the creature turned towards the floor of air, recognizing in some fashion that this led out. It wanted to go out; that was part of the program Proteus had installed, and that program was too powerful to ignore.

Proteus slid the door shut behind its creation and set about hiding all traces that either of them had ever been in this place. The thickly-clustered green substance receded into the walls and vanished, taking with it the corrosive slimes of the incubator. In the computer networks, Proteus erased all records of that apartment ever having been owned by a man named Tanaka Hiroshi, erased every last trace that the man had ever existed. With the information it had absorbed from his mind these last few weeks, it knew exactly where to look.

Midway through its data purge, Proteus noted that, although it could no longer exercise any sort of control, the device that had been implanted on Hiroshi’s neck was still functioning, somewhere inside the creature. It could not control, but it could monitor.

Perhaps the experiment was not a complete failure.

# 

Rei pulled her coat a little tighter and walked a little faster. Setting aside Monday’s freak blizzard, it had been getting warmer over the last few days, but today’s chilly, gusting wind was more than making up the difference.

Luna appeared atop a low wall. “Sorry I’m late, Rei.”

“It’s okay. Did Artemis tell you what I said about the Book?”

“He did.” Luna grimaced. “And as much as I hate to admit it, for once I’ve got no more ideas about something than he does. Did anything else happen last night?”

“Nothing unusual. The wards were all intact when I woke up, and the Book didn’t move again.” The wind gusted again, and Rei shivered. “Do you mind if we walk while we talk?”

“Not at all.” Luna jumped down from the wall and into Rei’s arms.

“That’s not quite what I had in mind, Luna.”

“I’d imagine not.”

In spite of herself, Rei laughed. “You’re as bad as Usagi, you know that?”

“Talking to yourself, Rei-san?”

Rei and Luna both nearly swallowed their tongues. Turning, Rei saw that Keiko and Anya had hurried to catch up with her. “Keiko, don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Keiko smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Rei-san. I promise I’ll find some other way to sneak up on you in the future.” Rei glared at her for a moment longer, then let out a sound part-way between a sigh and a laugh.

“That’s a beautiful cat,” Anya said. “Is she yours?”

“No. This is Luna; she lives with Usagi. Luna, this is Anya. And you remember Keiko, don’t you?” Keiko waved with the fingers of her left hand, and Luna meowed a suitably kitty response. *Wasn’t she the girl with the odd sense of humor who...* Luna broke off the thought as a weird sensation rippled across her awareness. *What is that? It feels... it feels like trouble. Is it coming from one of them?*

Anya had been about to scratch Luna behind the ear, and her hand had stopped short when Luna’s head turned.

“She doesn’t bite, Anya.” Anya smiled and patted Luna on the head with a touch of nervousness. Luna’s eyes narrowed. *Is that coming from her? What _is_ it?* Then she wrinkled her nose. *Uggh... what is that awful smell?!*

Rei paused suddenly as a warning flashed from her subconscious. As she started to look around, Keiko blinked in confusion. “Is something wrong, Rei- san?”

“There’s something out there,” Rei said softly. “It’s close.” Anya looked at her for a moment, then sniffed at the air and nearly gagged.

“Do either of you smell that?”

Rei and Keiko had just enough time to catch a truly foul reek on the wind before something big and fast-moving appeared, its green-grey outer hide—or whatever—trailing a mass of rope-thick tendrils and steaming in the chill as if it had just emerged from a hot bath or shower. It looked a little humanoid, but only in the sense of how it had been arranged; four limbs ended in twice the number of digits Rei had ever seen on any normal animal’s arm or leg, while its head, riding low between the massive shoulders, looked like it had been flattened. And then there were the vine-like growths trailing from its back.

In all, the thing looked like a plant trying to be a human, but without much success. Seven feet tall and three feet wide, it knocked all three girls down as it tore past them, huge and grotesque feet tipped with little rootlets digging into the ground and ripping small chunks out of the concrete with each step. Looking at those tracks, Rei had a horrible vision of what might happen if that thing were to step on one of them. It was, fortunately, only a product of her imagination and not an actual glimpse of the future, but between that and the stench, she was ready to be sick. Then she saw the direction the freakish thing was headed, and her stomach turned to ice.

“Are you two all right?” she said quickly, noting that Luna had already vanished in pursuit of the creature.

“Yes, just a little...” Anya started to say, positively green in the face. “What _was_ that thing?”

“I don’t want to know,” Keiko said immediately, shuddering.

Rei nodded. “Head back to the school and get somebody to call the police. I’ve got to find Usagi before... I’ve got to make sure she’s...” She took off at a dead run.

“Wait!” Anya half-shouted, reaching out and letting her hand fall when she realized Rei, already clear down the street, hadn’t heard.

# 

Ryo nearly collided with a telephone pole when the vision hit him, a single, brief image of someTHING he’d never seen before accompanied by an almost overwhelming sense of danger.

“GET BACK!” he shouted, catching hold of Ami’s shoulder with one hand, Minako’s elbow with the other. Minako’s indignant squawk and Ami’s startled exclamation were both drowned out by a splintering sound from the wall to their left. Bits of brick went flying as something massive tore through in an explosive unleashing of raw force, knocking everyone off their feet. Ryo and Ami caught each other as they fell and slid sideways back down the sidewalk, and Artemis let out a loud yowl of protest as Minako fell on him; on the other side of the blast, Makoto had practically enveloped Usagi, then somehow managed to turn both their bodies in mid-air so that hers was the one to hit the ground first.

The wall-buster took off at a shambling run, indifferent to their presence. Or maybe it just didn’t see them through all the dust and flying snow.

Rei came around the corner a few moments later, just as they were all getting up. “Are you all right?” she said immediately. There was no question who she was directing the inquiry to.

“We’re fine,” Usagi replied. “I take it you saw that... thing?”

Luna appeared atop what was left of the wall. “We did. It ran right past us.”

“It’s another one of those fungus monsters, isn’t it?” Minako demanded, dusting herself off.

“I’m not sure.” Rei frowned. “It looks a little like them, but its shape is... wrong, somehow. They were all as springy as elastic, but this one’s a lot more solid. And the others didn’t have roots, did they?” At the startled glances, she pointed to the holes in the sidewalk and the road, which continued up to a blasted-out gap in the wall across the street.

“Where do you suppose it’s going?” Makoto asked, trying to remember what lay in the direction the creature’s trail was pointed.

Minako took out her transformation pen. “I know one way to find out.”

# 

Rei was staying with Usagi, and Ryo couldn’t have followed anyway, but there had been a bit of a heated argument when Ami announced that she was coming with Venus and Jupiter. They all pointed out that her last attempt to transform had literally blown up in her face, and that she was supposed to be taking it easy, but she ignored both points and pulled out her transformation pen anyway. The change went off without a hitch, but Mercury didn’t look much better than she had before, and it was only after she had promised—three times—to hang back and let the others do the fighting that they agreed to let her go. Ryo had added something about her owing him another one, which for some reason brought a healthy blush to Mercury’s cheeks; the blush probably helped more than anything else to convince the others she up to the task.

She had no trouble keeping up with Venus and Jupiter as they chased the creature, and her visor and computer were working as well as ever, but Mercury still couldn’t shake off a slight nervousness. The transformation had worked this time, but there had been a moment or two when she was almost certain she was about to lose it. And even now, she didn’t feel completely right; the physical benefits of strength and speed and reflexes were all there, but there was a kind of hollow, unfinished sensation riding at the edge of her awareness. It was a feeling almost exactly opposite to the sense of gathering energy that preceded the use of a Senshi attack, and Mercury suspected that it really would go better for her if she didn’t try to use her powers.

*Worry about it if it comes to a fight,* she chided herself. *For right now, keep your mind on the problem at hand.*

She was trying to figure out where this latest creature was headed. Walls did not slow it appreciably, although it seemed to be intelligent enough to realize that going over or around buildings would be much easier than trying to batter through a dozen or more of the walls within. It didn’t seem to be taking any interest in people, either, which was very unusual. But then again, as Rei had pointed out, this one wasn’t like the other fungus beings; Mercury’s analysis showed some similarities in its makeup, but more about it was different than the same.

Her computer beeped, alerting her that the creature’s energy field was generating a steady series of high-frequency pulses, and Mercury recognized the phenomenon immediately. *Radio waves. The thing’s transmitting radio waves.* Her eyes narrowed. If it was transmitting, someone, somewhere, had to be receiving.

The thought came to her that this creature might be a decoy, sent in to lure the Senshi out, observe their behavior and fighting styles, and transmit what it learned back to its masters before it was overcome and destroyed. Past foes had never tried that tactic, and Mercury feared it might be very successful; part of the reason the commanders of the various dark forces had been so much more difficult to defeat than their minions was not just due to their greater strength, but because they had frequently faced the Senshi beforehand, had a chance to learn how they fought as individuals and worked together as a team. The thought of an entire _army_ of superhuman creatures with access to that kind of knowledge was more than a little disturbing.

“Jupiter!” Mercury called out. “Can you hit that thing on the move?”

# 

The blue jacket had been joined by grey pants, a starched shirt, and—despite some heated objections from Haruka—a red necktie. She had been silently grateful that the Sousei sisters didn’t sell shoes as well, and then had to talk _very_ fast when Annah suggested they stop by a shoe store just down the hall.

*I suppose I should count my blessings that these two didn’t try to color-coordinate me down to my socks and underwear.* She glanced sideways at Michiru and Setsuna, then shook her head. After outfitting Haruka for the evening, Setsuna had informed Hanna and Annah that she wouldn’t need a ride, and, shouting matches or not, she fully intended to be back tomorrow. The sisters had been glad to hear it; Guomo and Ifumi gave her looks that said she really ought to reconsider that last part if she valued her sanity. Now they were on their way to the parking lot.

“I’d still feel better if you let me at least _look_ for something,” Setsuna was saying. Haruka sighed. One reason she tried to keep her birthdays quiet was that it saved her from having to deal with the awkwardness of accepting gifts she really had no use for.

“I think we can accept the help you gave us finding the suit as a suitable present,” Michiru replied.

“Or the look on Michiru’s face when you snuck up behind us,” Haruka added.

“Yes,” Michiru said blandly. “Or that.”

“I’m not exactly the easiest person in the world to shop for, and to be honest, I wouldn’t feel right accepting something from you, Setsuna. Not after you’ve lost...” Haruka grunted as Michiru’s elbow dug into her ribs.

“It’s okay,” Setsuna said. “I don’t mind talking about it. And I can understand how you might feel uncomfortable, Haruka. But would you mind terribly if I went ahead and bought you something anyway?”

Haruka thought it over, remembered Setsuna’s earlier claim of enjoying her ’normal’ life, remembered how happy she sounded talking about it with Michiru just now. She sighed. “Alright. Just as long as you promise not to tell anybody else, okay?”

“Done and done. I have...”

Whatever Setsuna had remained a matter for another time, as a skylight overhead suddenly shattered, dropping a rain of glass shards and something very large and unhappy into the mall. Most people dove for cover, but Setsuna merely took a long step to the left and a slight step backwards. Michiru tried to figure out what the woman was up to while keeping her own eyes on the falling creature; both tasks ended abruptly when Haruka knocked her down and then crouched over her, shielding Michiru with her own body as the glass hit the tiled floor with a loud crash.

“My hero,” Michiru said dryly, earning an answering grin as Haruka got up and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Michiru frowned; ‘fine’ could have a lot of meanings with Haruka, but this time, she seemed to be telling the truth. They both looked at Setsuna, who had somehow managed to stand right in the middle of the falling glass without being touched, and was looking down at the shattered debris with an expression of absolute astonishment. “Neat trick,” Haruka muttered. “Tell you what, you can teach me how you did it and consider _that_ a birthday present.”

“I’m... I’m not sure what just happened,” Setsuna admitted.

“Worry about it later,” Michiru said. “Right now, we’ve...”

“Attention all shoppers,” a loud, clear, and familiar voice called from above. In spite of themselves, the three Senshi standing on the floor looked up at the three who were just beginning to descend through the busted skylight. “We apologize for the inconvenience presented by this little interruption,” Venus continued grandly, “and would ask at this time that, for your own safety, you all clear the area while we engage in a little urban pest removal.”

There was a moment in which nothing moved. Then a horde of slightly panicked shoppers began to move in all directions, getting as much distance between themselves and what was coming as possible.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Venus called to the wall of fleeing backs as she, Jupiter, and Mercury took up positions around their rising enemy. Michiru and Haruka looked at each other, glanced at Setsuna with a look that said ‘stay out of the way,’ and ducked around the nearest corner.

“Mercury,” Jupiter said, “is it still transmitting?”

“No. The electrical energy from your attack seems to have overloaded it like I hoped, only now it’s...” Mercury jumped as the creature snapped its squashed head forward, lashing at her with its mane of razor-tipped tendrils. “...mad,” she finished lamely.

“Then quit talking,” Uranus said sharply as she and Neptune joined the ring, “and take it down!”

“Where did you two...” Jupiter started to say, turning her head to look at Uranus. Her eyes widened. “What’s _Setsuna_ doing here?!”

“We’ll explain later,” Neptune snapped. “Now, together, before it has a chance to move!”

Mercury opened her mouth, but her words were lost in the crackle of energies as the other four unleashed their attacks. Venus’ Love Chain entangled it first, followed by the Deep Submerge, Supreme Thunder, and World Shaking hitting it all at once; the thing was blasted into the air on a pillar of electrified water, still tangled in the heart-shaped gold links. But even as it continued to ascend, small spikes appeared on the creature’s chest and shoulders. The green substance around those spikes seemed to contract slightly, and they shot forward. The Senshi dodged easily, but at the same moment, the creature flexed its massive arms, and Venus’ chain shattered. Then it did something unexpected, reaching out with its arms towards the rim of the broken skylight and catching itself, heedless of the sharp glass that would have mutilated a human’s hands. Hanging there, the mold-man moved its large legs up, the rootlets that served as its toes lengthening and hardening into more spikes. Again the green matter contracted, and again a barrage of woody darts rained down.

Mercury found herself sharing cover with Neptune, who didn’t look very happy with her. “Why didn’t you...” The Water Senshi broke off as she got a good, close-up look at Mercury’s still-pale features. “Are you sure you should be here, Mercury?”

“It was broadcasting some kind of radio signal earlier. I had Jupiter zap it, and that seems to have killed the signal, but if starts sending again, my computer’s the only thing we have that’ll pick it up. I’d rather not take the chance of whoever was on the receiving end being able to watch us in action, would you?” Neptune’s mind worked every bit as quickly as Mercury’s; any of the others would have needed a full explanation before they understood the danger, but Neptune just nodded.

“Fine. But stay down.”

“Hey!” Venus shouted. “A little help, here?” The creature had moved itself to one side of the skylight and seemed to have fused one of its arms into the materials of the roof; it had essentially become a living turret, its legs moving to track the movements of the Senshi as it fired those piercing splinters. When Mercury and Neptune looked over the low wall they were hiding behind, the free arm aimed straight at them and fired its own barrage. They ducked back immediately, but one splinter slashed across Neptune’s head and imbedded itself in the floor beyond, trailing a few strands of her hair.

Neptune touched one finger to a spot of blood in her hairline, where the very roots had been torn out. “That was a little too close, I think.” She risked another quick look. “Right. It’s got Jupiter and Uranus pinned down behind the counter of that deli, and I think I saw Venus dive around the corner across the hall. We need some way to bring it down, but as long as it’s up there firing, nobody can stand up long enough to take a look, let alone shoot it.”

“Up there,” Mercury said, pointing at the sprinkler system. “If you bust open the sprinklers around that thing and we get Jupiter to send a bolt up into the pipes a minute later...”

“Better have Uranus and Venus ready to hit it when it’s distracted,” Neptune advised. “Water and electricity didn’t seem to bother it very much.” She looked up at the sprinklers as Mercury relayed the hasty plan to the others, focusing her will and her power on the water in the pipes that ran through the ceiling. *Flow,* she told it. *Break loose and flow!* She heard three, four, five popping noises in rapid succession, followed by a steady gush of water. There was a muffled shout from behind the deli counter, and a dazzling net of expanding energy flashed up towards the falling water; almost instantly, there followed a loud crackle and a mass of hisses and pops rather like frying bacon. Venus and Uranus jumped out of hiding and fired, Beam and Blaster streaking up at the shocked mold-man.

The others scrambled out of hiding in time to see their enemy falling, the end of its left arm blackened and trailing smoke. But its thick legs spread wide as the creature dropped, absorbing the shock when it touched down. Uranus was already charging, sword out, to engage the thing at close range before it could start shooting again. Neptune hastily focused on the pipes again, wrenching the flow to a halt and then willing the water all over the floor to gather itself up and push away. If Jupiter fired again while Uranus was out there, with all that water laying around... *Damn it, Haruka, you know better than that!*

The mold-man met Uranus’ charge by reshaping its blackened arm into a thick shield, harmlessly absorbing the first swing. A moment later, the Space Sword skirled piercingly against a heavy, scythe-like blade of what might have been bone, erupting from the creature’s functional right arm. The weapon was three times the size of Uranus’ sword, and with the shield to block on one side, the mold-man was suddenly the one with the advantage. Uranus jumped, tucking her feet up underneath herself as the huge blade swung through the air below her. The shield-arm moved up, and she had to grab hold of the edges to keep herself from being hammered out of the air. And then it was another desperate jump as the sword-arm chopped down at her head; she was only half-landed, standing on one foot, when the shield-arm shot forward and struck her full in the chest. Uranus flew backwards and crashed sidelong through a store window, her sword skittering away over the tiles in the other direction. The mold-man took a step forwards, and then another.

“NO!” Neptune shouted. “Get away from her, you monster! This is her _birthday!_ Do you hear me? LEAVE HER ALONE!” Neptune raised her arms with a wordless scream of rage, unleashing her power without a second thought about how to control it.

The mold-man stopped its advanced towards Uranus as the water that had been flowing away suddenly returned. Not only that, but the pipes in the ceiling, floor, and surrounding walls exploded as the water within them heard and heeded the call of its mistress. A massive sphere of liquid formed around the creature, growing to five, ten, fifteen feet across in the space of heartbeats; inside the building ball, the mold-man spun crazily, the force of the incoming jets of water pushing it in a dozen conflicting directions at once. For a moment, its movements stabilized enough for it to look at Neptune. Then she brought her arms down.

With a sound like someone cannonballing into a swimming pool, only backwards, the huge orb imploded. There was a moment, just before water began to erupt from all sides, when the Senshi could clearly see the thing start to shrink, pushing in on itself and the creature it held as every point on the outer surface tried to go to its opposite. Then there was just water, flying every which way imaginable. The Senshi ducked out of the way of the blast, all except for Neptune, around whom the flying water seemed to part. When the others looked again, a soaked and shattered mass of manlike mold was all that remained in the middle of a vast, spreading puddle on the floor, its limbs twitching feebly.

“_Water_ did that?” Venus asked in astonishment.

“Water pressure,” Mercury explained. “Unless I miss my guess, for a moment there—for just a moment—that thing was feeling the kind of force they build submarines to withstand.” She frowned, aiming her computer at the thing. “Given the damage it just took, I can’t understand how it’s still holding together...”

“Are we too late?” ChibiMoon’s voice asked as she and Saturn appeared. “We got here as fast as we could after that odango-atama thought to call us.” Her face took on a disbelieving cast when her eyes fell on the battered creature. “Is _that_ it? Doesn’t look like much.”

“Neptune sort of put it through the wringer,” Venus told them. “We were just debating what to do with the rest of it.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Saturn said. She raised the Silence Glaive... and Mercury’s hand closed around the haft.

“Don’t! It’s human! Look,” she added, pointing at the thing. The Senshi looked, and blinked; the green substance, pulverized beyond its ability to recuperate from, was sloughing away in massive sections with the draining water, leaving behind a soaked, battered, and unconscious man.

“Is he still alive?” Venus asked quickly.

“He’s not too badly hurt, physically,” Mercury replied after a moment. “The green stuff took the worst of the damage, but I think we’d still better call an ambulance for him.”

“I’ll do that,” Setsuna murmured, moving off in search of a phone.

“Should I...” Saturn began.

Mercury shook her head. “Better not. That green stuff is alive, too, and if there’s any of it inside him, you might heal it, too.” Saturn nodded and began looking around.

“Over there,” Jupiter said, nodding towards the broken display window. Neptune was just visible beyond, kneeling beside something that was making faintly audible sounds of protest and trying to bat her hands away.

“I am perfectly capable of getting up on my own,” Uranus said hotly as the other Senshi gathered around.

“Not until Mercury and Saturn have had a chance to make sure nothing’s broken,” Neptune replied with equal heat. “Now shut up and be still.”

Uranus shut up and was still.

“Maybe I was hearing things,” Venus began, looking at the two of them as Mercury started scanning for the extent of Uranus’ injuries, “but Neptune, I could have _sworn_ I heard you say it was her birthday today.”

Neptune and Uranus exchanged a long look, during which Neptune’s face slowly turned a brilliant red. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.”

# 

Proteus debated its next move.

All accessible information on Hiroshi had been purged long before the humans had begun looking for it, and the thoughts and memories that had belonged to him had been drained even before that, and were now floating about in Proteus’ own awareness. This did not eliminate the possibility that someone might yet be able to identify the man, but that information would be of little use _unless_ more of Proteus’ enslaved humans were tied to similar incidents as Hiroshi. That would, eventually, form a trail back to the call center where they all worked, the one element all of them had in common.

But without risking at least one more of its pawns, Proteus knew it would be trapped as it was forever, or until it was found out and destroyed. The possibility of discovery, when held against the certainty of eventual destruction, was a risk worth taking.

Adjusting its plans, Proteus selected another human, a woman named Nanako, and began its next experiment. It would move slower this time, conduct the transformation slowly, to improve its control of the final product. It would use what it had learned from Hiroshi and do better.

It had no choice.

# 

Haruka kept the smile on her face until the door closed. She’d been wearing the expression for most of the night, and her jaws ached from the effort. Michiru, she swore, was going to pay for that little slip-up at the mall.

Dinner had, despite her fears, been absolutely wonderful. Even with the starched shirt and tie, the suit was more comfortable than she’d expected. Michiru, with her hair done up in a style where a swathe of hair veiled one side of her face while the rest tumbled down her back—left bare by that clinging, hinting sea of gold-trimmed blue she called a dress—had been nothing short of breathtaking. Haruka had spent most of the evening either staring at Michiru or glaring at other people who were staring; she supposed that she must have eaten something at some point, but for the life of her, she couldn’t recall what.

It was when they got home and found the rest of the Senshi waiting for them that everything fell apart. Michiru’s one little mistake, a moment of verbal carelessness in a fit of rage, had sparked a mad shopping spree among the younger girls, a last-minute attempt to find ‘the perfect gift.’

Looking at the gifts piled on the table, Haruka shuddered. Usagi and ChibiUsa had thrown in together for a pair of fuzzy slippers. Racing cars, thank God or Buddha or whoever else was responsible; Haruka thought she would have killed them on the spot if it had been bunny slippers. Minako’s choice of fuzzy novelty dice had not been much better. Rei’s gift had been a prayer for good luck and prosperity in the coming year, and a blessing ward hung on the front door to drive away evil spirits. And no, Rei had added, that didn’t include Usagi. She had also found a book of wisdoms somewhere, a collection of the sort of pithy little sayings found in fortune cookies, newspaper horoscopes, and Minako’s scrambled vocabulary. *Maybe she’s trying to get me to convert or something,* Haruka thought absently, picking up the book and flipping through the pages. *Good luck.*

Ami’s present had been the two-volume ‘Encyclopedia Acceleratica,’ a self- proclaimed ‘guide to all things automobile.’ Haruka had flipped through it as well, and it seemed to be an honest claim; she’d have to remember to thank Ami. Ryo had very politely skipped out on the whole business—Ami’s boyfriend, it seemed, had the makings of a wise man in him—and Hotaru had settled for giving her another massive hug and kiss; anything more pricey would only have irritated her ‘papa,’ and Hotaru wasn’t about to endanger her allowance. Makoto, who had sent Ami on with the others and then arrived about ten minutes after Haruka and Michiru returned home, brought a freshly-baked batch of banana muffins to substitute for a cake, and a pair of coffee mugs. The one had what looked to be an eagle painted on the side, while the other bore a dolphin. Very clever of her, really, to come up with something that would appeal to Michiru.

And last but not least, there was Setsuna’s gift. Another book, entitled ‘The Art of Modern Fencing,’ a not-so-subtle suggestion that perhaps Haruka ought to polish her swordswomanship if she meant to go blade-to-blade with other monsters in the future. The muffins had followed, and Haruka gave up and enjoyed herself a little. It was hard to be grouchy when you were eating anything Makoto had whipped up.

But everyone was gone now, and the only trace of the muffins were a few speck-sized crumbs, so Haruka was free to feel as grouchy as she liked. Tugging at the high collar of her shirt again as she climbed the stairs—she’d unbuttoned the thing hours ago, and the tie was long gone—Haruka went ahead and was grouchy. A little. Being mad at people who were just showing that they cared about you was no easier than being grouchy while eating Makoto’s cooking. But the slippers and dice helped.

Out of long habit, she looked in on Hotaru, who was already soundly asleep, before continuing on to the bedroom. Empty. *That’s odd. Where’d Michiru get to?*

A sound made Haruka turn around. And then her eyebrows tried to climb into her hairline.

Michiru was wearing something... at least, Haruka _thought_ she was wearing something. Her skin didn’t usually have a blue tint to it, but the thing was so sheer that it was practically nonexistent. Her hair was down, and she was smiling.

“Happy birthday, Haruka.”

Haruka managed a squeak as Michiru closed the door behind her.

 

# 

***BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP***

_(The picture shows a Sailor Moon test pattern, with Moon herself standing in the center, holding up a sign that reads ‘Technical Difficulties—Gomen nasai!’ A grinning, winking Venus is giving her classic ‘V’ sign in the lower left corner; Mars drums her fingers irritably in the lower right while Mercury is consulting a user’s manual above; Jupiter is leaning against the side of the screen, waiting, in the last corner, and Luna is asleep below Moon. The test pattern is replaced by a totally dark screen.)_

**Minako** : Are we on?

**Rei** : I’m not sure. Ami?

**Ami** : The sound’s getting through, but we don’t have any picture. Hang on a minute.

**Rei**   _(muttering)_ : Trust the odango-atama to wreck our only camera.

**Usagi** : Hey!

**Makoto** : Come on, let’s just do the moral.

**Rei** : Yeah, whatever. Today’s moral is...

**Minako** : Malls are sacred ground, and any who defile them will suffer terrible retribution?

**Usagi** : Mold and mildew are a menace to life as we know it, and must be eradicated?

_(The dark screen manages to sweatdrop.)_

**Rei** : I think today’s moral has to do with how, no matter how carefully you plan and prepare, you have to remember that you’re never completely in control of a given situation, and there’s always the chance that something unexpected will come along to prove it. The people who are backing those ‘Directors,’ for example, thought things were ‘being taken care of’ until the events from the last episode proved otherwise; their reaction in this episode was brought on by overconfidence. Proteus got a taste of uncertainty as well, when its experiment blew up in its face.

**Makoto** : And there’s Haruka, how she thought she was going to be able to slip her birthday past without us finding out. But what sort of a moral do you get out of all that?

**Rei** : Simple. Things don’t always go like you plan, so don’t assume they will. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. That way, if the worst happens, you’ll be ready for it.

**Makoto** : Not bad. Ami-chan, how’s that picture coming?

**Ami** : Not very good. I think...

**Minako** : Here, let me see!

**Ami**   _(sounding nervous)_ : Uh, no... Mina-chan, really, I can get it... don’t touch that!

**Usagi** : Mina-chan, get away from there and let Ami-chan do her... hey, watch it with that!

**Ami**   _(sounding desperate)_ : Not that way, Usagi! Don’t step on the...

***ZZZZZAP! ZZZZZZZZORT! CRACKLE! SSSHHHHHHHHHHHH—BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP***

_(After a screen of snow, the test pattern reappears. Jupiter is restraining a shouting, kicking Mars, who is trying to get free and strangle Moon, who is sticking her tongue out with one eyelid pulled down; in the upper right, a cheerfully smiling Venus is about to take a hammer to a control console, while Mercury has turned away with her eyes covered. The sign has fallen on Luna, who doesn’t look at all happy about it.)_

24/06/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_Ah, done at last. And no matter what else happens, I can safely say we will see February (early) in the next episode._

_Next time:_   
_-One or two things come together while others fall apart;_   
_-More on Atlantis;_   
_-Rei tries her luck with the Book._


	10. Pause, Rewind, Replay, and Eject; or Currents in the River of Time

# 

Emergency crews had been called in after the fight. Police had cordoned off the area and kept the crowds away while firemen and damage assessment specialists had gone over the wreckage, tallying up the end result and searching for any casualties. Fortunately, it appeared as though almost everyone in the area had gotten out in time, as only one man was carried out and loaded up into an ambulance.

Statements were taken from a dozen or so store employees who had taken cover behind their counters and desks or in back rooms, from a security guard who had been flushed into a corner when half the pipes in the building exploded, and from a few customers who had also opted to hide rather than risk getting crushed in the mass exodus. One of those, a tall, striking young woman with uncanny red eyes, had been the one to call for the ambulance after the ruckus had died down; she and her two companions had claimed not to have actually seen much after the skylight shattered, and the two men who took their statements had not pressed the issue.

The man who arrived some time later and began questioning the two policemen was not so understanding; he went over every detail, every question they had asked of each eyewitness, with an attitude that suggested they had been lax in their duties or were just plain incompetent. The pair were so busy being offended that they failed to notice the interrogative fellow’s interest in the red-eyed woman, who was by now long gone.

On the other side of the cordoned-off area, nobody thought anything of a very official-looking woman who appeared with an order to transport any and all surveillance footage from the mall’s security cameras to a secure location for proper examination. And they barely noticed the trio in grey coveralls who were walking around and poking into things; there were dozens of people like that on the scene, trying to figure out what had happened, although the others didn’t have little clones of the Geiger-counter humming and beeping in their hands.

The fact that these five individuals arrived and left in the same grey, unmarked minivan went completely unnoticed with all the other vehicles from various agencies and television stations clogging up the parking lot.

The five unremarkable men and two similarly uncommonly ordinary women hanging around in long coats didn’t occasion much comment either, even though they arrived and left in another unmarked van which was the twin of the first. But then again, nobody saw the curious, lightly armored uniforms or decidedly high-tech looking weapons hidden under the coats. And they certainly didn’t see the bank of computers in the back of the van. People can be so unobservant at times.

The last group of unusual investigators also went unnoticed, but by the time they showed up, it was well past midnight. Pretty much everyone else had departed except for the mall’s night security shift, and it wasn’t like _they_ were kicking around on the roof, waiting for four figures in grey cloaks and mirror-faced helmets to step out of a circle which just suddenly appeared in mid-air.

The lead guardsman looked around, then indicated with a short wave of his firelance for two of the others to take up defensive positions around the portal while he and the fourth made a sweep of the area. That took little time at all, and the pair returned to the gate, the leader’s helmet shifting very slightly as he gave the all-clear.

Cestus emerged from the portal and headed straight for the gaping hole in the roof, flanked by the leader and the fourth guardsman. He knelt beside the shattered side of the skylight, dark eyes intent on the area below. What he saw appeared to satisfy him, as he nodded sharply and began to rise, pausing when he spotted a tattered length of something fluttering in the night breeze, caught on the sharp end of a snapped-off metal rod. Cestus extended one hand, and the ragged thing flew easily into his grasp. He examined it closely for a moment, then ordered the guards back into the gateway; they obeyed without question, following him back through the portal.

The guardsman who had emerged first paused for a moment, lagging behind the others to look around at the vast city, extending in every direction almost as far as the eye could see. His face was hidden by the one-way material of his visor, but the shake of his head was unmistakable, both amazed and disbelieving. Then he too was gone.

# 

Archon sat alone in his private chambers, thinking.

Cestus’ examination of the battle site and discovery of the withered fragment of bioweave had confirmed that a unit had been involved in this latest incident, and that it had been terminated by the same unidentified force as the others. But all active units had been accounted for: the nexus sites were fully armed if not yet fully active, both first—and second-generation units functioning normally; the units stationed within Atlantis City were all where they were supposed to be; the watcher continued to perform its assigned tasks without flaw or failure. And no unauthorized units had been produced; the energy reserves remained as they should.

So where had the thing come from? What had created such an unusual mutation? Why had it been turned loose without a complete program? And how had the watcher missed it?

Archon had kept that little piece of information to himself. His knowledge of the rogue unit had come, not from the watcher, but from his apprentice, who had summoned him in an utter fury, believing he or someone else in Atlantis was meddling with her plans for revenge. She had not said how she knew, but in its blind rush from nowhere to its death site, the rogue had apparently come close to harming her enemy.

At another time, Archon would have chuckled over the irony; until such time as she was ready to strike in person, his apprentice would do everything in her power to make sure her victim remained in perfect health and safety, essentially becoming the best friend of the one she hated most. But news of a rogue had made such thoughts extraneous.

The watcher should have detected and reported the energy required to create even a lowly first-generation unit, or this curious variant. And yet it had not. That suggested that either the watcher itself was malfunctioning—not an unheard of thing; even Atlantean technomagical devices broke down from time to time—or that the creation of the rogue had been masked from the watcher’s senses. Either way, it was clear to Archon that the watcher was no longer completely reliable. Until such time as the malfunction could be determined and corrected, or the masking technique penetrated, he thought it might be wise to... what was the saying his apprentice had used? Ah, yes. ‘To take everything with a grain of salt.’ Accept what is given, but do not accept that it is _all_ there is to be given.

Thinking about that, Archon remembered what else his student had said, something else he had chosen to hold back from Janus and the Lords for the moment: Senshi, the girl claimed, had been seen fighting the rogue.

After long minutes of consideration, Archon called forth a row of memory crystals from the unwalled void around him, selecting one before sending the others back into infinity. He activated the crystal floating between his hands and waited as an image began to take shape before him, the image of a very old man, his skin-and-bones body swallowed up by the gold-trimmed blue robes somewhat similar to the ones Archon wore. The top of the wizard’s head was quite bald; his beard and what little hair remained on the rim of his scalp were thin, utterly white, and reached practically to his knees. His eyes were bright blue, far more alert and intelligent than might be expected for someone of such an advanced age, and his voice was surprisingly strong.

“Right, then,” the old wizard said in a businesslike manner. “For the record, I am Vaurin Greymantle, Lord of the House of Istar, Magus Maximus of the Academy of Research under the Imperial Order of Mages, et cetera, et cetera, and this experiment is the ninth attempt...”

“Eighth,” a female voice corrected.

“Eh? Oh, right. The _eighth_ attempt in a series of experiments aimed at greater understanding of the mystical energies generated by the stellar, planetary, and sub-planetary bodies. In particular, I...”

Somewhere, a throat cleared.

“...that is, ‘we’ hope to discover the means by which certain individuals are able to directly harness said energies, and to perhaps discover a means by which to eliminate the diminishing effect of distance upon their use. Such a development would greatly increase the range of application for planetary energy and could prove to have uses in such fields as...”

Somewhere, a throat cleared again.

“Right, right. It’s in the memo. As the basis for our research, we are naturally employing the assistance of the Greater Senshi as primary subjects, keeping open the possibility of a follow-up study of the powers of the Lesser Senshi. Since they will naturally be the most likely to benefit from any positive results of these studies, they all have been most cooperative.” The old man’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I would like at this time to again express my disappointment with the decision of the Council of Lords to prohibit the participation of Lady Pluto in these experiments. As the only Senshi other than Saturn—who is of course not a safe subject for experimentation—whose powers are unaffected by her distance from her source, she would be of incalculable assistance in this endeavor. But we shall, as always, abide by the wisdom of Council.” Greymantle added something under his breath which the magic of the crystal had failed to catch, but which likely wasn’t too flattering of the ’wisdom of the Council.’ Then he began.

“To reiterate: the reason for the gradual reduction of power a Senshi experiences as her distance from her source increases is due to the innate mundane and mystical radiation of that source. In some manner we still do not fully understand, a Senshi’s body is able to absorb this radiation and store its energy for later use. Time does not appear to have any appreciable decaying effect on stored energy, regardless of distance, as demonstrated in an earlier test; Lady Neptune had been away from her world for three full weeks, making no use of her powers, and was an even match for Lady Mars, freshly arrived from _her_ world. The difficulty lies in regaining spent energy, because as a Senshi moves further away from her source, its radiation becomes more and more diffused into space. ‘Recharging’ is thus made slower and less efficient, hampering the effectiveness of a Senshi’s power, as Lady Neptune’s subsequent defeat by Lady Mars one week later proved. The position of other stellar bodies also appears to have an impact on the speed of recovery; a previous experiment showed Lady Jupiter able to regain spent energy more quickly than Lady Mercury, whose planet, though much nearer, was also on the far side of the Sun at the time, whereas space between Earth and Jupiter was relatively clear.”

Greymantle continued to discuss variables and the like, but Archon had stopped listening and presently switched the memory crystal off; viewing the recording had confirmed his memory of the experiments the old wizard described, and of the final results.

Although a little erratic at times, Greymantle had been one of the best, practicing the art for close to a thousand years, a wizard with considerable power and the stylish flair and genius to back it up. His ultimate conclusion had been that because the power of Saturn naturally touched on all points in space and time, distance meant very little to it; the same held true with Pluto, thanks to the lingering effects of the Mobius Gate Project. A Senshi of either planet was therefore able to reach across the barriers and ignore the limitations suffered by her sisters, almost as if she were carrying her world around in one pocket wherever she went. Other Senshi had to gather energy as best they could, rather like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Which of course, is best done with a magnet.

And since he had never been granted Pluto’s assistance, Greymantle had finally gone with the ‘magnet’ idea; a device with the capability of drawing in the unique radiation of a given source, bringing them into contact with their respective Senshi and thereby tremendously accelerating her recovery of energy. Simple enough in theory, but apparently impossible to pull off in reality; Greymantle had spent nearly twenty years working at it before he died, supposedly as a result of that ongoing experiment. It had been said that his final attempt to create the ‘magnet’ had instead turned into a short-lived pocket of antimatter, breach into nullspace, or some other equally destructive energy/substance/phenomenon. No one had tried again.

*Almost no one,* Archon corrected himself. Rumors had circulated for years that Greymantle’s star student and research assistant—that was her voice speaking to the old man in the recording—had continued this and other of her master’s most complex and seemingly impossible projects. But if Greymantle had been erratic, his apprentice was well and truly crazed. She was brilliant, no question, maybe as much of a genius as her master, but she took risks even he wouldn’t have countenanced, fostered theories that were simply beyond belief, and was something of a political insurrectionist besides.

More than ‘something;’ in the end, she had been on the other side in the war which had sunk Atlantis and reshaped the world, if not the entire galaxy. Archon supposed the woman might have found a solution to the Senshi problem, assuming she’d survived the war and the inevitable chaos of the years that followed it; the bizarre energy the watcher kept reporting could very well be coming from one or more applications of that solution. But he wanted proof.

Archon shook his head. The Lords respected him, but if he went to them with this right now, they’d think he’d gone as crazy as Serenity.

But suppose—just suppose—she’d actually done it? What if his apprentice was correct, and there _were_ Senshi active on Earth today, Senshi who, thanks to the work of a long-dead genius and a long-dead, traitorous madwoman, could access most or even all of their power?

*Their powers were no greater than those of any competent wizard, and nothing at all beside the might of a true archmage.* Or so he’d told his apprentice only a few days ago. And in his day, on Earth, with their energies weakened by distance, that had certainly been true. But when not on Earth, when _not_ weakened by distance...

Wizards could take many roads to power, as many roads as there were schools of magic. Some focused on a single branch of the mystical arts, learning its secrets at the expense of others, gaining quickly in their power and the understanding of their chosen field. Others expanded their attentions to multiple schools, advancing much more slowly and not obtaining such a depth of expertise in any single field, but earning a versatility and overall grasp of magic their more specialized counterparts could not match. Those of this second type, those who possessed the mental strength and the magical power to attain control of all forms of magic, could become truly awesome forces—if they lived long enough. Archon was one such; given time, his apprentice might also rise to such power.

Senshi were different. Where a wizard studied the elements in order to master them, a Senshi _was_ her element. Even a novice Senshi just learning her powers possessed a greater affinity for and command over her element than most wizards could ever achieve. A fully trained and experienced Senshi, one at the height of her powers, could not be bested for control of her element. Matched, perhaps, depending on the strength of the individual and her opponent, but never OUT-matched. And woe to the spellcaster whose control was anything less than perfect when confronting such a Senshi with her own element.

How many of them were there, and which ones were they? The scrap of bioweave had been electrified, suggesting a Senshi of Jupiter, and Cestus had reported extensive water damage to the battle area, which would most likely be the work of a Senshi of Neptune. Two at least, perhaps three if a Senshi of Mercury had been involved, the residue of her powers masked by those of Neptune. And the mana nexus had been destroyed by three individuals working with water, ice, and wind... Uranus, as well?

Four. And if there were four of them in the same place, working together, it would be very unlikely for Venus and Mars _not_ to be there as well. Not when the Court was involved, not when _they_ had chosen to send Pluto to this city, at this time.

For all his power and knowledge, Archon’s understanding of the Court was limited. The most basic thing to be remembered when dealing with them was that almost nothing the Court did was ever as simple as it appeared. A truth at the core of a lie, a stain of darkness on the purest light, method within madness, a universe unfolding into mirrors; that was their way, by nature and by necessity. And when they reached a decision as a whole, they never took sides. Or rather, they took all sides, equally.

Pluto’s banishment to this city, bereft of her powers and her memories, seemingly alone against the gathered might of a reborn Atlantis, had seemed far too much of an advantage for Archon to accept. But if the other Senshi were _also_ present, also active... yes, that would be more like the Court. Chaos, for certain, would have loved such an arrangement, for it would throw an otherwise inevitable outcome into doubt. Balance would have insisted on it.

Archon felt a brief flicker of worry. The arrangement was exactly what the Court would have chosen, but it placed an amnesiac Pluto with no way to know what she was doing in close proximity to Uranus and Neptune. If they started mucking around with the Talismans and unleashed the Grail, they might just wake up Saturn... no, the Court would never allow that. Order might see the attraction of the rigid, unchanging Silence, but none of the others would agree to it, not even Death—for in a world totally without life, how can there ever be new death?

All six of the remaining Greater Senshi, then. Had they merely stumbled into their powers and been forced to learn alone, or had someone found and trained them properly? Archon would rather face six powerful but relatively unschooled Greater Senshi than six with the moderate strength and peerless skill he remembered. And even six like that would be preferable to six who possessed their full power—or whatever level of stable strength Serenity’s work might have provided—and the skill to know what to do with it. Archon knew he might not have a choice in the matter.

He still needed evidence to truly convince Janus and the Lords, evidence to prove—or disprove; Archon had stopped believing in gods long ago, but he offered up a fervent prayer now that he might still find his suspicions to be wrong!—that the Senshi had returned as well. And he needed time to find that evidence. But if his apprentice was right, if the worst-case scenario was true and their unseen foe was indeed six powerful and skilled Senshi with custody of Pluto—however crippled she might be without her memories—then waiting could prove to be a deadly error.

How long could he keep silent? How many days—how many hours—could he afford to hold back what he knew, before it became too late to change anything?

# 

“Seven?”

“Correct.” Usagi grinned in triumph, a grin which faded away when Haruna moved on to part two of the question. They had been doing trigonometry for about a week now—and this particular question for what felt like hours, though in fact only about two minutes had gone by—and it was only with help from Ami and Luna that Usagi was understanding even a tenth of it. Just what the heck _was_ a cosine, _really?_

*At least we’re out of those awful polynomials for a while,* Usagi thought, shuddering internally at a dream-image of an army of ‘x equals this’ and ‘y equals that’ joining ranks against her. She didn’t even want to think about some of the things Ami had mentioned, just a few pages along in the book.

Realizing Haruna had just asked her for the other part of the answer, Usagi glanced quickly at her notes and said hesitantly, “Thirty-eight degrees?”

“Right again. Very good, Usagi.”

Usagi sat back in her chair and glanced enviously at Ami and Ryo, both of whom were busily working through problems. Ryo was about five pages ahead of most of the rest of the class, Ami perhaps twice as far along as that—and complaining that she was still working to catch up for the time lost from her two day-sickness a week ago!—and yet either of them would be able to look up from their work and answer a question correctly when Haruna called on them. She didn’t, usually; they both knew what they were doing, and Ami actually pointed out mistakes Haruna had made from time to time. Haruna also didn’t ask Minako any questions in class, but that was just to spare herself a lot of aggravation; math wasn’t Minako’s forte. It wasn’t exactly Usagi’s best subject, either, but it _really_ wasn’t Minako’s.

Math and Minako and whatnot were forgotten as Usagi’s attention went off on another tangent, fixing upon a slightly more important level of problem. Things had been quiet since the battle at the mall, but none of the Senshi were relaxing in the slightest; where their enemies were concerned, long silences always ended in bad news. The last break had thrown the mana nexus at them; what would follow this one?

The man who had been taken over by that weird green stuff was still in the hospital. Nothing about him was being said on the news, but ChibiUsa had stolen the disguise pen, turned herself into a nurse, and slipped into the building to check up on the poor fellow. Most of the older Senshi had been upset with her sudden independent action—Hotaru had seemed more disappointed that she hadn’t been invited along than anything else—but they’d sat down and listened to what she had to say.

It turned out that the man had no identification on him, and all attempts to ID him had failed. More importantly, while his body had recovered, he had yet to regain consciousness; ChibiUsa had handed over a computer disk for Ami to puzzle over, then turned a sneaky smile on Setsuna and said that the disk had been ‘borrowed’ from Doctor Yotogi, who she _really_ ought to call. Setsuna had startled them all by seeming to give some serious thought to the matter.

From what the disk said, ‘John Doe’ apparently had a very low level of electrical activity in his brain, just enough in the right places to keep his body functioning. For all intents and purposes, the poor man was a vegetable, but there was no physical damage to account for his condition, despite the beating the creature he had been had taken from Neptune.

Michiru and Haruka had both reacted to that news with a touch of relief that Usagi, for one, had been glad to see. Not all that long ago, the two older girls would have been indifferent, at best—a monster was a monster, casualties of war, and all that—but associating with the Inner Senshi was clearly doing them some good. Michiru had noticed Usagi noticing and smiled faintly, rolling her eyes and sighing; Haruka turned red, embarrassed by her own admission of relief, before muttering something under her breath about ‘getting soft’ and then grunting slightly when Michiru planted an elbow in her ribs. She did that quite often, reacting to Haruka’s more annoying remarks and actions almost without realizing it. Usagi thought it might be a useful thing to know when Mamoru finally came home, and started paying closer attention to see if she could figure out how to duplicate that instinctive-appearing response.

She was watching Setsuna a lot these days, too, but she seemed to be having no trouble adjusting to her new job. Usagi wasn’t sure if that was normal or not for people suffering from amnesia, but then again, as far as Setsuna was concerned, ‘normal’ didn’t really enter into things. Not usually, anyway; now it was almost as if she were trying to bury herself in normality. Kenji had, at Ikuko’s insistence, dropped Setsuna off at the mall each morning for the first few days, and Hanna or Annah—again at Ikuko’s request—had driven her home. Now, at her own insistence, Setsuna took the bus, walking for a few minutes with Usagi in the morning to reach the bus-stop, arriving home a little after three. And she usually spent a few hours each night working on something from the store, humming—actually humming!—an odd little tune as she cut this, stitched that, or sketched designs.

Usagi didn’t recognize that tune, and the first time she’d asked about it, Setsuna had been startled to realize that she _was_ humming. The name of the tune, she didn’t know, nor did she recall where she’d heard it, or even if it had any words. Once or twice, Usagi had overheard Setsuna singing faint snatches of it under her breath, not really words but musical nonetheless; Setsuna’s singing voice might not have been as good as Rei’s, but there was a sweet, haunting quality to the tune. Luna didn’t recognize it, but said it sounded a little like old songs from the Moon Kingdom, though not entirely; after a while, Usagi got used to the song and quit wondering about it.

Rei was still stymied in her attempts to open the Book; in point of fact, she was getting a little snappish whenever Usagi tried to bring it up. She had also been talking to Minako and Artemis about something on more than one occasion, something none of them would even admit to discussing if Usagi tried to confront them about it. Usagi’s first guess was that Rei might be asking the self-proclaimed ‘Ai no Megami’ on what to do about Yuuichirou, except that pigs would fly before Rei admitted she had any feelings for the guy, and she knew better than to talk to Minako about sensitive things like that anyway. Since both of them ignored her and she couldn’t figure it out herself, Usagi turned to pestering Artemis. The white cat was a lousy liar; where the two girls flat-out ignored Usagi’s questions, Artemis dodged them. Not particularly well, but Usagi still didn’t know what was up. She resolved to sick Luna on Artemis for some answers at the earliest opportunity.

Aside from a faint pallor, Ami appeared to have fully recovered from her brief illness, although she was more bubbly these days than Usagi could remember seeing her, always smiling faintly and every so often breaking into a silly grin or a bout of giggles. Ryo probably had something to do with that—by now there wasn’t a kid in school who hadn’t clued in to the fact that he and Ami were, in their own quietly reserved way, ‘an item’—although to the best of Usagi’s knowledge, the two didn’t even hold hands in public. And that included Makoto’s apartment.

And speaking of Makoto, she had been drifting along in some sort of haze for the last few days. Not her usual kind of starry-eyed, fixated on the ‘perfect’ guy haze, either—thinking about it, Usagi realized that Makoto hadn’t spaced out over a guy since before Christmas, now a month and more gone—but a quiet calm that rivaled even Rei’s meditative trances. And she was always smiling when she looked at Ami and Ryo. Granted, most of the Senshi smiled more often when one of their number was happy, but Makoto seemed to be taking a much deeper satisfaction than that from the whole thing; even when she started arguing with Ami—which happened at least once every other day—Makoto had a look of absolute contentment in her eyes. What was up with that? The two of them had taken to shouting at each other nearly as loudly as Usagi did with Rei—or with Shingo, or ChibiUsa—and yet there were times when Usagi was sure they were both enjoying...

Usagi hit herself mentally and called herself nine different kinds of baka for not guessing sooner. They were arguing almost like sisters. Neither girl had ever had a sibling, nor had either of them ever lived with someone close to their own age, and now that they were living together, they were—just like family—trying to change things about each other that they had previously never even thought about, but which they now found ‘annoying’ or ‘inconvenient’ or ‘foolish’ thanks to the enforced close quarters and round-the-clock association. Domestic bliss wasn’t exactly an accurate description for it, and Usagi wouldn’t be surprised if Ami and Makoto tried to strangle each other before it was over, but she thought they were both enjoying the cohabitation more than they let on.

But it was more than that, Usagi realized with a bit of a shock. Makoto had lived alone for a long time; with her parents gone, the only other family she had ever mentioned was an uncle, a man who saw to it that she had enough money to support herself and otherwise left her alone. Makoto never complained about being on her own, and in fact often claimed to enjoy the sense of independence, but Usagi had to wonder.

Even if nobody had ever met him, Makoto’s fixation on her old senpai was legendary, and yet since Ami had moved in with her, Makoto seemed to have completely forgotten the guy. She still commented on the particularly handsome or well-defined guys that passed through her field of view, but with a casually appreciative air that was nowhere near her usual level of wide-eyed interest, and she gave no indication at all that they reminded her of ‘him.’

Had Makoto been drawn to one short-lived crush and brief relationship after another because she was still hooked on a guy she had never even dated? Or was the _idea_ of that crush just the excuse she used to hide from everyone, including herself, the fact that living alone for so long was... well, lonely? Was she trying to find romance, or reassurance? Someone to change her life, or merely someone to share it?

Given Makoto’s recent behavior, Usagi thought she might be on to something here. But if that was the case, what would happen when Ami finally moved out? How would Makoto take living alone again after months of having _not_ been alone? What would she do? What would the rest of them _have_ to do because of it?

“Usagi!”

“Aaah!” She came out of her reverie with a jolt to find Minako standing in front of her. “What?”

“Class is over, silly.” Minako glanced at her curiously. “Thinking deep thoughts, were we? Care to share?”

Usagi looked hastily around as they left the room. Ami, Ryo, and Makoto were all gone, on their way to other classes; seeing that no one nearby was paying any real to attention to either of them, Usagi briefly explained her thoughts. Minako listened attentively, an unusually intent expression on her face.

When Usagi finished, Minako nodded. “I’ve been wondering about that, too. Good to know I’m not the only one who pays attention.”

“You knew?” Minako just gave her a suffering look. “Right, sorry, lost my head.” Minako would fail to notice changes in somebody’s romantic behavior the same day Rei admitted she liked Yuuichirou as more than ‘just a friend;’ it would be an even rarer day when Minako saw and didn’t try to meddle. “So what do we do, O Mighty Goddess of Love?”

Minako drew herself up grandly, opened her mouth to proclaim some divinely convoluted wisdom... and then stopped as another girl rushed up. The girl, whom Usagi knew simply as Lala-chan, nodded politely to her and then turned to Minako.

“Mina-chan, I need to talk to you about something.” Lala glanced apologetically at Usagi. “It’s sort of personal.”

“No problem,” Minako said. “Just give me two minutes, Usagi-chan. Thanks.” And she dragged Lala off a short distance and proceeded to listen to a hasty, mostly one-sided discussion. Usagi couldn’t hear what Lala was saying, but she seemed very passionate about it; most of Minako’s replies were the words, “He didn’t,” with subtle variations on the tone and inflection to indicate differing degrees of shock, outrage, or amusement. Finally, Lala stopped talking, and Minako began speaking quickly. Usagi didn’t hear any of that, either, but Lala listened intently, nodding at several points, before smiling, hugging Minako, and running off the way she’d come.

“What are you doing?” Usagi asked flatly.

“Just answering the call of my divine office; Lala-chan’s been having some problems with Daichi-kun. Now, about Ma-"

“Mina-chan?” They both turned to see another girl—Usagi didn’t recognize her—with the same slightly apprehensive look Lala had worn.

Minako sighed. “Just a second, Usagi-chan. I’ll be right back.” It took longer than a second, of course, and was a virtual carbon-copy of the talk with Lala. Minako was shaking her head when she came back. “A Love Goddess’ work is never done.”

“All right,” Usagi demanded, “_what’s_ going on?”

Minako looked at her as if she were crazy. “They’re asking me for advice.”

“Why? You don’t exactly have what I’d call the credentials for this job, Mina-chan. You’ve never had a steady boyfriend longer than ten seconds”—Minako gave her a hurt look—“and every time you’ve tried to fix Rei, Mako-chan, or Ami-chan up with somebody, it’s turned into an absolute disaster.”

“I’ve thought about that a few times myself,” Minako admitted. “I’m usually dead on about these things, but the way...”

“‘Usually’? You mean you’ve done this before?” Minako nodded. “For other people besides us?” Nod. “_Successfully?_” Minako nodded again, and Usagi took a deep breath. “Start at the beginning.”

“It started about... oh, maybe six or seven months after I met Artemis. I could look at two people together, and I’d just know they were right for each other. Sort of a magnetic thing, you know?”

“What does _love_ have to do with _magnets?_"

“Metaphor, Usagi, metaphor. Attraction, magnetic; you see?” Usagi nodded dumbly, frightened to realize that it did make sense, and Minako went on. “I can usually get a good bead on how people feel about each other when they’re together—whether it’s friendship or physical attraction, something a little more than that, or actual love—and I’m pretty good at telling if two people who’ve never met are a good match or not. Heck, I even managed to fix Kasuri-chan and Tara-chan up"—Usagi blinked—“but whenever I try to help out one of the rest of you—pfft! I think it has something to do with our alignments.” She stressed that last word. “They must get in the way somehow.”

“Yeah, probably,” Usagi agreed dazedly.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No... I mean, yes... I mean, I believe you, it’s just... well...” Usagi looked around and lowered her voice. “After hearing Luna go on about how elemental alignments were what allowed Ami-chan, Haruka, and Michiru to notice that mana nexus, I figured you’d—I don’t know—end up as a walking metal detector, or something.”

“Oh, I can do that, too.” Minako grinned. “It comes in handy in chemistry class sometimes, but it’s not _nearly_ as much fun as this. I used to just amuse myself pairing people off, and maybe slip some advice in every now and then if I saw someone having problems; a few people thought I was being nosy, of course, but some others listened, and when things started working out for them again, word got around. Hardly a day goes by anymore when someone _doesn’t_ ask me for help. Not that I mind, of course.”

Usagi’s eyes narrowed with a close approximation of cunning. “Does this have anything to do with whatever you’ve been talking to Rei about for the last week?”

“Hmm? Rei-chan? You know as well as I do that I’m the last person she’d talk to if she were having relationship troubles, Usagi-chan. Now,” she said seriously, “getting back to Mako-chan. You’re probably right about everything— three years is a long time to stay hung up on a guy she hasn’t seen in all that time, especially since she’s admitted herself that he barely knew she existed— but I’m not sure there’s much we can do. Mako-chan has to admit to herself what it is she really wants, first, and us barging in and trying to rearrange her life is only going to upset her.”

“Not to mention the fact that she threatened to—how did she put it?—‘kick your Love-God-Ass’ the next time you tried to hook her up with someone,” Usagi added.

“That too. But more than that...” Minako looked at her feet for a moment. “Makoto’s happy right now, Usagi, happier than I’ve ever seen her for more than a few days at a time. I don’t want to take that away from her; do you?” Usagi shook her head. “I didn’t think so. So we’ll let her be for now, but remember to keep our eyes open later. And hope she and Ami-chan don’t kill each other in the meantime,” Minako finished wryly.

“One more thing to worry about on top of everything else,” Usagi groused. "And for my next trick, I will juggle a half-dozen chainsaws, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back...”

“Speaking of your back,” Minako said abruptly, “how is it? Not wearing out yet from the extra weight?”

“No, I’m fine. Another benefit of Luna’s training, I suppose, although I don’t think this"—Usagi patted her belly—“was quite what she expected to be training me for.”

“Not much of a threat to the human race,” Minako agreed. “Of course, fourteen years down the drain, who knows what she may be capable of?”

# 

ChibiUsa sat quietly in class and tried not to look bored out of her skull as Yarano-sensei droned on about cross-multiplying fractions. Looking bored, she knew, would only bring on a question, and if she didn’t stop to think before she answered a question, her answer might clue her teachers in to the fact that she knew quite a bit more than she ought to.

Her formal education up to this point had been a series of private tutors—most of them Senshi—and half of the subject matter from those classes hadn’t happened yet. Or it had yet to be discovered. Or it had been discovered, but it just wasn’t accepted yet.

Math, for instance. Mercury handled most of her education in the sciences with help from a few specialists in various fields—genius aside, Mercury was trained as a doctor, not a mana physicist or quantum theorist—and the last homework assignment she’d given ChibiUsa had included math problems only the modern Ami or Michiru were likely to look at. ChibiUsa entertained daydreams of presenting some of _those_ problems to Yarano-sensei and watching the woman’s jaw hit the floor, but such dreams never came to pass. It was just too dangerous.

ChibiUsa’s first trip through time had been on a frantic quest for figures out of her mother’s bedtime stories, to find the long-ago Senshi who had defeated the Dark Kingdom, who were led by Sailor Moon, who seemed to be able to do anything and possessed the ginzuishou ChibiUsa thought she’d lost or destroyed. She’d had no idea at the time that those Senshi were the same ones she saw every day, or that Sailor Moon was really her mother; her only thoughts had been to find someone who could save her mother from ‘the bad people.’

But after all had been said and done, ChibiUsa had started to worry. Her mother’s tales of Sailor Moon were all about battles against the Dark Kingdom or the two wandering aliens, Ail and Ann, and of the battles out of which Crystal Tokyo was born. The Queen had never mentioned the Dark Moon, and ChibiUsa wondered; was that because her mother had purposely kept quiet—or because she hadn’t known? Had her going back in time changed not merely the future, but the past, and all of the history in between? Was she living in a world she’d stolen from some other ChibiUsa? Was she supposed to be... dead?

She had eventually gotten over the nervous suspicion, but then, during her second trip, when Senshi she had never heard of began to appear, ChibiUsa had become very, very afraid. She had not been able to corner Pluto and get a direct answer until much, much later; she hadn’t wanted to ask the question, let alone risk hearing the answer. But after a horrible dream one night, back in her own bed, in her own time, a dream in which her father and all her friends seemed to die fighting other Senshi, and in which she herself vanished, ChibiUsa went looking for Pluto.

She asked first about the nightmare, about what it meant. Pluto told her it had been a brief flash, a reaction at a moment in time parallel to the instant Mamoru had been killed by Galaxia, an act which rippled through to the future and would have erased ChibiUsa from existence if Sailor Moon had not defeated Galaxia and set things right. Because she was sensitive to the event and the target of its ultimate effect, ChibiUsa had seen something of it in a dream—just as Usagi and the others had briefly seen _her_ in the past, pleading for help.

Galaxia. Evil Senshi. More stories she had never heard of before. ChibiUsa had taken a deep, frightened breath and asked her other question: Were the Dark Moon Family supposed to win?

Pluto said yes.

In the original timeline, the Senshi fought and defeated Beryl and healed the aliens, but the months in which ChibiUsa now knew they fought the Dark Moon had instead been relatively quiet, up until the coming of the Deathbusters. That battle had gone very differently, for it had been ChibiUsa’s heart crystal that awakened Saturn—and it had been Hotaru’s anger at what had been done to her friend that gave her the strength to defeat Mistress Nine from within. But without ChibiUsa, the Deathbusters had not found a heart crystal sufficient to their needs; instead, when the Senshi finally raided Professor Tomoe’s lab, they found a little girl who seemed to be dead. And when Sailor Moon tried to heal her, her Grail-enhanced powers had awakened Saturn, under the full control of Mistress Nine. Even then, Hotaru might have been able to stop it, because she would never have allowed her father to die. But Tomoe Souichi was already dead, killed in the attack by Uranus and Neptune. Hotaru screamed at them in her mind—and Saturn killed them in reality, drawing on the power of the Grail within her. The rest of its power was still going into Sailor Moon, and the buildup between positive and negative forces caused a tremendous explosion.

Mistress Nine, Hotaru, and the city of Tokyo ceased to exist. The ginzuishou reacted by trying to save Usagi and everyone she loved from the catastrophe, but it exhausted itself in doing so, and took centuries to recharge. Without the power of the crystal to sustain life, only the Senshi, their two feline advisors, and Mamoru had the strength to survive the long sleep. Waking hundreds of years later and piecing together what had happened, they grieved for their lost friends and families, and set about trying to make things better. They never spoke of what had happened to Tokyo; it hurt too much, and the Earth they had awakened in had enough hurt to go around.

Galaxia had come to Earth long ago and crushed it, leaving behind only a few remnants of civilization on a world poisoned by the corrupted force of the Grail and the wild energy of Saturn. Galaxia was long dead by the time the Senshi awoke, slain by the inexorable power of the Chaos-essence she had trapped within herself, and her great empire of worlds had collapsed, leaving Earth a primitive, savage world. Faced with that, the Senshi had no choice but to fight, and in fighting, they made enemies. Ultimately, Usagi—now Serenity—was able to pull together enough of the warring factions to begin building Crystal Tokyo, but, embittered by the long fighting, those who were to become the forebears of the Dark Moon Family refused to follow her. Serenity would not kill them, and she could not permit them to remain on Earth to attack her people, so instead she exiled them into space. Long years later, their descendants returned. And Crystal Tokyo fell.

Pluto explained that, had events gone along that course, ChibiUsa would not have been permitted to enter the Time Gate. Denied access to the past, Mercury would have seized on the idea of using the in-between place of the Time Gate as a staging area for the present, to slip away from the invasion and strike at the enemy from behind. Pluto would not have stopped the Senshi then, since they were not trying to use the Gate, and their sneak attack would have succeeded in destroying the Wise Man, far weaker in the future than in a past where he had the corrupted power of the ginzuishou within ChibiUsa to call upon—but still strong enough to kill the four Senshi even as he himself was destroyed. Without the Wise Man’s corrupting influence, the more noble natures of certain members of the Dark Moon Family would have reasserted themselves. ChibiUsa herself would have eventually ended up married to Diamond, a marriage symbolic of the reunion between the light and dark sides of humanity, and the realm to follow would have been everything Crystal Tokyo had been and more—to everyone except her, with her parents and friends dead.

ChibiUsa had shivered hearing that. Not as bad in some ways as what she’d feared, but worse in others. Then she asked Pluto, if that was the way things were supposed to have gone, why had it been changed?

“You’re the guardian of Time, Pu,” she had said. “Why did you let it all change?”

Pluto had not answered her at first, instead looking off into the mists and speaking softly to herself. “I am charged with the protection of Time, the security of this device which has the power to alter and even undo the effects one of the fundamental forces of the universe. I can see the past, the passing present, and the unfixed future, and when you came here, I saw yours.” Pluto had smiled sadly. “I am forbidden to interfere, but I gave up everything I loved for everything I believed in once, a long time ago, and you... you weren’t even being given the choice. I wanted you to be happy, little one. The world you are in now _is_ your world, just rewritten a little better than before. The history I have told you is now just a fairy tale, and nothing more; the one Mars tells you is how it really happened. I expect I’ll have to answer for that, someday,” Pluto had added, with an almost fierce glance at the mists, “but I’d do it again.”

And now it appeared as though Pluto’s prediction had been correct, as if someone or something had indeed come to pass judgment on her. She was here, and ChibiUsa was here, and there was no one at the Time Gate to monitor their actions, to prevent or correct their mistakes. If they did something wrong and Crystal Tokyo ceased to exist, there was no way for them to know until it was too late. Except...

Glancing around, ChibiUsa pulled the thin chain hanging about her neck, drawing forth a tiny key, a near-replica of Pluto’s staff, differing only in its size and in the single large crystal at its head. She thought about the key, about what it could do, about what she might be able to use it for.

She thought very, very hard.

# 

Ami and Ryo looked up at the knock on the front door. Several books lay on the table before them, open to pages of equations and hard text.

“Expecting somebody?”

“No,” Ami admitted, setting her notes aside and rising from couch. She opened the door and blinked in surprise. “ChibiUsa?”

“Hi, Ami-chan. I need...” ChibiUsa’s eyes widened slightly when she spotted Ryo walking up behind Ami. “Oh. Uh, hi, Ryo-kun. Um... I can come back, if this is a bad time.”

Ami blushed a little. “No, it’s fine. Come in, come in. We were just going over some science problems. Did you want something to drink?”

“No,” ChibiUsa declined, settling herself on the living room chair. “I’m not thirsty. But thanks. Is Mako-chan around?”

“She stepped out for a few minutes,” Ami replied. “She wanted to see if she could get some spices she’s been running low on.” She and Ryo resumed their seats on the couch. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

ChibiUsa glanced at Ryo, then said under her breath, “I suppose it makes more sense for you to be here.” She pulled out the key, slipping the chain off over her head and placing it on the table. “This is what I wanted to talk about, Ami-chan.”

Ryo looked at the key, then at Ami’s expression of startled recognition. "I take it this is the key that lets people travel through time?”

“Not exactly,” ChibiUsa corrected. “It lets you go to the Time Gate, but whether or not you can travel through time depends on what Pu decides... decided...”

Ami picked the key up. “I seem to remember there being some rather pronounced... problems if you tried to use this thing at the wrong time.”

“That was my fault,” ChibiUsa admitted. “At least a little. You really have to concentrate to get this thing to work, and it needs a certain amount of energy; I kept trying to use it at less than full power, or when I wasn’t thinking clearly. And Pu stopped me once or twice, because it wasn’t safe for me to leave. I’m a lot better at controlling it than I was, and I haven’t used it once since I arrived. And Pu is... she won’t stop me—us—this time.”

“Why do you want to use it?” Ami asked. “If what Luna said is true, the Gate can’t be opened without Pluto’s staff; all you’d be able to do is kick around in that place.”

“I know.” ChibiUsa was silent for a moment. “That place is... Pu said it was the present, the exact instant in time where past and future come together. I didn’t really understand a lot of it; she was talking about stuff like ’universal variance equality’ and ‘sympathetic temporal alignments,’ and it didn’t make a lot of sense. But there’s a trick she showed me; you can use that place to look into any other point in space and time. It’s not easy, but I puzzled out how to do it.” She smiled. “We might be able to learn something. Who we’re up against, where they are, why Pu is... like she is.”

“And?” Ami asked. “What else?”

“N-nothing,” ChibiUsa said.

“Usagi-chan,” Ami said gently, “I’ve been watching your mother for years. I know what to look for when she’s trying to hide something, and I’m seeing all the same signs from you right now. Why do you want to go to the Time Gate?”

“I don’t belong here,” ChibiUsa whispered. “It was okay as long as Pu was there to keep an eye on things, but now every time I turn around I’m afraid that I’ll say or do something and then get home and find out that it’s all changed or that I might just...” With a visible effort, she got control of herself. “Maybe going to the Time Gate will tell us something useful about what’s been done to Setsuna and maybe it won’t, maybe it’ll tell us something about whoever’s behind these green fungus monsters and maybe it won’t, but it’s the only place I can stay without risking...”

“Except,” Ryo pointed out, “that for all we know, you’re supposed to be here right now, and shutting yourself away outside of Time could be the very thing that you’re _not_ supposed to do.”

ChibiUsa blinked. “You,” she said flatly, “are not helping. At all. I had everything all worked out, and now... damn it.” She laughed helplessly. “I never even thought of that!”

“Nobody can think of everything,” Ami said simply. “But let’s call the others and think this over a bit more before we give up on it.” Her eyes glittered. “I’m not sure how the rest of them will feel, but I certainly wouldn’t mind finding out who’s responsible for what happened to my grandparents’ house.”

# 

They met the next afternoon under the pretense of a massive weekend sleep-over at Michiru’s house. Michiru and Haruka, for their parts, weren’t entirely certain how they’d gotten talked into hosting this particular event, and spent much of the afternoon in a daze. The small mountain of sleeping bags, overnight kits, and junk food that gradually took shape in the living room likely didn’t help, and Hotaru received—and ignored—a number of suspicious looks from her foster-family about the whole business.

The cats didn’t have luggage, fortunately. Neither did Ryo, whose presence had been insisted on by Ami and ChibiUsa both; there had been a few knowing smiles—for Ami—and a few raised eyebrows—for ChibiUsa—about that, but the girls put Ryo to work anyway, helping move chairs and a couch or two as they tried to assemble a spot where all of them could sit and talk comfortably.

Michiru had watched the spectacle of her home being rearranged for a few minutes and then quickly departed, saying something about getting Makoto acquainted with the kitchen and the attached dining facilities.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to how big this place is,” Makoto admitted, looking around the dining room, which appeared as though it could have held most of her apartment without complaint. Then she turned back to the kitchen with a very different expression. “But this, now... _this_ I like.”

Michiru smiled. “One of the necessary evils of high society; if you throw a party, you have to have the facilities to cook enough to feed everybody. Even caterers can only do so much without a base of operations, and Mother did like to host parties.” She ran a finger along the edge of a cutting board; it and everything else were clean and well-kept, but if Makoto was any judge of kitchens and their utensils, then none of the knife-marks on that board were recent. “Of course,” Michiru added wistfully, “I haven’t put most of this to use since my parents passed away, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of any of it. Maybe someday...”

“Maybe someday,” Makoto repeated softly. How many times had she used those words herself? “What were they like?”

“Father was an executive,” Michiru replied, “a working man who made good; youngest vice-president in the history of the company at twenty-five, a seat on the board of directors before he was thirty. He was sort of plain, and he talked like he looked—straight to the point, no wasted words—but I used to think he was the most handsome man in the world when he smiled. Mother was an heiress, third-generation. She was a real lady, or at least as close as you can find these days; people used to say I looked like her. It wasn’t quite an arranged marriage, but it came close.” She smiled faintly. “They weren’t in love in the strictest sense of the word, I suppose; certainly not like Usagi and Mamoru are. They treated the marriage as a business, and each other as partners, at least—friends or respected acquaintances, if not lovers—but I think they were happy. _I_ was happy. Yours?”

“High-school sweethearts,” Makoto said. “Not the royal couple of the prom or anything like that, although I think Papa _was_ the captain of his soccer team. He and his brother owned a construction company together, and he coached at an athletics center in his spare time. Mama got a summer job at the flower shop when she was in high school because she and the owner’s daughter were best friends, and she worked there full-time after she graduated. She loved flowers. It’s a little odd,” Makoto added, “but I don’t really look like either of them. Mama had green eyes, but she and Papa both had very dark hair, and neither of them were as tall as I am now. I could look Mama in the eye by the time I was twelve, and I suppose I would have been as tall as Papa after another year or so if...” She broke off, brushing away tears and clearing her throat. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s natural; we hurt, we cry.”

“_You_ don’t.”

That provoked a sad smile. “I did all my crying a long time ago.”

Makoto looked at Michiru in silence, then asked quietly, “How... how did it happen?”

“The official cause was a boating accident. Unofficially... that was the day I found out that I was Neptune. But I didn’t find out in time to save my parents.”

“A youma?”

Michiru shook her head. “I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t like anything I’ve seen since. Something dredged up from the bottom of the sea and the bottom of a nightmare in one, all squid-like tentacles and rubbery flesh beneath plates of armor and horn, and all of it dripping seawater and slime. It tore the boat apart like it was paper, and it dragged me—all of us—underwater. Just when I thought I was dead, there was a flash of blue light, something small and hard in my hand, and words in my head. It couldn’t hold on to me after I’d transformed. I don’t think it liked that.” She smiled grimly. “I don’t think it liked it when the gas engine in the yacht blew up, either.”

“I did things that day I’ve never been able to do since,” Michiru continued. “I was breathing water like air, moving through it like a torpedo, standing on the surface, shaping it into weapons of all kinds. I did... something... there was a whirlpool, a current pulling the creature out to sea and down, down... then it felt like something bent, or twisted, and it was gone. I could only find Mother, and she was hurt so badly I couldn’t bear to leave her, even to try and find Father. She didn’t recognize me until I changed back. For all that she was the one hurt, dying, I did all the crying, and she did all the comforting. We floated on what was left of the yacht for almost an hour before the harbor patrol found us. She didn’t make it back to shore. It was more than a month before I stopped crying myself to sleep, and almost a year before I could go near a boat again.” She looked at Makoto. “I guess you’d understand that, though, wouldn’t you?”

There was a momentary silence. “It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” Makoto said. It was more a statement than a question.

“Sometimes it’s not so bad,” Michiru replied, looking meaningfully through a succession of doorways, to the room where Haruka was either helping to move things or arguing to keep things where they were. “As long as you’re not alone. But I guess you’d understand that, too, wouldn’t you?”

There was another brief silence, broken by a muffled thud and a loud yelp from the distance. Michiru winced at the thud and then glanced towards the source of the disturbance, frowning. “I’d better go check on that before Haruka decides to throw something at someone. I’m not sure what I was thinking, leaving that bunch unsupervised in my own house, and besides,”—she looked around at the kitchen—“you probably know more about most of the things in here than I do.”

“Probably,” Makoto agreed. “Michiru?”

The older girl paused and looked back. “Yes?”

“Thank you for telling me; I know it can’t have been easy.”

“It helps to talk about these things, or so I’ve heard; thanks for listening.” She put a hand on Makoto’s shoulder. “If you ever want to talk... about your parents, I mean...”

“Maybe,” Makoto said, smiling a little. “Someday.” Michiru smiled back and gave the other girl’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before leaving for the front room.

Makoto stood there for a while, thinking about things with a detached clarity that surprised her. Her parents had been killed in a plane crash; Michiru’s had been killed by a monster. She never got to say goodbye; Michiru got to watch as her mother died. And who, Makoto thought, was to say which of the two experiences was worse?

She realized something else, too. Knowing that someone else understood what it felt like to lose loved ones—that someone _really_ understood—somehow made her feel a little less lonely.

With that in mind, Makoto turned to the kitchen. Ami’s explanation had—as usual—been a little hard to follow, but if they were going to go storming off through Time, best to do it with full stomachs. Dark memories were banished as she got to work.

# 

They gathered in the rearranged living room after dinner, the girls taking a moment to slip out of sight, clean up, and transform. Mercury staggered briefly as her uniform warped into existence, then quickly looked around to make sure no one had been on-hand to see. This was another reason she wanted to visit the Time Gate, to perhaps find a solution to whatever was wrong with her.

“Is everyone ready?” ChibiMoon asked, looking around. The others nodded, including Usagi and Ryo. As was becoming custom, there had been a few moments spent fighting over whether it was safe for any non-Senshi to make this trip, after quite a few minutes spent asking whether or not it was safe even for the _Senshi._ ChibiMoon had explained that the trick Pluto had showed her of observing time required a lot of precise mental control; Luna certainly had that, and every extra pair of eyes looking for answers would help. Then too, in a place from which it was naturally possible to see all points in Time as past AND future, Ryo’s ability to see the future would probably have some enhanced effect. And with so many of them going, it was really much safer to bring Usagi along—just in case. Mars, although not happy about dragging Usagi into potential trouble yet again, was bringing the Book as well—just in case.

“Okay,” ChibiMoon said. “Here we go.”

“Do you think maybe we ought to nail down everything in the room before we try?” Venus asked. “You know, just in case?”

“I know what I’m doing, Venus,” ChibiMoon replied a bit sharply. She was getting awfully sick of that phrase, and she held up the key before anybody else could say it again, or make any other smart remarks. “CRYSTAL KEY: ACTIVATE!”

The transparent stone at the head of the key flashed, shooting a hair-thin line of reddish energy from each of its many facets. The beams missed the gathered travelers entirely and seemed to impact on the interior surface of a large, invisible sphere around them, reflecting off in different directions. The lines crisscrossed empty space at incredible speed, filling the air until every point along that unseen, immaterial globe had been defined, and not once did the beams strike anyone. When the sphere was complete, the dancing lines of energy reflected one last time, rebounding back into the crystal, each one striking the exact same facet from which it had begun. The heart of the crystal flared with brilliant white light.

The world blinked out.

# 

Ryo’s sneeze carried him clear off his feet. After a moment of sniffing and rubbing at his eyes, he looked around; had there been a floor, his jaw would have hit it.

The place was an empty void. Thick, grey-white mist reached in every direction for as far as the eye could see. More disturbing was the fact that everyone was standing upright at different angles, like one of those bizarre paintings with stairs leading along a ceiling and doors in the floor. Usagi appeared to be standing on her head, except that her hair and clothes all fell in the direction that was _up_ to Ryo, making him wonder if _he_ wasn’t the one who’d gotten inverted.

“Everybody here?” ChibiMoon asked, looking about and counting heads as she tucked the no-longer-glowing key away again. “Okay, then. This’ll probably go easier if we’re at the Gate itself. Gives you a reference point in all this... well, whatever it is. This way.”

“No,” Pluto said suddenly. The others turned to look at her, pointing past Venus. “There.” Sure enough, the dark, rectangular shadow of something very large was visible through the cloaking mists, the two narrow ends level with the angle of ‘ground’ that Pluto appeared to be standing on. Ryo swallowed; he’d only glanced in that direction briefly, but he was sure there hadn’t been anything there. Pluto started towards it, and the others fell into line behind her.

They stopped a moment later as bootheels began clicking on a solid surface, where before there had only been mist. Shapes were suddenly all around them; not appearing gradually from the mists or flickering into existence, just _there._

Mars launched a Burning Mandala before anybody else had time to do more than stop and blink. The fiery rings hit one of the shapes and deflected away, their energy dissipating into the mists, but none of the large objects moved.

“Calm down,” they heard Usagi say. “Everyone, relax.”

“What _are_ they?” Saturn asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” ChibiMoon admitted. “I’ve never seen anything... there never IS anything here, except the Time Gate.”

Six tall podiums to their right faced off against a wide gallery on the opposite side. Venus, at the back of the group, turned and jumped in surprise when she saw a seventh, larger podium looming up behind her. The most distant podium appeared to be made of some sort of grey stone, or perhaps metal; edges that might once have been sharp as razors were now dull and pitted with a reddish discoloration that might have been rust. The next box looked to have been formed from the swirling mists, drifting within a loosely-defined limit in a slow, random pattern; the stand beside it was black, but in different degrees, as if it had been made from shadows. The fourth podium was white marble, once pristine and finely-carved, but now stained and chipped. A tangle of plant life, half of it overgrown and half of it dead, formed the next seat, and the last member of the row was a pile of broken, dusty-looking rocks.

*Not rocks,* Ryo realized a moment later, recognizing a shape or two from biology class. He glanced quickly at Mercury, and knew from the look in her eyes that she’d also recognized the ‘rocks’ for what they were. They joined hands and held on very tight. Saturn, Ryo noticed, cast a quick glance at the sixth podium and then walked a little closer to Neptune and Uranus. It was hard to tell whether she was seeking protection or moving to be in place to provide it if the owner of the grim seat appeared.

The gallery was wooden, the same sort of high-quality work gone halfway to ruin as was to be found on the row of podiums. It had only three seats in it, shapeless masses of dust which might once have been cushions. The largest podium, the one behind Venus, appeared to be made of opaque glass or crystal; unlike the rest, it was in good repair, the sides smooth and clear and uncracked, but it too had no occupant. The empty seats were more disturbing than the idea of them being occupied; if there had been occupants, the Senshi could have dealt with them, but with all the seats empty, it felt almost as if one—or all—of those places might suddenly be filled the moment their eyes left it.

Pluto had ignored the appearance of the seats and walked right up to the Gate. She extended one hand to touch the massive, ornately carved door at about the level of her shoulder, then leaned forward so that her forehead touched the cool material in some form of communion.

“Pu?” ChibiMoon asked nervously.

“Can’t you hear it?” Pluto said softly.

The others looked at each other, tilting their heads to catch a sound. "Hear what?” Venus finally demanded.

“Inside the Gate. The flow of Time. A symphony of seconds and centuries.” They all stared at her. Ryo started to turn one ear towards the Gate, thinking that he almost could hear a faint swell of sound, then shook his head.

“I didn’t like this place much the first time,” Mars said shortly, “and I like it even less now. Let’s do what we came to do and then get out of here.”

ChibiMoon nodded. “Good idea. Everyone, listen carefully; you have to picture the place and time you want to see, get it fixed firmly in your head. Detail is important; the more precise the image is, the more likely you are to get a window.” ChibiMoon looked down at a spot on the floor with an expression of intense concentration. Part of the solid-seeming greyness between the seats began to swirl away from an emptiness—no, an image. It was blurry at first, distorted and shifting, but then it sharpened into clarity, showing all of them standing in Michiru’s living room, being surrounded by the light of the key. After a moment, the image was swallowed by the mist again.

“Neat trick,” Uranus admitted. “Any particular reason why you wanted to see that again?”

“It’s probably the furthest point along in time that you’ll be able to see,” ChibiMoon explained. “Pu said that looking into the past, however distant, is easier for most people than looking into the future, because the past is considered to be fixed, unchanging, while the future is fluid. Looking into a different location in the present is about midway. I could look into any instant between the point where we left Tokyo and the point where I left home, but I probably couldn’t see beyond that instant. And I’m not going to try to look into the future,” she finished. Noting the looks some of them gave her, she added, “I promised Mama I wouldn’t tell you about your futures. I’m not going to show them to you, either.” Then she smiled a very cunning smile. “That’s what Ryo-kun is here for.”

They all turned their attention to Ryo. He sighed. “I should start charging you people for these visions.”

“What exactly are you doing?” Uranus asked as Ryo sat down on the ‘floor’ and then lay back, arms behind his head as if he were in a grassy field, watching the clouds. Mercury knelt to his right, computer out and visor on.

“We think his being here will enhance Ryo-kun’s ability to see the future,” Mercury explained. “But his visions have a history of bringing on headaches; the clearer or more urgent the vision, the more intense the pain gets, and there have been occasions when it was enough to make him black out.”

“This way,” Ryo added without breaking his gaze away from the endless mist above, “at least I won’t risk hitting my head falling.”

Mercury pulled at a corner of her computer, and a small piece of the frame appeared to come off between her fingers. She put the ‘spot’ on Ryo’s forehead, and the center of it began to blink softly; so did the section of the computer it had been removed from. Jupiter glanced over her shoulder and saw that the screen had been filled with the sort of futuristic diagrams one expects to find in the Sick Bay of the starship Enterprise.

“If you pull a humming salt-shaker out of that thing,” Venus started to say.

“It’s a remote sensor,” Mercury explained without looking up. “It gathers information specific to its program and the subject, rather than picking up everything in the vicinity like the computer or visor normally do. It lets me get a more precise reading, but it also dumps all of the computer’s processing power onto the single task, so I don’t bother with it very often.”

“Not really a good idea in a battle situation,” Neptune agreed.

“Pulse, respiration, blood pressure, neural activity...” Mercury paused. "Luna, there are some readings here I don’t understand.”

“Let me see.” Luna hopped down from Usagi’s arms and trotted over. She looked at the screen. “That information grouped together in the lower left?” Mercury nodded. “Don’t worry about it; those are old Moon Kingdom terminology. They have to do with the subject’s latent magical energies; the current level of power, the projected safe maximum, the projected maximum, special variant conditions, that sort of thing. See that reading coming off the frontal lobe? That’s the physical traces in Ryo’s brain that account for or were caused by his future sight.”

Mercury nodded slowly. “And then this,” she said, pointing at a notation coming from near Ryo’s heart, “must be...”

“Exactly,” Luna said. “It’s a fairly simple system to read; I’ll explain it all later, if you want.” Luna didn’t added that the reading labeled as ‘SLE’ -Subject Latent Energy—was unusually high for a human. Almost three times the average for a normal person in the old Moon Kingdom, if she recalled the figures correctly. Luna remembered what Queen Serenity had said about the old palace sensors registering the last trace of the youma energy within Ryo’s body, but she hadn’t expected the reading to be quite _that_ high. Then again, any one of those _particular_ youma had been enough to give four Senshi at once a rough time; it only made sense that the residual trace for one of them would be fairly steep.

“Then we’re ready.” She took Ryo’s near hand. “You can begin any time, Ryo-kun.”

Ryo didn’t reply, instead letting his gaze fix on a point somewhere in or beyond the slowly swirling mist above him. He tried what ChibiUsa had described, picturing a specific place—the apartment where his family lived—and a specific time—breakfast tomorrow—and focused all his thoughts on putting as much detail into the image as possible. But no spiraling hole appeared in the mists. After a moment, he changed tactics, trying what he always did when attempting to force a vision; the image of place and time fell away, but the staring into space and the sharp focus of will remained. Funny, but that sound Pluto had been talking about seemed to be...

His eyes widened as something like a choir of a thousand pipe organs simultaneously hitting the lowest possible note went off in his head. Had such a sound actually _been_ a sound, it would have blown out his eardrums and likely turned his brain to paste; as it was, he thought the second part of that equation was coming along just wonderfully.

Even Pluto looked up in surprise as an image appeared above them all. The mists around it did not swirl or churn or flow away; they were ripped apart by the edge of the vision-window, which expanded outwards with a speed similar to the shock wave of an explosion. And, like an explosion, the image changed rapidly:

Saturn, trudging through what looked like a jungle, clearing a path for herself by lopping vines and branches off with the Silence Glaive as she walked and wearing an absolutely disgusted expression. A shadow of some sort fell across her from behind, and...

Shingo was walking down a street somewhere in Tokyo, with snow all around but not particularly thick. Three boys his own age appeared in front of him, saying something. Shingo’s face darkened, and he said something back, then swung at the lead boy with his fist...

All the girls except Setsuna and ChibiUsa were standing in an airport lobby, and Mamoru was coming down an escalator. Usagi, much slimmer than she currently was, leapt and tackled her fiancee, literally knocking him off his feet. Kneeling over Mamoru with a triumphant smile, she looked up in shock as shadowy figures appeared...

A man in strange, dark robes inset with many symbols walked slowly through a darkened room, his back to them. He stopped suddenly and turned, revealing a hard face. Jagged lines of white raced through his black hair and beard like lightning bolts, and his utterly black eyes widened in shock as if he could actually see them watching him...

Rei kicked open a burning door and looked into a room that was engulfed in smoke and flame, shouting a word—a name?—that was lost in the roar of the fire. She had her transformation pen in hand and seemed about to raise it when she looked up and saw...

Ami was wandering amidst jewel-like pillars and shallow pools of pale water in a cavern filled with sparkling blue-white mist. The mist rippled as if a wind had stirred it, and Ami stopped, startled, as...

Jupiter pounded fiercely against a wall of glass which glowed dully and somehow resisted her blows. In a reflection on the glass and in Jupiter’s eyes, they saw a light came on in the otherwise dark area beyond the glass, saw a figure step into the light, saw Jupiter’s eyes go wide...

Uranus was fighting a creature that looked like a man made of stone, faceless and powerful, her sword flashing and slicing chips of rock away as the thing sought to pound her with huge fists. A massive beam of white-hot energy shot out of nowhere, ripping the stone creature from its feet and throwing it back twenty feet or more. Uranus turned towards the source of the beam as a brilliant white light illuminated her features...

Venus rolled to one side as a leathery, three-clawed foot crushed the rocky ground where she had been, then flipped to her feet and away as a reddish beam shot at her, leaving a black patch on the ground. She turned around to face whatever was attacking her, just in time to see a sawtooth-edged, bone-white blade plunging in at her stomach...

The vision-window shattered abruptly, and the fragments were immediately swallowed up by the mist. The Senshi heard Ryo groan softly; Mercury had discarded the computer and put her free hand to his forehead. Her other hand remained tightly locked with his.

“Remind me not to try that again, will you, Ami-chan?”

Mercury smiled. “How’s your head feel?”

“About the same as always.” Ryo started to sit up, then fell back as a wave of dizziness hit him. “Forget I said that.”

Saturn, a little shaken by the images, knelt down to Ryo’s left and extended a hand glowing with pale purple light to his forehead. The dull throbbing in Ryo’s head went away immediately as Saturn’s gloved fingers brushed against his skin, and he felt quite good all over, every dull ache or mild soreness gone.

“Is it always that bad?” she asked softly as Ryo got to his feet.

“The headaches? No.”

“I wasn’t asking about the headaches.”

“I know.”

“So,” Venus was saying, “I’ve got five deer that say Mister Black Eyes and Big Robes is a villain. Any takers?”

“’Bucks,’" Artemis corrected patiently, “not ‘deer.’ Money, not animals.”

“Dough, a deer, what’s the difference?” Venus paused. There was a song in that, somewhere, she was sure of it. She shook her head. “So, if Ryo-kun’s had his turn, who’s up"—a window was already swirling open, and her last word trailed off, losing its interrogative note—“next.”

They turned and saw Pluto, her eyes firmly fixed on the growing image and burning with a fierce inner light. Usagi remembered her friend’s near-desperate eagerness on the Moon, when she’d looked at the old device connected to the computer and asked if Serenity could have done anything to help her. The look in Pluto’s eyes now was still eager, but not in the same way. It was a little vicious, but Usagi couldn’t figure out why.

The image that took shape was the instant on New Year’s Eve in which the first fungus-creature had fired its devastating blast at the Mizuno house. Then the scene began to play itself backwards: the surging beam of greenish energy the Inner Senshi and the cats remembered was sucked back into the toaster; the light on the creature’s head winked out; it turned back to the four Senshi in the snowbank, and energies formed between them, half zipping into the creature, the other half flying back towards the Senshi and disappearing.

“You didn’t say we could do that,” Saturn said to ChibiMoon.

“I didn’t think we _could._"

Pluto continued to push back through the event, rewinding it to the point where she had first seen the creature burst from the house across the street. And then she went further than that, somehow zooming the image in to follow the entity’s movements inside the house. It raced backwards through the living room, righting and reassembling overturned or shattered furniture; in the kitchen, it spat out all the devices in its body to their original places and dwindled into a much smaller form, a greenish orb similar to the one that had been left behind by the monster at the Cafe. A jagged hole of black energy appeared in the air above the ball, which shot up into it, the gateway closing and leaving the house as it had been.

And still Pluto followed the thing. After a moment of blurry distortion, the image cleared and showed a huge chamber of unfamiliar design. The walls were high and hidden in shadow, and large devices loomed all about. The only clear details were of a spherical object at the center of the scene, sort of a room- within-the-room with walls of glass and complex carvings on the floor. At its heart was the ball of green, discharging—absorbing, really, since this was all being shown to them in reverse—sparks of energy. The energy vanished, and the glow within the glass-walled area faded.

Then a figure drifted through the only opening in that transparent wall. It was the black-eyed man in robes, and the image froze as soon as his face became clear.

“I told you,” Venus said.

“Where is he?” Mercury demanded sharply. Everyone except Pluto looked at her, slightly startled, and Usagi suddenly figured out what that eagerness in Pluto’s eyes was; Mercury had the same look. Usagi decided she wouldn’t want to be in the robed man’s shoes when her two friends caught up with him.

The image was changing again, the point of view pulling away from the robed man, passing rapidly through a succession of many walls. When the scene emerged into corridors or rooms, there was very little light, and after a certain point, no light at all.

“It’s underground,” Luna said after a moment. “Or underwater. Somewhere very deep in either case. Go back—or forward—would you, Pluto?” The image remained dark a moment longer, then brightened—a little—as it moved back into an area of light. Eventually, the black-eyed man reappeared, unmoving. Luna frowned. “That’s what I thought. Whoever that man is, those markings on his clothes were in common use by practitioners of magic back in the Silver Millennium or earlier periods of history.”

“Looks like an archmage,” Artemis noted. “Or at least, he thinks he is. Pluto, can you zoom in on the area of his robes just over his heart? If he’s true to the old fashion, there should be a symbol there to show his allegiance.” Pluto obliged, spinning the image and moving it closer.

A series of seven silver circles was plainly visible on the front of the wizard’s dark mantle, broken circles which were connected to each other by a seemingly random pattern of short lines. The cats stared at it, eyes wide, ears and tails drooping.

“Oh no.” Luna buried her face in her paws. “Tell me I didn’t see that.”

“Seven broken and interjoined rings... deep underground or underwater... magical rites and devices which were outlawed two thousand years ago...” Artemis shook his head. “It has to be, Luna. Too much of it fits.”

“Would one of you please start making sense?” Mars demanded.

“Where is he?” Mercury repeated.

“He’s in Atlantis,” Luna said.

“And we are in big trouble,” Artemis added.

-Indeed you are-

The voice was incredibly cold, a hissing whisper heard more in the head than in the ears. To Ryo, it was the mind-voice of the youma Zoicite had turned him into; to ChibiMoon, it was the voice of the Wise Man; Saturn heard it as Mistress Nine. It was a different voice to each of them, but always of the same kind. Dark. Frightening. Seductive.

Evil.

As the podiums had suddenly appeared without actually appearing, now they were restored from their assorted states of decay, and—for the most part—occupied. A faceless being in stark grey robes sat in the first box, radiating an aura of authority and control; next to it was a thing which blurred from form to formlessness to what looked mostly like a dog in robes, with corn growing out of its ears. Third was a black shadow, a hole in reality, within which floated two blood-red eyes; the fourth box remained empty, while the fifth held a being half-plant, half-animal, somewhat human, and seemingly female. Three women sat in the gallery; the one in the middle looked almost exactly like Pluto—but somehow not quite—another looked much younger, and the third, much older. A very plain, ordinary-looking man sat in the tallest podium, watching them with grey eyes. The box to his right, the last of the row of six, also held a figure, but after one glance at it, everyone averted their eyes. Almost everyone.

“You,” Saturn whispered, staring at the black shroud, the bony hands, the apparently empty hood. The blood had completely drained from her face, and her eyes were shining with violet energy.

“You,” Uranus hissed, looking up at the very ordinary, very average man, with his hair that was not grey due to age.

“You,” Usagi said flatly, her eyes on the incessantly shifting thing in the second box. It looked at her, then suddenly seemed to be wearing her hairstyle.

“You,” Pluto said in shock, unable to pull her gaze from the three images of herself.

-The event has been as it was intended—The second figure was the source of the dark voice.—The conditions have been met; I exercise my right-

“The conditions have been met,” the grey man agreed. He looked at the three women who were not quite Pluto and nodded, and they in turn nodded back, turning to look at the Senshi.

*Not at us,* Usagi realized after a moment. *Past us. But there’s nothing there except... oh no.*

There was a tremendous sound as the Time Gate swung open, revealing the swirling flow of Time itself. In the same instant that the great doors parted, a tremendous roaring wind pulled at the Senshi and their three friends, dragging them towards the Gate. Pluto, near the back, was sucked in almost immediately; Uranus and Neptune followed a moment later, and Artemis flew in on their heels, with Venus right on _his_ heels as she tried desperately to catch him. Lacking the strength of the Senshi, Ryo was next, and Mercury jumped in after him.

Saturn had driven the Silence Glaive into the shifting substance of the mists as an anchor, and now looked back helplessly as ChibiMoon also vanished into the Gate. Just ahead of her, Mars and Jupiter had dragged Usagi to the ground; the low position reduced the pull of the wind, and their combined weight seemed to be enough to hold them in place. Luna was hanging on by her claws, though, and when the shoulder of Usagi’s shirt tore, she was pulled away. Usagi tried to reach for her, but the shift made Mars lose her hold on the Book, which also flew back, and when _she_ reached for the Book, she leaned up too far, and was thrown after it.

Jupiter tried to keep Usagi pinned down, hunching down over the smaller girl so as to put her full weight as well as her strength into the effort. But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and by pushing Usagi down, Jupiter pushed herself up, just a little. It was a little too far, and the inexorable force of the Gate caught her, dragged her slowly upright and then violently backwards. She collided with Saturn, and for a moment, it looked as if they both might hold steady. Then the Silence Glaive, rocked loose by the impact, emerged from the mists beneath, and both Senshi were blown into the Gate.

That left Usagi, hanging on to a surface that wasn’t really there by dint of her fingernails and sheer furious determination. She actually managed to drag herself forward a bare fraction of an inch. Then she paused. Several inches. A slip backwards. Another pause. Another fraction.

She glared up at the seated figures, and her eyes said that if she ever got her hands on any of them, what Mercury and Pluto were planning for the man with black eyes was going to seem pleasant by comparison.

Then even Usagi was overpowered, sucked into the swirling vortex of color and sound beyond the Time Gate. As the currents within what her mind could only describe as a corridor carried her away, Usagi looked back at the rapidly fading mass of the Gate, which was slowly swinging shut. She could just make out a figure, a shape that wasn’t a shape but seemed to be wearing her hairstyle.

“dEBT rePAiD,” she heard a bizarre voice say. A limb that could only be loosely described as an arm moved, throwing something in after her—after all of them—just as the Time Gate crashed shut, something which flashed and flickered as it spun end over end towards her.

Pluto’s staff.

# 

Mars woke up with a start, for a brief second not knowing where she was, hoping against hope to look around and find that it had all been a dream.

No such luck. She was sitting in a rocky field somewhere, all grey dust and stark stones. The sky overhead was thick with clouds, very low and very dark, sooty black clouds which did not look like they promised rain. Spaces in between the clouds were not the familiar blue of a daytime sky or the equally familiar star-specked black of night, but a dull grey hue very similar to the dust and stones all around her.

She could still breathe, and although the chill air held a decidedly musty odor, it did not appear to be threatening to crush her from pressure. Nor was the gravity unusual; she felt no lighter or heavier than she normally did.

*That means I may still be on Earth. But where? And _when?_*

“That’s what we were wondering,” a familiar voice said from behind her. Mars turned, startled, and let out a relieved sigh when she saw Uranus and Neptune, both a little dusty but both very definitely here.

“I think you dropped this,” Neptune added politely, handing over the Book, which was no dirtier than it had been, and still firmly sealed shut.

“Thank you,” Mars said, taking the Book and looking around. “Any ideas about this place?”

“None. We’ve only been here about two minutes, and nothing looks familiar.” Neptune raised her wrist and pressed a button on her communicator. It beeped twice, and was answered by identical beeps from Mars’ and Uranus’ own communicators. After a moment, Neptune sighed. “And unless Ami’s boyfriend or the cats are out there, it appears we’re the only ones who ended up here.”

“Wherever _here_ is,” Uranus said. “And whenever.”

Mars hugged the Book close as she looked out at the blasted landscape. *Usagi, where are you?*

# 

Jupiter came to with a vicious pounding in her head. She was laying on a bed of sweet-smelling grass and perhaps a few small flowers, looking up at a brilliant blue sky through which a flock of birds flapped in shifting formation.

“Good morning.”

“Hello, Mercury,” Jupiter said, without rising. The grass was very soft, for one thing, and she didn’t really feel like looking around, for another. “Do you have any idea where we are or what time it is?”

“Actually, yes. I did a scan of the area with my computer, and it matches the geography of Tokyo to within a reasonable margin of error. There’s no city, though, just a lot of fields and trees. And judging by the angle of the sun, my computer says it’s 8:24am, local time. Probably early summer.”

“And the year?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but since there isn’t a city—or a settlement of any kind within a hundred kilometers—it’s probably somewhere in the past.” There was a pause, after which Mercury added, in a soft, sad voice, "We’re the only ones here.”

“Not exactly,” a strange, melodious voice said. Jupiter was on her feet in an instant, turning with Mercury to face the source of that unfamiliar voice, raising her arms into a ready stance in case it proved hostile.

A girl not much older than themselves stood at the edge of a nearby group of trees. She was a little shorter than Jupiter, very slender, and wore a loose-fitting, sleeveless, low-necked dress of some pale green material, belted at the waist with a silver thread, but her feet were bare. Hair of a brilliant emerald green hue was worn in a short-cut style that framed her face with two inward-curving tails, and her pale skin held a faintly greenish cast. Wide, deeply brown eyes regarded them both curiously.

“Who are you?” the girl asked. Her ears, Jupiter noticed as the stranger turned her head slightly, came to very definite points. She also had a third tail in her hair, at the back, much longer and straighter than the two to the sides.

“Who are you?” Jupiter countered.

“I am Sasanna Teol Hydarallanallen,” the girl—or whatever she was— replied, seemingly unbothered by the blunt counter-question. “Who are you?”

Mercury’s mother had raised her to be polite, so she responded. “My name is Mercury; this is Jupiter.”

The girl—Sasanna Teohwhatever she called herself—looked at them, lips moving as she silently repeated their names. Her expression seemed vaguely puzzled. “Those are not your real names,” she said. “At least, they are not your only names.”

“No,” Mercury admitted, “they’re not our only names. But they’ll do.”

Sasanna looked at her, then at Jupiter. “Your name is Kino Makoto. Mako-chan?” She pronounced it ‘Keenoh Mahkohdoh,’ but Jupiter blinked anyway. And then she blinked again when the girl added, her face even more puzzled, “Amma? Amalthea?” She pronounced those ‘Ah-mah’ and ‘Ahmahltheehah.’ “How many names do you have?”

“H-how did you know that?” Jupiter asked in a shaken voice.

Sasanna seemed startled. “The trees told me, of course. I can hear them, and they can hear you, a little. Do you not hear them?”

“The trees told...” Jupiter repeated slowly.

“What _are_ you?” Mercury demanded.

The girl paused, frowning as she thought. “My kind,” she said at length, "do not have a name for ourselves. We are what we are, no more, no less. But there was...” She looked back at the trees, and Jupiter thought she heard a sighing rustle. Goosebumps ran up her arms.

*Just the wind. Just wind in the leaves. Plants can’t talk. I used to imagine my plants could answer when I talked to them, but they couldn’t, they can’t, they don’t... do they?*

“Ah,” Sasanna said, nodding as she turned back to them, “yes. Whilowhorlowillowander reminds me of the man who spoke with Rheanna Diema Dwaenonymmossifer many seasons ago. His word for our kind was ‘dryads.’ Have you given us another name since then?”

# 

“Ohhhhhh,” ChibiMoon groaned, “my head.”

“Your head and mine both,” Venus replied. “Owowowowow... wow!”

ChibiMoon’s head shot up to look at whatever had made Venus give that wondrous and suddenly pain-free exclamation, just in case it was a ‘wow’ inspired by something like a huge explosion or their being lost in a place where all the usual laws of reality had been stood on their ear.

After a moment to look around, she sincerely wished it had been either of those two. What she was seeing was much, much worse. Terrible. Disastrous on a scale that absolutely refused to register in her mind.

They were standing in a garden of some kind, filled with many lovely plants and pieces of sculpture that fell into varying categories of size, style, and physical composition. None of that was what bothered ChibiMoon; it was the huge, gleaming silver-white shape taking up much of the skyline like a mountain which scared her.

“I’m home,” she announced weakly. Venus looked over sharply, a little concerned by the sound of ChibiMoon’s voice as she added, “Mother is going to kill me.”

# 

Akhmed looked around at the campsite and nodded in satisfaction. Finding this little oasis, so close to home, had been a welcome surprise indeed. Instead of riding the rest of the night and arriving tired and dry and dusty at midday, he and his horse could take their ease this evening and well into tomorrow, then ride out in the early evening and be back well before midnight. He could afford to waste the day; good old Mahdib had made excellent time for him.

The horse, wrapped in a spare blanket for warmth in the night air, was taking a well-deserved drink from the cool water of the pool just then, and shortly turned his attention to some low-growing scrub around its edges. Not exactly the sweet hay and sweeter apples the family typically served him, Akhmed thought with a smile, but the reedy little grasses were apparently satisfactory to sate the loyal horse’s hunger this evening.

Or maybe not so satisfactory. Mahdib suddenly looked up from his dinner and whickered softly, a note which made Akhmed reach for his dagger as his eyes scanned the area. The old horse had good ears and good instincts, and if he had heard... ah, there, just coming over the lip of the high, dusty hill that hid this place. A bandit? A fellow traveler?

A girl, on foot. Akhmed stared, stunned. She was young, probably no older than his little sister Kaiya, and wearing strange clothes. The light of the full moon made every detail very clear, if slightly lacking in color. Her hair was done up in a style as strange as her clothes, and though he couldn’t be sure of its color, he knew it was far, far more pale than that of any woman he had ever seen or heard of. Her face was also pale and very pretty, though she looked as if she’d been crying; as she got closer, Akhmed could see that her eyes were a brilliant blue, slightly rimmed with the red residue of tears, but there was nothing of weakness in them that he could see.

She was also very pregnant, and that decided Akhmed.

“You, girl! Are you lost? Hurt? Come down to the camp; I will not harm you, I swear.” The girl hesitated, looking at him, then called down to him, words in a language Akhmed had never heard before. He shook his head. “I can’t understand you. Please, come down. The desert is not safe at night.” He gestured with his hands, and she walked closer, slowly.

It was then that Akhmed saw the cats. One blue-black, the other white, and both with strange crescent marks on their foreheads, they moved along to either side of the strange girl. The way they looked at him and at the area all around reminded him of old soldiers and caravan guards he had met from time to time, sizing up unfamiliar ground for enemies and dangerous or defensible positions.

The girl and her cats stopped a short distance away, and she bowed slightly, smiling nervously; Akhmed returned the greeting and the smile. She said something, but Akhmed again shook his head. “I can’t understand you. And you probably can’t understand me, can you?” After he stopped speaking, the girl frowned, made a sort of cupping gesture at her ear, and shook her head. Akhmed sighed. “I thought not. Will you come sit by the fire?” He motioned towards the fire, and the girl nodded, rubbing her arms in the chilly night air.

She sat down on a low stone next to the fire, and Akhmed fetched the other blanket from inside his tent, offering it to her. After a moment, she accepted it and wrapped it around her shoulders, saying something and smiling. She picked up the black cat and held it close; the white cat sat a little closer to the fire.

“My name is Akhmed,” he said after a moment. He repeated his name, tapping himself on the chest.

“Usagi,” the girl said, pointing to herself. Then she pointed at the cats, in turn, and named them “Luna,” and “Artemis.” Then they sat there for a time, a thousand things to say, but no way to say them. Akhmed offered the girl some food and water, which she accepted, but he wasn’t exactly sure what to do next.

“Ho, the camp!” Akhmed looked up at the hill again, startled. Three men had appeared there, and moonlight flashed on blades at their hips. Without thinking, Akhmed put himself between the girl and the three newcomers; when they got closer, he cursed silently. He knew the man in front, but not by choice.

“Hello, Akhmed,” the tall, scar-faced leader said pleasantly. “Imnho sent us to find you.”

“Hello, Tukkad,” Akhmed replied. “I’m surprised to hear Imnho is so concerned for my well-being.”

“Oh, he could care less about you,” Tukkad admitted, “but those documents you’re carrying for your father? Those, Imnho cares about a great deal. He’s paying us well to see that they reach him intact. You, he wasn’t so specific about, but if you’ll just hand over those letters—and anything valuable you might be carrying—I could see my way to...”

“Akhmed?”

“What’s this?” Tukkad asked, barking out a harsh laugh. “Akhmed, you sneaky devil! What have you been up... to.” Tukkad’s eyes widened as Usagi moved out from behind Akhmed.

“Hair like gold,” one of his companions muttered.

“Where,” Tukkad asked in awe, “did you find a slave girl like that? What did she _cost?_" He shook his head, realizing he was asking questions of a man he’d been hired to rob, if not outright kill. “No matter. I don’t think you deserve anything that pretty, Akhmed. Hand her over with the documents, and you can go.”

“Not a chance.”

Tukkad shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He and his companions drew their weapons, took a step forward... and hesitated as a low, thunderous growl filled the night air. Akhmed saw that the three thugs were staring at something behind him, something that was probably the source of that growling noise. It was a noise Akhmed remembered hearing once or twice, and the memory of what made a sound like that made him start to sweat. Behind him, Mahdib snorted fearfully.

“A demon!” the second of Tukkad’s men shrieked, turning to run. He got about five steps before the other man caught up and passed him, running flat-out. They both vanished over the hill, long cloaks flapping behind them, leaving Tukkad alone, pale, and shaking violently.

A huge blue-black panther walked into Akhmed’s field of vision, moving slowly around Usagi and coming to a halt in front of Tukkad. The beast’s shoulder cleared the level of Akhmed’s waist, and it was easily as long as he was tall. It was certainly far more powerful, probably stronger than he and Tukkad put together, and it was undeniably better armed. *A beast that size must have claws the size of daggers,* Akhmed thought uneasily. *And its teeth... gods, its teeth!*

Tukkad apparently reached the same conclusions, because his face went whiter than the moon overhead, and his shaking increased to the point where he could hardly stand. The huge feline just stood there, looking at him; it growled sharply once, and Tukkad turned and ran for his life, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The panther watched him run, then turned back to face the humans, and Akhmed saw immediately that it bore a crescent on its forehead. He realized that Usagi was holding on to his arm, but not in a way that suggested she was afraid and seeking comfort; it was more like she was trying to comfort him.

The beast’s eyes blinked, and then its entire form blinked as well. Instead of a cat, another young woman stood before Akhmed, a little taller and a little older than Usagi, with very long and extremely dark hair, the same shade as the fur of the panther had been. She was as fair-skinned as Usagi, though they otherwise looked nothing alike, and wore a white dress of a style that was as different from Usagi’s clothing as from what Akhmed was familiar with. Her eyes were the eyes of the panther—and, Akhmed realized dully, of the little black cat as well.

“We need to talk.” Akhmed heard a faint thump behind him following the woman’s words, and turned; so did Usagi, looking a little confused until she spotted the source of the sound. Then she broke into giggles.

The white cat had passed out.

# 

It wasn’t possible to have a headache anywhere other than in your head, but having said that, the pain that had taken up residence in the rest of Ryo’s body felt agonizingly similar to the intracranial overpressure he felt after a particularly intense vision.

The pain, he thought, had only a little to do with whatever had happened at the Time Gate. Wherever and whenever he had landed, it felt... odd. The air was warm, humid, and somehow heavy, as if the atmosphere were a little thicker here. He could see a lot of green, and there was a pervasive smell he didn’t recognize. There were also weird sounds off in the distance, sounds he didn’t recognize any better than the smell, and liked even less.

Getting up and looking around, he saw plants of all kinds, growing thicker and taller than anything he had ever seen.

*Saturn might be around here somewhere,* he thought immediately, recalling the vision of her wandering around through a jungle. Some of the plants from that vision looked a lot like the plants that were growing around here. He would rather have been here with Ami-chan, but he supposed he could do worse than be stuck to tag along behind the second most powerful Senshi in existence. All he had to do now was...

“Welcome back.” Turning, Ryo saw Pluto sitting on the rim of a jagged tree stump about twice as thick across as she was tall. A tall, oddly-shaped staff was leaning against her left shoulder, both her hands wrapped around it.

“That must have been some tree,” Ryo said.

Pluto smiled. “Yes, it was. How do you feel?”

“Sore. Tired. Hot. A little stifled. You?”

“About the same.”

Ryo looked around, but they seemed to be alone. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that; since that bizarre vision back in the hospital, being around Pluto always made him just a little nervous. “Any idea where or when we ended up?”

“The where, I’m not sure of, except that I’m sure we’re still on Earth.” Pluto paused, getting to her feet with a little help from the staff. “As for when...”—she looked out at the thickly growing trees—“don’t ask me how or why, but I think this is ninety million BC. Give or take a century or two, either way.”

Ryo stared at her.

# 

Saturn was, in a word, pissed.

Being lost in space and time, ripped away from one’s friends and family, and left to wander blindly through a stinking, sweltering jungle will do that to most people, even those whose natures are not typically angry ones. Of course, most people are not Saturn.

Saturn’s power was a dark and sometimes terrible one, and she kept it firmly locked away in a mental cage, behind barriers of willpower in the furthest corner of her mind, only letting it out for brief periods, and always under the tightest reins she could devise. When she got angry, those barriers buckled, and the power rattled around in its cage, almost as if it was eager to get out and do some damage—which it might very well be. Usually, whenever this happened, Saturn clamped down on her power and her temper, hard.

Right now, though, she let the power rage and rattle and surge to its satisfaction. Her mood was dark, and for once, it suited her to have that purple-black energy roiling and gnashing in her brain, blood, and bones.

She slashed through vines, leaves, low-hanging branches, and even the occasional tree or stone as she walked along, not really knowing where she was going and well beyond caring in any event. The Silence Glaive lived up to its name, moving through the air without even a whisper of sound, and its typically gleaming blade was unusually dull, as if the weapon itself could sense its mistress’ dark mood and was doing everything it could to be as inoffensive as possible.

Saturn was deep enough in her personal darkness that she failed to notice the steady series of thudding footsteps and crunching foliage coming up from behind her. But she did notice when a huge shadow suddenly appeared, swallowing her own shadow. She turned around.

It was big and scaly, with a hide that ranged from olive green to dull brown depending on where one looked. Two small eyes looked down at her from either side of a head that was a good six meters in the air, and the mouth of that head, when it opened, was filled with a forest of gleaming teeth—and a breath that stank of rotten meat. The beast lowered its head to snap up the little morsel before it...

...and drew back with a snort as something flashed up into view.

“Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.”

As a group, dinosaurs have long been famous for having some of the smallest brain-to-body mass ratios ever to evolve in the animal kingdom. It is important to remember, however, that just because they were unintelligent is not immediate grounds to dismiss them as stupid. A species—or a group of species—does not get to rule the world for several hundred million years by being stupid; nature has spent far too much time cultivating the fine quality of instinct to permit it. It is also important to remember that animals in the modern world are well-known for their ability to perceive things that humans either can’t or won’t acknowledge as being there.

This particular carnosaur—a cousin of the infamous tyrannosaurs—was hungry, and its powerfully keen snout told it there was meat right in front of it. At the same time, however, that nose was picking up other scents: a cold, flat odor it had never encountered before; another smell which it associated with the last time it had run into a fellow predator; and a scent that said ‘danger’ to the beast’s small brain as clearly as would the smell of smoke or the rumble of thunder.

After a moment, the huge beast turned away and lumbered off in search of something else to snack on. Once it was out of sight, Saturn went back to chopping a path through the trees.

She didn’t notice the small eyes watching her from the shadows of the foliage all around.

 

# 

_(The room is empty. Shingo pokes his head in from the left and looks around, then flashes a V-sign at the screen and grins.)_

**Shingo** : All right, looks like it’s my turn. That odango-atama does this all the time, so it can’t be _that_ hard... um...

**Voice Off-Screen** : Psst!  _(Hands a sheet of paper to Shingo and motions for him to read it.)_

**Shingo** : Hey, thanks! Okay, let’s see... Today’s moral is that the future is shaped by events in the past, and...  _(Shingo frowns and looks more closely at the sheet of paper)_  Wait a minute, that’s the same moral they used in Episode Eight!

**Off-Screen** : Huh? Let me see that.  _(Shingo hands the paper back, and there is a brief pause.)_  Damn. Sorry kid; I guess you’re on your own.

**Shingo** : Great.  _(Thinks hard.)_  Well, except for the fact that they really ought to make sure ahead of time that there’s going to be somebody on hand to do these things, I haven’t got any ideas.

**Off-Screen** : Plan ahead. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Yeah, I think that’ll do.

**Shingo**   _(frowning)_ : Isn’t that what they said in Episode Nine?

**Off-Screen** : Uh, no. _That_ moral was about how you can’t hope to plan for everything; _this_ moral is about how you shouldn’t leave things to chance if you can help it.

**Shingo**   _(still frowning)_ : I think I want to talk to the author.

**Off-Screen** : He’s busy.  _(Cut to a scene of the Judge, locked in a tiny room with a computer, typing away with a glazed expression.)_

**Shingo** : Oh.  _(Looks around as the screen gets dim.)_  Are there any video games in here?

**Off-Screen** : No.

14/07/00 (Revised as of 15/08/02)

_(Best zombie voice) Must... write... stories! (Shakes self out of typing trance.)_

_Sorry for the delay; I try for a bi-weekly ‘publication,’ but ran into some trouble getting this one off the ground. Ah well._

_I went traipsing off into the nether reaches of time mainly because it occured to me that I hadn’t done much with ChibiUsa yet, and she deserved a chance to show that—in this story, anyway—her ‘spore’ personality is more or less a thing of the past. Although, as this episode has shown, the ‘past’ can be a subjective thing..._

_I also realized that her possession of that little key left a MAJOR potential plot gap. And we couldn’t have one of those, now, could we? Of course, NOW I have to figure out how to... well, that’s my problem, isn’t it?_

_Next time (and in several times at once!):_   
_-the Senshi struggle not to do anything that might unravel the fabric of history as they know—or don’t know—it, and;_   
_-Venus is introduced to Crystal Tokyo, sort of._


	11. Lost in Space-Time, or A Continual Continuum Discontinuity

# 

Guard duty at the Royal Palace was considered something of a mixed bag by the soldiers of Crystal Tokyo. The hours were good, the pay was good, and the benefit of working in the most beautiful city ever built by human hands was a definite plus. The air was fresh—unlike a lot of the off-world colonies where it had to be recycled and always had the faint smell of whatever local atmosphere managed to whisk in—the people were friendly, and the floors didn’t suddenly shift to odd angles like they did on ships in the fleet that had run into ‘turbulence.’

On the other hand, the job also meant that you had to spend a lot of time dealing with members of the Royal Court. By and large, they were decent enough people, but they were also the sort of people used to getting their own way—members of this or that noble family; heads of assorted financial empires; senior members of the military hierarchy; various knights and dames of the realm; Senshi—which could make them annoyingly difficult to deal with. And there was always one intrigue or another in motion as the gathered notables amused themselves in between the performance of the duties that kept the realm running.

Case in point: Guardsman Matthew Creed, assigned to head up the morning watch on the palace’s west gate, was less than ten minutes away from completing his shift, signing out for the day, and heading off to a quiet little restaurant on the bay. The food was good enough, but the real reason he spent so many of his off-hours at the place was a certain brown-eyed waitress who always kept a spare seat, a hot cup of coffee, and an extra smile waiting for him. Neri was her name, and he was just waiting until he could work up the courage to...

Matthew’s mind drifted out of a fond, often-visited daydream as he spotted two figures approaching the gate. Most of the traffic into the palace was through the great main gates, in the south; west gate was used mainly by those few servants who lived outside the palace, or by people who wanted to come and go with a minimum of fuss and bother, but were usually trailed by a dozen or so attendants.

The figure in the back wasn’t one Matthew recognized. A young blonde woman, and dressed something like a Senshi, but with a different uniform and a mask. Maybe a guest for some costume ball, although Matthew couldn’t recall seeing any such event scheduled. The figure in the lead, though... _that_ one, he recognized.

“Princess,” Matthew said, bowing. “Welcome home. We’d heard you’d be away on an extended tour of the outer world colonies for the next several months.”

“I got bored,” ChibiUsa replied, smiling broadly—and just a touch nervously. The flicker of uncertainty got Matthew’s attention; the little Princess was infamous for always getting her own way with anyone except her mother or her guardians. She shouldn’t have any reason at all to be nervous about talking to a lowly guardsman, and in point of fact, she shouldn’t be using this side gate at all, unless...

“Run away again, have we, Princess?”

“What makes you say that?” she snapped, just a bit too quickly, a little too harsh. From the expression on her face, she realized the mistake the same second she made it, and she sighed. “No, I haven’t run away. It might be easier if I had,” she mumbled under her breath. “Can we go in, now? I have to talk to mother.”

“Of course, Princess. Just as soon as we’ve cleared your... uh... guest... through security.”

The Princess twitched. At any other time, Matthew would have been smiling to see that; the imperious little lady had made life difficult for any number of guards over the years, and had earned—royally earned—just a little of the nervousness she’d caused in so many others’ lives. As it was, though, he started getting suspicious, and just a little worried.

“Do we have to... um, I mean, is it really...”

“I don’t mind,” the strange girl said in an eerily familiar voice. It occurred to Matthew, as she raised her hands to touch the colorless gem in her tiara, that the some of the symbols stitched into the young lady’s almost-Senshi outfit were remarkably like... no, they were _exactly_ like... oh hell...

The mask melted away as the uniform redesigned itself into the more-than-familiar fuku of Venus, whose equally recognizable face smiled questioningly at Matthew and the other guards.

“Well?” she asked, crossing her arms and waiting.

“Uh, nothing, Lady Venus, nothing. Welcome back.”

Venus nodded graciously, started to walk past, then turned and, right next to Matthew’s ear but loud enough for the other three guards to hear as well, said, “Your name, sir?”

“Creed, milady. Guardsman Matthew Creed.”

“Well, Guardsman Matthew Creed, let me say this: You didn’t see us. We were never here. Kapeesh?”

“Yes ma’am. I mean, no ma’am. I mean...” Creed took a deep breath and nodded mutely. He even managed not to flinch when Venus patted him on the cheek.

“That goes for the rest of you, as well. Got it?” There was a chorus of ’yes ma’am!’-s, and Venus nodded. “Good. As you were.” She and the Princess continued on into the palace, and Creed wasn’t the only guard to exhale in relief.

“I thought she left for Mars the other day,” one of the guards hissed softly.

“I think that’s what we were supposed to think,” his partner hissed back. “Where’d she get that other uniform, anyway?”

“_What_ other uniform?” Matthew said, pointedly reminding them they were to shut up about the whole incident.

Both men snapped to attention. “Nothing, sir.” Creed nodded. Eight more minutes, and he could go see Neri, and try to relax. Just eight more minutes...

A short distance down the hall, unseen by the guards, the Princess was waving her arms and whispering shouts at her ‘escort,’ who was more or less ignoring her and staring at everything in sight as if she’d never seen any of it before. Both of them ducked a corner at the sound of approaching footsteps, and began to sneak around like (very badly) melodramaticized versions of the thieves, spies, assassins, and enemy soldiers that were never supposed to get inside the palace.

# 

“You could at least tell me where we’re going.”

They had been walking in the same direction for nearly an hour. Pluto had insisted that Ryo take the lead, so that she could see anything that happened to him; every so often, she murmured a course correction as they stumbled along past mossy boulders and splintered logs, under a seemingly endless canopy of monstrously oversized trees. It was moderately warm and fantastically humid; Ryo had been left with the choice of removing his shirt or being steamed alive in it. His wool socks—a gift from his mother just this past Christmas—were now stuck through the belt loops on his pants, the legs of which he had rolled up to above his knees. And he was still sweating like a pig.

Pluto, on the other hand, looked as fresh as a daisy. To Ryo’s mind, there was something distinctly unfair about that.

“And before you make any smart remarks,” he added, “no, I haven’t seen anything.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Pluto said calmly. Ryo couldn’t see her face, and her voice was neutral enough that he couldn’t be sure from the sound whether or not she was smiling. “To answer your question, if we stay on this heading at this speed for another five minutes and fifteen seconds, we’ll meet Saturn.”

Ryo stopped and turned around. He didn’t have to say anything; the look was question enough.

“I think it has something to do with this,” Pluto told him, hefting her staff slightly. “I’ve been dreaming about it every night for weeks, seeing it just float there in the mists, as if it were waiting for me. I’ve only transformed into this aspect of myself three times since my... injury... and it always felt as if I were missing something. But now that I have this back”— again, she raised the staff—“I feel... almost whole.”

“I don’t suppose it’s telling you how to whip up a portal that’ll get us and everyone else back to where we’re supposed to be, is it?”

At that, Pluto did smile. “No. Nothing so grandiose. But it is...” She stopped and looked around suddenly as the ground began to shake, then darted forward, seized Ryo’s arm with her free hand, and snapped, “MOVE!”

Ryo moved. Given their current location in history, the building thunder could mean one of two things; he wasn’t really keen on meeting either option, but given a choice, he thought he’d prefer a geological event to the other, more likely cause.

Said cause exploded out from the trees to their right with a massive burst of cracking timber, the pounding of enormous feet, and ear-shattering bellows. Ryo caught a quick glimpse of six or seven heads on necks taller than the trees before the bodies attached to those necks and heads blocked out his vision. A foot large enough to flatten a car rose into the air, and Ryo could feel his eyes trying to squeeze shut and open as wide as possible at the same time, an attempt by warring factions of his subconscious to witness the impending horror and, simultaneously, to block it out.

Something pulled him forward just as that colossal leg came down. There was a blur of light and sound, and he fell—or was he knocked?—to the ground. No, not quite the ground; he was caught between something wooden and something else that wasn’t quite so hard. The jarring impact ended the struggle in his subconscious in favor of the side that wanted to blot things out; his eyes snapped shut. The deafening noise had ceased entirely, but his eyes refused to open until the ground had stopped shaking.

Red eyes met his gaze. “All in one piece?” Pluto asked calmly.

“Uh... yeah.” *She’s not as heavy as she looks, she... oops.* That errant thought made Ryo blush from his chin to the roots of his hair; Pluto, getting to her feet and looking curiously at the air around them both, seemed not to notice. Ryo was extremely glad Ami wasn’t around to see this. Then he frowned. Granted, he had no romantic interest in Pluto, and he was reasonably sure she had no such interest in him, but was he _that_ uninteresting that she found staring at empty _air_ to be more entertaining?

As it turned out, she was not looking at the air, but at a strange shimmer _in_ the air, a shifting sphere of darkly reddish light which surrounded them and something of the tree against which Pluto had thrown them both. The weird energy made it difficult to pick out details about their surroundings, but Ryo thought the area looked quite a bit... flatter than it had.

Ryo glanced at Pluto. “What did you do?”

“I’m not sure.” She picked up a small stone and gave it an underhanded throw towards the barrier. The shifting weave of energy flashed more brightly where the rock hit it; the rock itself rebounded away silently, but as firmly as if it had struck a brick wall. Pluto considered the stone, then walked up to the barrier and rapped on it with her knuckles. Soundless pulses of pinkish energy accompanied each light impact, and her hand tingled oddly even through the glove, but that was all. No pain, no sense of heat or cold. Just immovability and that curious tingle. And, she realized, a slow, pulsing flicker in the orb on the head of her staff.

Pluto regarded the glowing depths of the orb for a long moment, then extended her staff headfirst towards the barrier and murmured one word: “Resume.”

The orb glowed brightly, and the energy-substance of the barrier began to shift more rapidly; it became blurry, indistinct, and then vanished completely. The sounds of the jungle returned.

“It was air,” Pluto said in a softly wondering tone. “Molecules of air, slowed down to such a degree that they wouldn’t—couldn’t—move more than a fraction of a millimeter in a century. A shield harder than wood or stone or steel, impervious to almost any force brought to bear on it because the air it was composed of simply couldn’t be moved out of the way.” Looking at the area around them, she added wryly, “Which was just as well for us.”

The small herd of dinosaurs had produced a level of devastation Ryo had never witnessed, either in person or in one of his visions. Their passage had brushed aside branches and in some cases entire trees in a rain of splinters; their huge feet and immense mass had smashed the fallen wood into pulp. Ryo looked back at the tree Pluto had thrown him at and saw that it stood alone in the middle of a newly-cleared path as wide and as flat as any highway. A cloud of dust was visible in the distance in that direction, and a last, fading bellow came back to them. Looking in the other direction, the direction from which the herd had come, he saw nothing except an avenue of arboreal obliteration.

Pluto noticed him looking around and pointed at the pulverized soil. In addition to the multitude of flat footprints from the herd, Ryo could also pick out several imprints from a different kind of foot, a bit smaller than those of the huge sauropods, and with three widespread toes. The shallower imprint indicated a smaller creature or creatures, but each toe-mark was very clear, particularly the short, narrow tip. Ryo had seen enough dinosaur movies and nature documentaries to know that the current equivalent of two or three hungry lions were on the trail of a very large meal. Considering that those ‘lions’ were probably three stories tall and not too fussy about what they ate, Ryo wished them good hunting—somewhere else.

’Somewhere else,’ he realized, was where they had been headed. “Uh, Pluto? You mentioned Saturn...?”

Pluto nodded and pointed into the jungle on one side of the newly-trampled trail. “Four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, provided nothing else happens.”

“You mean you don’t know? I mean, aren’t you seeing all this?”

“Actually... no.” Pluto coughed with a trace of embarrassment and raised her left hand; from that wrist, a small light on her communicator was blinking steadily at Ryo. “Our little trip through the Gate seems to have interfered with the communications side of things, but the homing beacons are still working.”

Ryo looked at her for a moment, then shook his head and started off, counting silently to himself as he went. Four minutes and thirty seconds and a large section of jungle later, he started glancing around, and caught a metallic glimmer from somewhere further ahead.

Saturn emerged from the trees a moment later, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the universe in general, and her eyes widened slightly when she spotted the staff in Pluto’s hand. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Turning to Ryo, Saturn had again started to say something when she blinked, as if only just seeing him; the corners of her mouth quirked up into a smile before she covered a giggle with her empty left hand.

“I’m happy that you’re happy,” Ryo told her. “Now, does either of you have the slightest idea how we can get back to our own time?”

Saturn shook her head. They both looked at Pluto—who was looking thoughtfully at both of them, and then at her own staff.

# 

Mercury tried very hard not to stare at the room all around, but it was a losing battle. She had surreptitiously taken out her computer to scan the place—and its owner—and while she had yet to examine the readings, she imagined they’d be... quite remarkable.

For one thing, they were up a tree. Or perhaps _in_ the tree; it was hard to be sure, since all the walls and furniture appeared to have been grown where they stood, all smooth curves and knobs of the same huge piece of wood, with open spaces—half covered by rows of leafy vine—serving as windows. They had followed Sasanna through the forest to the base of a colossal tree which defied classification according to what knowledge Mercury had of botany; even Jupiter, with all her knowledge of plants, couldn’t place the species. It was overgrown with enough moss, ivy, and fungus that it seemed like some jungle giant transplanted from the rainforest, and looking at it, the two Senshi had a vivid, momentary recollection of Ail and Ann and their enormous ‘parent.’ This tree was just as overgrown, but healthy where the alien tree had been twisted and dying, lush with green growth instead of black wither. And instead of the pervasive aura of fear they had fought as hard as animate roots and acidic sap, this arboreal titan exuded only a sense of great age and peace.

The girl—the dryad, Mercury reminded herself, as impossible as that sounded—had proclaimed the strange tree to be her home, told them that its name was Glossolyndaraberonasym, and led them up a flight of stairs which curved around the trunk and emerged in the middle of a single large room, asking politely if they would like anything to drink, they must be thirsty after such a long journey...?

“Th-that would be n-nice,” Jupiter stammered, still spooked by the thought that a silly childhood fantasy might actually... *No! It wasn’t real!*

Sasanna nodded and moved over to a spot on one wall where a little knob of growth hung by itself. She retrieved a wide and deep wooden bowl from a shelf and held it under the knob, which almost immediately began to pour a bright, clear liquid. When the bowl was full, she drew it away. The flow ceased before her hand moved, and not so much as a drop of the sparkling stuff dripped from the knob.

“Part of our nature is to share,” Sasanna explained, noting the expressions on their faces as she returned. “If one of my sisters were to visit me, we would share the same drink; the same if there were two visitors, or more. Does this... bother you?”

“We don’t mind,” Mercury said. It would have been rude to insult the customs of their curious hostess, and besides—although Kami alone knew what sort of microorganisms might be going on about their lives within a creature like this—she didn’t really think it was possible for the two of them to catch anything while in Senshi form.

“Uh, yeah,” Jupiter agreed. “Although, uh, I drink a lot.” *She didn’t touch anything except the bowl, but the taproot or whatever it is started and stopped at exactly the right time, almost as if she asked... no! Stop it! Plants can’t talk! They can’t!*

Sasanna smiled. “I thought you might; you must, to have grown so well.” While Jupiter tried to figure that out, Sasanna guided them to a stump-like table in the center of the room. As with all the other furniture—‘all’ being a wide, curved bench/couch set into the wall, a divan near one window, and the shelves—the table was a piece of the great tree, quite immobile. A dozen cushions of soft green moss ringed it and made for quite comfortable seats as the three of them settled down. Sasanna took one side of the table; the two Senshi sat on the other.

Sasanna drank briefly from the bowl, then passed it to Mercury. “We call this sweetwater; our trees make it for us.” She looked pointedly at the computer. “Glossolyndaraberonasym tells me that the strange thing in your hand has looked at us many times, and although he does not understand it, he thinks that it is remembering and thinking on what it sees. Is he correct?”

“It’s called a computer,” Mercury replied. “And yes, it does.”

Sasanna nodded. “I do not know how sweetwater will taste to you, or even if it is safe for you to drink at all. Can your... computer?... tell you?”

“It can,” Mercury admitted, raising her computer. “Water and sugar, trace amounts of chlorophyll. No harmful microorganisms. We can drink it, but there’s only one way to tell what it tastes like.” She raised the bowl and took a small drink. It was, as the name suggested, sweet—easily as sugary as any carbonated beverage in Mercury’s experience, just without the bubbles—and with the faintest tang of what tasted like the scent of pine needles. “Not bad.”

Jupiter was looking nervously at the seamlessly smooth walls of the room as she accepted the bowl from Mercury and sipped at its contents. Her attention rather sharply redirected itself to the bowl as the deliciously sweet liquid hit her taste buds; she took a second, much deeper drink, and was grinning widely when she lowered the bowl. “That,” she said, “is good.” As she passed the bowl on, she noticed that it was almost half-empty, and reddened in embarrassment. “Sorry about that.”

Sasanna waved away the apology. “It is fine; there is plenty. Are you also hungry?”

“No,” Jupiter replied. “We ate before we... uh, arrived.”

“Ah.” Sasanna took another drink. “Then we will tell each other our stories. Yours, I think, is more interesting, but I will go first so that you know me enough to tell me your story.”

# 

> #  _SASANNA’S TALE_
> 
> _The tree exists. It does not think, and is only remotely aware of its surroundings. It strives for nothing except rich soil, fresh water, bright sunlight upon its leaves, and room to grow. But as with all things, as a tree grows older, it changes._
> 
> _The world is filled with energy of all kinds. Some is the gentle heat of the sun or the painful heat of deadly fire; some is the energy of the falling rain and the rushing rivers. There is the wind in the leaves, the slow turning of the land; there are many kinds of energy that can be seen at work, and just as many others that cannot. All living things absorb these energies. Some of them, they use to live, while others are merely there._
> 
> _A tree, because it is so very large and lives for such a long time, absorbs much more energy than most other living things. As that energy increases, the tree thrives, grows tall and healthy; if it lives long enough, if it absorbs enough energy, then the tree changes in such a way that it becomes more than just a tree, more than just alive._
> 
> _It becomes aware. It wakes up._
> 
> _As the energy and awareness grow, the tree becomes able to recognize a certain thing about itself: it is both male and female. It has always been so, but for the first time, it KNOWS that it is. And it has also become aware of the fact that the animal creatures around it are somehow different from the vegetative state is has always known. The tree does not know how or why this is, but as its awareness grows, so does its desire to learn. So it divides itself._
> 
> _The body of the tree, which has taken on traits of other plant species thanks to its absorption of their energies, houses the male half of the tree’s awareness. This part gradually discovers that it can extend its awareness into other plants, feeling what they feel but are unable to KNOW that they feel. The aware tree learns, and grows wise from what it learns, slowly discovering how to change itself, adapt its shape._
> 
> _The female half of the tree’s awareness, infused by the energies of many animal creatures, leaves the tree and becomes a dryad, a blend of both plant and animal nature. She remains linked to her tree, unable to move beyond a certain distance without growing weak; if she is too far away for too long, she will die. But within that range, the dryad is free to do as she pleases. She watches the forest and its creatures, and because she is part plant and part animal, she is able to speak with beings of both worlds._
> 
> _Both a dryad and her tree live for a very long time, but their numbers increase only very slowly, for dryads are created, not born. They are all female; without males of their own species, they cannot produce offspring. At the same time, a dryad’s other-self, the male half within the tree, is no longer able to produce seeds; that part of its nature went into the dryad. Only through the long, slow process of growth, age, and energy can a new awareness be born within a tree._
> 
> _So the dryad cares for the forest, for all its children, as if they were her own, the seeds her tree will never again produce, the children she herself will never have. Her other-self provides the food and shelter her more frail body requires, and she in turn tends to his immobile form—for if he dies, she also perishes. They speak to one another, and to the other dryads and waking trees in the region, sharing information, puzzling over strange things they have seen, or simply taking enjoyment in each other’s conversation and company._
> 
> _After a life several times longer than even a tree’s, a dryad’s partly animal body grows tired. Each day it is more difficult for her to muster the energy to awaken, and she begins to show signs of age. At the same time, her tree slowly finds it more difficult to awaken with each new spring and put forth his leaves. Eventually, a spring day will come when neither tree nor dryad awaken again, but choose instead to sink back into the peaceful unawareness from which they began. She fades away, and he goes into a deep, unbroken slumber. The tree may stand for another few centuries before it is overcome by the elements, but it is, once more, just a tree._

# 

“This,” Jupiter asked, briefly forgetting to be nervous as she looked around at the wooden room again, “is you?”

“Yes.” Smiling, Sasanna laid a hand upon the table, a gesture of fond familiarity. “He is part of me, as I am part of him.”

“And you’re how old?”

“We were three hundred and four turns of the seasons old when we became as we are,” Sasanna replied. “That was four hundred and nine turns ago. Tarnara Ferdel Auramyndoralla, the oldest of my sisters to ever live upon this island, was one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two turns of age when she and her other-self, Kardelbanbororootyn, finally entered into the long sleep. They had been awake for all but two hundred and eighty-six of those turns. Kardelbanbororootyn still stands, but he has not spoken in a hundred and nine turns.”

“That’s... incredible,” Mercury said.

Sasanna shrugged. “It is what we are.” She finished off the last of the sweetwater, then rose to refill the drinking-bowl. “So,” she said as she returned, “I have told you my story. Will you now tell me yours?”

“We’ll try,” Jupiter said. “It’s just that... uh...”

“It may be a little difficult for you to understand,” Mercury said. She smiled a slightly crooked smile. “It’s hard enough for _us_ to understand, sometimes.”

“The best stories often are,” Sasanna said.

It took hours to explain. Sasanna was a very patient audience, but finding a way to express things so that she—a magical half-plant entity with only limited knowledge of humans—could understand them proved very difficult. The Moon Kingdom, they described as ‘a forest of people, destroyed by a terrible fire.’ Their attempts to explain the concept of reincarnation degenerated into a round of ‘like this’ and ‘sort of like that’ and ‘if you can picture,’ and they weren’t entirely sure Sasanna understood it any clearer at the end than at the beginning. She seemed absolutely enthralled when they touched on Ail and Ann—as Mercury had thought she might.

Thinking about it, Mercury began to understand why, out of all the planets the galaxy—the universe—must hold, those two had chosen Earth to try and revitalize their dying parent. Abundance of life was one thing, but if the planet had actually given rise to a species similar to their own at some point in its long past, a species that had, like themselves, been partly plant and partly animal, well...

It was well into the afternoon by the time they had finished—more or less—and Mercury concluded her effort to explain time-travel with a jaw-cracking yawn. “I’m sorry,” she apologized sleepily.

“If I understand it correctly, it was night where you were before you came here, yes?” Sasanna smiled. “One of the things we have learned about since separating is the need for sleep—and I think you two are in particular need just now.”

Jupiter giggled. “You can say that again.” Mercury looked at her friend oddly. Something was not quite right about Jupiter’s behavior. She had been jumpy the entire morning, but now she was smiling and chuckling for no apparent reason, and as she got to her feet, she seemed slightly unsteady. Mercury’s gaze fell on the drinking bowl; it was empty, but Sasanna had refilled it a number of times during their conversation. Looking at it, Mercury felt several things fall into place.

“Jupiter,” she began carefully, “how do you feel?”

“How do I feel?” Jupiter smiled vaguely. “Well, now that you mention it, I feel... I feel... I feel good, Mercury. I feel very, very... very, very, VERY, very...” She kept repeating that until she trailed off into giggles.

“You’re drunk,” Mercury said flatly.

“Impossible,” Jupiter snapped, bringing her right hand down on the table with a thump. “I haven’t touched a drop, ever! ’cept for a couple of recipes... and Usagi-chan’s last birthday party”—Mercury remembered _that_ particular incident with a visible wince—“but that’s the only... well, unless you count that egg nog at Christmas. And there was that one date I had with... um... whatshisname... Uredo-kun... but those are the only times! I’m sure!” She hiccupped again, and added, “I’m pretty sure.” She moved off, counting on her fingers and mumbling to herself.

Mercury sighed. She had no idea who ‘Uredo-kun’ was; she doubted that she really wanted to know. “Sasanna, do you have a spare bed around here?”

“Only the one,” the dryad responded, “in the upper chamber, but you may both use that, if you are tired; it is large enough.”

Mercury shook her head. “No. We wouldn’t want to push you out of your own bed.”

For some reason, Sasanna laughed at that. “Come. We will put your tall sister to bed, and you will see what I mean.” That was something Sasanna had decided on after hearing their story; since the Senshi all shared the same origins, the same purpose, then they—like the dryads, who considered each other family even though they were only very seldom related to each other—must be sisters. Mercury didn’t argue with her; it was true enough.

Jupiter was sitting in a window, one leg up on the sill in front of her, arms locked around her knee, and head tilted back, eyes closed. She was humming a wordless and tuneless little ditty with a contented smile as the other two approached.

“Come on, Mako-chan,” Mercury said. “Time for bed.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Jupiter replied, yawning as they got her down from the window. Mercury looped Jupiter’s right arm around her own shoulders; Sasanna took the left, and between them, they started moving her along. “Really, Mercury, I’m fine. Good for hours yet.”

“Uh-huh.”

Moving slowly and with a fair number of pauses and redirections, Mercury and Sasanna managed to guide Jupiter to the set of stairs running along the wall of the chamber and on into the upper level of the great tree. The stairs weren’t quite wide enough for the three of them to walk side-by-side—well, for two of them two walk, and the other to stagger—so Sasanna took the lead, hauling Jupiter forward, while Mercury pushed along after them both.

Halfway up, Jupiter leaned precipitously forward, staggering Sasanna and dragging Mercury off-balance. The look on Jupiter’s face was confused, and her head moved as if trying to more clearly catch a sound that was on the edge of her hearing. “Sasanna, this is a very nice tree you have here, but does it have termites or something?”

“No.” Sasanna sounded a little offended. “He is quite healthy. Why do you ask?”

“I keep hearing this noise. Scratchy, whispery, creaky.” Jupiter kept up her search for another moment before shrugging dismissively. “Must be the wind.”

“Must be,” Mercury agreed. Even though she didn’t hear a thing, Mercury knew from experience that disagreeing with Jupiter when she was drunk could be hazardous to your health.

“Sorry I mentioned termites,” Jupiter added.

The apology seemed to do the trick; Sasanna’s voice had returned to normal. “Thank you.”

They reached the bedroom a few steps later, and Mercury stumbled on the last step. “I see what you meant about the bed.”

This level of Sasanna’s home was as large as the one below, but much of that space was taken up by a bell-shaped alcove in the ‘wall’ opposite the stairs. The alcove filled more than a third of the level, and was itself filled by the bed, a bulge of green larger than two or three king-sized mattresses. There were a dozen or so circular patches of ivy and moss on the alcove’s walls, and a large cluster of some kind of fungus was fixed to the ceiling. The far wall of the mini-chamber had another of the circular windows in it, with small, leafy plants in full bloom clinging to the rim.

Mercury looked to the right of the alcove and saw a bowl-shaped depression in the floor, with a number of the knob-like growths reaching down from the ceiling like wooden stalactites. A small stump stood next to it, and close at hand was another of the knobs, hanging above a curved outgrowth about halfway up the wall. Moss was thick on the walls and floor in that part of the chamber, and there were more of the unexplained discs of fungus on the walls. After a moment of puzzled examination, Mercury smiled. The washroom, obviously.

The area to the left of the alcove connected to a circular doorway, which appeared to lead out into the branches. As with the windows downstairs, vines hung thickly from the frame, forming a flexible screen rather than an actual door. That part of the chamber was otherwise empty.

“As I told you, my sisters and I share everything. We can go several days without sleep, and we usually return directly to our trees after visiting each other, but sometimes—particularly in the winter—one or more of us will be unable to get home for a few days. So we make sure that we have room. Now,” Sasanna added, looking at Jupiter, who had fallen asleep on her feet and was snoring softly, “let us see to your sister.”

# 

Mars looked out of the mouth of the cave she, Uranus, and Neptune had taken shelter in, and sighed. Night had come on quickly, or perhaps it had been well underway when they’d arrived, but this place—this time, she corrected herself—didn’t get any prettier in darkness. The dust and rocks remained dusty and rocky, and the low-hanging clouds were as thick as they had been during the day. She caught only brief glimpses of the stars—not enough to recognize anything—and saw nothing at all of the moon.

*Gone,* she thought bleakly, *just like Usagi.* She sighed and went back inside.

Uranus and Neptune sat on either side of a fire, a fire that was hovering a short distance above the stony surface and burning without fuel. Mars looked at it and focused slightly, and the flame burned a little higher, a little brighter.

Learning she could do something like this had been a bit of a surprise, although now that she thought about it, the ability to call up and sustain a campfire-sized blaze made perfect sense given the other, more spectacular tricks she could pull off with fire. It was tiring, though; the flame might not be burning wood or gas or anything like that, but she was sustaining it on her own force of will, and that was slowly but surely beginning to run down.

Mars turned to the small hollow at one side of the cave and filled her hands from the water within. The cave had been dry as a bone when they found it, but that was no more of a problem for Neptune than sustaining a fuelless fire was for Mars. She drank some of the water in her hands and used the rest to clean the dust from her face. Then she joined the others around the fire.

“Any sign of them?” Neptune asked.

Mars shook her head. “It looks like they didn’t follow us.”

“Smart move on their part,” Uranus said, with a grin that did not mean she was amused.

‘Them’ was a group of eight ragged, rag-wearing, hungry-looking men who had appeared out of the dust and stones as if from nowhere, wielding an assortment of weapons which ranged from moderately advanced to positively primitive; one had been carrying a reasonably rust-free handgun, while the rest made do with wooden or metallic clubs and a variety of sharp things that could only loosely be called knives. From the way they had looked at the three girls and then grinned at each other, Mars was guessing food had not been foremost on their minds.

Very little except running had been on their minds once it was all over. Uranus and Neptune had not been gentle, and Mars, for once, had no disagreements with the older girls’ methods; she’d been the one to deal with the gunman, reducing his weapon to a red-hot puddle of twisted slag in a single gout of fire when he’d started to raise it after seeing four of his compatriots go down. The Senshi hadn’t used their powers at all up to that point, and it pretty much broke the nerve of the men who were still standing. The girls had let them run, left the ones who were unconscious as they lay, and headed off in a different direction, finding the cave along the way.

The problems of immediate safety and shelter solved, they were left with only a few hundred or so more to deal with, not the least of which was that the cave showed signs of occupancy. The blackened patch of stone on the floor and the smoke stains on the ceiling had nothing to do with Mars’s dancing flame, and there was a small stash of assorted items further on, including a medium-sized barrel of water. Not the sort of thing someone would leave behind, given the arid environment outside, so they sat and waited for the owner or owners of the cave to come back, and hoped they hadn’t already met them. They needed to know where they were, _when_ they were, where to find food, what had happened... so many questions.

After a time, they heard voices outside, three or four of them, engaged in conversation.

“...never seems to get any better,” a rough man’s voice said. “In the last three years, I could count the number of times I’ve seen the sun or the moon—clearly, without clouds all over either of ‘em—on one hand.”

“You’d have to,” another man said in a tone that suggested a smile, “considering that you’ve only _got_ the one hand to work with...”

“Mind how you speak to your elders, boy,” the rough voice replied. “Particularly _this_ one, or you’ll find out just how useful this hook of mine actually is when I use it to pick out your... eh? Heads up, lads, there’s someone in the cave.” There was a round of low curses that the Senshi couldn’t hear, and then the rough voice called out, “Who’s in there?”

“Strangers,” Neptune called back. “We don’t mean you any harm, whoever you are; we were looking for a place to spend the night and found this cave by accident.”

“It’s a woman,” a third man muttered. “Where’d a woman come from, all the way out here?”

“Excuse me?” That was a woman’s voice. This couldn’t be the group from before.

“Quiet!” the rough-voiced man snapped. “Right, miss. I’m going to have to ask you and whoever else is in there with you to come out, one at a time, leaving whatever weapons you’ve got behind. Nothing personal, you understand, but these are nervous times.”

“I understand. I’ll come out first.” Neptune glared fiercely at Uranus when she started to object, then nodded intently at the Space Sword; after a moment, Uranus sent it away, but she didn’t look at all happy about doing so. Neptune gave her a slightly nervous smile, then got up and walked—slowly—to the front of the cave. She paused, took a deep breath, and then stepped outside with her hands in the air.

She saw five figures—no, seven; there were two others half-hidden higher up among the rocks on either side of the little cul-de-sac cliff that housed the cave. Both of those appeared to be carrying bows, and the rest were armed with a similar mix of weapons as the earlier group; metal gleamed here and there in the light of the lanterns two of them held, but none of that was part of a gun. Neptune didn’t relax, though. Clubs and knives and arrows might be crude compared to bullets, and they were certainly nothing at all next to what some monsters packed, but they were still dangerous, and Saturn’s healing powers were very far away. Neptune spared herself an instant to worry as she thought about Hotaru, then focused firmly on her own situation.

“Move away from the mouth of the cave,” the rough-voiced leader said. “Slowly. Keep your hands where we can see them.” Neptune did that, stopping a few paces away from the group on the ground. There were two men besides the leader—whose left arm ended in a nasty sort of metal prong instead of a hand—and two women; definitely not the same bunch as earlier, but Neptune still didn’t relax.

“Nice outfit,” the woman on the left murmured. She sounded like the one who’d spoken earlier.

“I sort of like it,” a man replied with a smile. He was the one who’d been surprised to hear a woman’s voice; the two women of the group gave him a flat look.

“_Will_ you two shut up?” the leader demanded. “Okay, girl. I’d like to know where in blazes you came from, but right now, I’ll settle for knowing how many friends you’ve got in there.”

“Only two. Did you want me to call the next one out?”

“You do that. But tell them both to take it slow and easy.”

Neptune nodded and turned back to the cave. “You’re next, Uranus. Come out, but don’t make any sudden moves.” There was a pause in which nothing seemed to happen, and then Uranus appeared in the mouth of the cave. The look she gave the seven men and women was undisguisedly hostile; the look she gave Neptune wasn’t much better.

“And now the other one, miss, if you would.”

“Your turn, Mars. Leave the Book.”

“What’s a book?” That was the younger man, the one who’d teased the leader about his missing hand. He was waved to silence by that ugly prong as the leader strained to hear Mars’s reply.

“I’m going to put the fire out first, if that’s okay with you.”

“Good girl,” Neptune said under her breath before looking at the hook- handed man. “Is that okay with you?”

He nodded. “Have her light a torch, first, so we can see her when she comes out.” Neptune relayed that, and soon Mars had joined her friends. The leader looked them over carefully, a decidedly neutral sort of inspection. “Well,” he said at last, “I’m not sure what to make of you three. Where’d you say you came from?”

“We didn’t say,” Neptune answered. “But if it makes a difference, we walked here from that general direction.” She nodded towards the dark dust plain.

“The badlands? Three of you, alone, dressed like _that?_” The woman who hadn’t spoken until now snorted.

“We don’t get many visitors from _that_ direction,” the leader said calmly. “Most of those who do drop by aren’t exactly what you’d call friendly, or particularly interested in conversation. And clothes aside, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a woman coming out of the badlands in one piece, let alone three women together.”

“You have now,” Uranus said flatly. “I don’t appreciate people who call my friends liars.”

“And I don’t appreciate people who lie,” the leader said in an equally flat tone. He held up his amputated arm. “I lost this fifteen years back, trying to cross that little slice of hell with fifty damned good men and women around me. Twenty-two of ‘em never came back, and the rest of us only made it because we had the good sense to turn around. Six more died anyway, and nobody got out with a scar of some sort. And you three expect me to believe you got through without a scratch? Try again, girls. There are things out there that’d eat the lot of you for lunch without so much as...”

Mars forgot about the man’s words as a warning shot through her mind. She turned her head to look out of the small valley and caught a glimpse of something just beyond the edge of the torchlight and the two lanterns. It was silhouetted against the dull grey of the dust plain, black except for glowing red eyes. Three eyes.

The man with the hook followed her sudden movement and spotted the shape. He shouted a warning at the same moment as a hissing roar erupted from the shape. The creature, whatever it was, leapt forward; the archers fired their arrows at it while the others drew whatever weapons they had.

They were only slightly less surprised than the three-eyed creature about what happened next.

# 

The lizard paced around the base of the tree, sniffing at the roots, at the trunk, and at the air with a persistence Ryo didn’t particularly enjoy seeing. It wasn’t a very large creature, as far as dinosaurs went—three meters at most from its nose to the tip of its tail, half that at the hip at best, and not particularly muscular—but neither was it the only one of its kind he’d seen since he, Pluto, and Saturn had taken refuge up this tree. The creatures blended well with the foliage and were constantly moving around, so it was hard to get an exact count, but Ryo could see no less than seven of them poking around below.

The lizard-pack had shown up not long after Saturn, moving along just at the edge of vision and doing its collective best to stay out of sight; a popped-up head here, a rustle in the bushes there, now and then a short, barking hiss from one member to another. All in all, they looked and acted like the less-vicious cousins of the CGI raptors so popular in late twentieth century media, minus the sickle-claws on their hind legs. Ryo had been trying very hard to shake that idea, but with little success.

More than the fact that there was an unknown number of large reptiles following them, those brief, weird calls worried Ryo. They were never quite the same, and listening to the creatures now, he could hear clicking noises and more barking sounds, going back and forth from one reptile to the next. The idea of being hunted wasn’t very appealing, but it was preferable to the idea of being hunted by creatures intelligent enough to communicate with each other.

That seemed to be what was happening, though. Shortly after the humans had gone up the tree—Saturn and Pluto easily carrying Ryo in a vertical jump equivalent to clearing a two-story building—a dozen or so of the lizards had appeared, looked at the tree, and started clicking at each other. Then the largest of them had moved forward, sniffing cautiously as it did so, made a complete circuit of the tree, and looked up at the three figures in the branches before barking back at the others. The leader’s gaze had been far too knowing, and the reaction of the rest of its pack to that one call had been to spread out and surround the tree on all sides.

Ryo shook his head. “Are you sure this is going to work, Pluto?”

“Not entirely sure, no.” She was sitting at ease on a branch thicker around than a lot of trees Ryo had seen back in Tokyo. He himself was sitting at the base of that branch, his back to the massive trunk; Saturn was to his right, sitting cross-legged at a V-shaped joint between two smaller branches, with the Silence Glaive resting across her knees and her eyes on the lizards.

“It may not work at all,” Pluto went on. “But given our current circumstances, what do we have to lose by trying?”

“Did you want a complete list?” Ryo grunted as Saturn poked him in the ribs with the butt-end of her weapon. “Okay, okay.” He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then fixed his eyes on the orb atop Pluto’s staff, and concentrated.

The irony was more than a little painful, but for someone suffering from amnesia, Pluto had an excellent memory. Furthermore, she had kept her eyes and ears open over the past month, absorbing every scrap of information she could find as she continued to try and rebuild something of what she had lost. Now, some of what she could remember had given her an idea.

The planet Saturn, according to Luna, was a shifting nexus of different dimensions, and it had once been used to travel across great distances in space. A study of its properties had led to the development of the Time Gate. A previous Senshi of Saturn had chased daimons into their own dimension; even if Hotaru had never done it, _Saturn_ could travel across space. And with her staff and the Garnet Orb, Pluto could manipulate time. Between them, the two Senshi just might be able to fashion a way to move through space AND time.

They had no idea where in space and time their friends were, no idea where and when they had to go to find everyone. But they did have Ryo. The Garnet Orb was supposed to give Pluto greater control over and range with her power; it _had_ allowed her to raise a shield of super-slowed air without even thinking. The orb’s powers, whatever they were, related to time; Ryo’s visions had been enhanced in the misty moment of the Time Gate, a place where Pluto was—supposedly—all but invincible. If the orb improved Pluto’s focus, might it not do the same for Ryo?

It was certainly doing _something,_ its pulsing, almost blood-red glow getting steadily stronger as Ryo looked at it. Looking into the orb, Pluto could see images taking shape. As the glow became brighter, the images grew more distinct:

Ami and Makoto, first, talking with an odd-appearing but lovely girl, in a house that appeared to be entirely made of wood. Both Senshi wore sleeveless dresses that were modified from the white one the stranger wore, Makoto’s in emerald green, Ami’s in a brilliant blue...

They saw Usagi next, riding awkwardly on a horse at night, across a land that was all moonlit sand and low, tough scrub. Artemis was perched in front of her on the horse’s shoulders, and a beautiful dark-haired girl none of them recognized sat behind Usagi. A dark-skinned young man in strange clothes led the horse...

Then ChibiUsa, wearing a white gown Pluto and Ryo had never seen before—but which Saturn recognized in a flicker of memory that was partly Hotaru’s and partly someone else’s—and Venus, both of them surrounded by... Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn? And a tall and handsome man in something that looked a little bit like a tuxedo—a silver one, trimmed with gold—and a woman just as tall as the man, exceptionally beautiful, with a very, very familiar hairstyle. None of them looked particularly happy...

And lastly Mars, Uranus, and Neptune. Wherever and whenever they were, it was dusty and drab, a landscape of faded browns and greys. Mars had the Book tucked under one arm, and the mysterious tome was still unopened as the three Senshi walked into a camp of some sort, with people staring at them openly from all sides...

The images faded, and Ryo blinked, signaling the end of the vision.

“You okay?” Saturn asked.

“I’m fine.” He blinked again and added wonderingly, “I _am_ fine. That didn’t hurt at all.” Then he laughed. “And it worked, too, the first time and without a hitch.”

“I didn’t see Luna,” Pluto said.

“I know,” Ryo admitted, “and that worries me a little. But... I get a sense of people when I see them, something that isn’t just visual recognition. A feeling, in here.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s all jumbled together, but I’m sure Luna _was_ in one of those visions. I can’t tell which, though.”

“As long as we know she’s all right.” Saturn looked at Pluto. “So what now?”

“We go after them, if you’re ready. Are you?”

Saturn got to her feet, nodding. “I... think so.” She couldn’t quite keep the uncertainty out of her words as she and Pluto stood side-by-side on the large branch. Pluto noticed.

“I’ll be right here, Firefly.”

“I know. Thanks.” Saturn wasn’t quite sure whether she took Pluto’s hand or Pluto took hers, but she was grateful for that reminder that at least one friend was with her. This was not going to be fun.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and turned her senses inwards, seeking the sealed-off mental corner where she kept her power. It was easy enough to find, and once she had, Saturn took a long look at it; she could not actually see anything, but her mind’s eye created the image of a cage of gleaming silver bars, within which floated a dark mist, a violet-glowing black mass of slowly shifting energy. When she had let it loose earlier, the power had been dispersed throughout her entire being, a second skin curling almost protectively around her, cloaking her in raw, dark force; when she had shoved it back into its cage, the power had formed smoky claws and hooked tentacles and snatched at the bars, rattled them fiercely while something at its heart snarled in frustration at being bound again. It had calmed down now, but with most of her power concentrated and sealed away as it was, Saturn thought it looked darker. More dangerous.

She hesitated as it became aware of her, a ripple passing through the cloud as short streamers drifted between the bars before being pulled back. The power itself wasn’t conscious or alive—it just _was_—but sometimes she thought that if it had been either, it wouldn’t be too impressed with her. Saturn took another steadying breath, slid aside the locked barriers of will she had placed around her power, and let it out.

It poured free, through the mental image of the open cage door, through the bars of that cage, out above the top and down through the floor. The silver cage vanished in a swirling flood of energy; Saturn let it wash over her, let it fill every part of her. Her skin froze, her blood boiled, and her bones crackled with force. If she opened her eyes now, they would be blazing with dark light; if she spoke, her words would echo with barely restrained power. She knew immediately that, if she chose, she could lay waste to everything in sight, carve out a massive swathe of obliteration a mile or more across. And this wasn’t even half of her full strength. This wasn’t even close to half.

But it was enough. With the power came vague, half-formed memories of another time, another place, another person. Saturn didn’t know for certain how her friends perceived their past lives, but when she looked into hers, she seldom saw very much. Oh, the memories were there, and if she didn’t try to force it, the information she needed from them at any given moment would ride forward on a wave of dark force. But they always went back the same way, pushed into that little corner alongside her power. Remembering without the power was difficult at best. All she really knew for certain about her past life was that her name—possibly a real name, possibly an adopted pseudonym—had been Pandora, and she had been one of the few active Senshi of Saturn. The last, until Tomoe Hotaru. And she had known how to use her powers.

Acting more on instinct than conscious thought, Saturn raised the Silence Glaive above her head; to her left, Pluto did the same with her staff. The hooked silver blade of the Glaive began to radiate waves of dark, violet energy, and as those waves washed over Pluto, the Garnet Orb came to life in a flare of bloody light. Wind began to swirl around them, and bolts of energy curved out wildly, forming a sphere that was partly swirling lines of red, partly jagged slashes of violet. It was still the middle of the day, the sun bright overhead, but it was suddenly very dark around that single tree. Ryo shielded his eyes, and the lizards screamed.

And just like that, the light and the three humans were gone, taking the energy and most of the tree with them. The lizards fled into the jungle.

All but the leader. It looked at the shorn-off trunk of the mighty tree, the smoking holes that had been gouged into the ground by errant bolts of force. Moving carefully around those small, black-hot pits, the creature reached what had, until only seconds before, been the end of the branch on which the humans had been standing. It still looked like wood, but it was black as night, at once shiny and dark under the sun. The lizard picked up the leafless black branch in its forearms; it did not feel quite like wood. One end came to a flat tip, the point where the outer edge of the sphere of force had cut the stick free from its parent. The other end divided into three irregular and unequal prongs, one smooth-sided and going to a point, the next short and blunted, and the last a twisty, gnarled twig.

The pack-leader looked at the strange thing for a long time, so intent on the object that it failed to notice the approach of a hungry predator a good ten times its own size until the beast was right on top of it. Then it was too late to do anything except scream.

The hunting carnosaur drew back with a snort as the triple-pointed head of the black stick flew up towards it. The smaller reptile stared at it, then glanced at the object in its claws; if it had lips, they would have curved into a smile. Instead, the man-sized creature opened its jaws wide and let out an echoing call of triumph, thrusting the twisted branch skywards. The blackened wood appeared to flash.

The big predator watched for a moment. Then, for the second time that day, it turned away from what should have been an easy meal and lumbered off in search of something else. If it had been intelligent enough to be suspicious, the dinosaur would have begun to think this was one of those days when it just couldn’t win. When it came upon the steaming, half-eaten carcasses of a pair of unlucky sauropods—brought down an hour or so earlier by three of its smaller relatives, who had eaten their fill and now moved on—the hungry beast chased off the lesser scavengers that had begun to cluster around and licked its chops. The day was looking up.

Behind it, the stick-bearing reptile had already vanished into the trees.

# 

Venus sat in a small, well-appointed room that had no windows, no telephone, no television, and only one door, which was locked about nine different ways _and_ had a pair of rather cute guards on the other side. At least, she thought they were cute; she’d been shoved into this room so fast that she’d only been able to catch a quick glance at the two. Maybe, as the old saying went, there really was something about a man in a uniform...

Oh well. If she was under arrest, she could have done a lot worse; aside from the lack of much of anything to do, this was a very nice little chamber. Nothing at all like those gloomy, drafty tower chambers described in most medieval-setting stories; certainly a far cry better than police holding cells in her own time, at least if the TV shows had the details right. And it wasn’t the Black Hole of Calculator, by any means. Or was it Car-Cutter? Cow-Cudda? Something like that.

*It could be a lot worse,* she told herself. *At least I know who the judge and jury are likely to be.*

She wondered where ChibiUsa had gotten to. They’d been sneaking around through every side passage and secondary staircase in this place when they’d almost literally bumped into Jupiter, who had taken one look at them and gotten a very strange expression on her face. Things had happened _very_ fast after that, and the last Venus had seen of her pink-haired companion, they were hustling the girl off in one direction under heavy guard. Venus herself had been going in the other direction at the time, blindfolded and surrounded by guards who were under strict orders not to say a word to her for any reason whatsoever, and she’d been turned around so many times that she no longer had any clue as to where she might be.

Venus yawned, then shrugged and lay down on the bed. It had been a long day at home, and a few hours here hadn’t made her any less tired. Might as well get some sleep while she had the chance; ChibiUsa could handle the rest of it. It _was_ her home, after all.

She was about halfway to sleep when the door slid open and Jupiter stepped into the room, still wearing that peculiar look. Venus returned a look of her own, a wordless, one eyebrow raised ‘well?’ she and Mako-chan had been using on each other for years. Jupiter responded with the ‘well what?’ face, the same eyebrow raised at a slightly different angle, then held out the blindfold again.

“I believe a last cigarette is traditional,” Venus said, taking the cloth.

“You. Don’t. Smoke.” Jupiter clamped her jaw shut.

Venus grinned. “Are you speaking past tense, or current?”

“Just put the blindfold on, Venus. This mess is going to be hard enough to untangle as it is without you seeing anything _else_ you’re not supposed to.”

“Okay.” Venus slipped the blindfold over her eyes, made sure it was tight, and kept her eyes shut for good measure. “Just understand that if I knock any priceless artifacts over, it’s your fault.” She tugged the blindfold one more time, then nodded. “Right. Take me to your leader.”

# 

Sitting on the rim of the alcove, Sasanna looked at the two figures sleeping in her bed. *How very strange they are,* she thought. *So very much like us, and yet so very much unlike us.*

She looked at Mer... no, her name was Ami when she was like this. It had been beyond odd to watch the reversal of their transformation, to see them turn from one thing to another so quickly and easily. Sasanna thought they both looked different like this. Younger, that was it. They looked younger.

She looked across the alcove at Ami, who wore a faded green gown from one of the moss-lined holding chambers surrounding the bed. Sasanna was not entirely clear on the details behind human sleeping customs, but she had been happy to help as she could. The girl was curled around one of the moss-stuffed pillows, clutching at it in fact, and murmuring words the dryad could not quite hear. One came through very clearly—Ryo something—in a tone that was equally longing and frightened.

*Poor little sapling,* Sasanna thought. *So far from the soil that she knows, alone in her mind.* The dryad made a motion with one hand, and a vine reached up from the substance of the mattress, its tip glowing dully as it touched Ami’s forehead. The murmurs faded, the tension left her. *Sleep, my wise young friend. Forget dreams for a time and sleep in peace.*

The vine ceased to glow and withdrew as Sasanna turned to Makoto, who lay within arm’s reach on the huge mattress. Moonlight streaming through the window passed through the leaves of her plants, and the resulting light lent a faintly green cast to Makoto’s face. Sasanna and Ami had managed to get the girl into another spare gown; between that and the light, and with her hair unbound, covering her ears, she looked very much like a sleeping dryad.

Sasanna hesitated, then extended one hand, gently touching the tips of her fingers to Makoto’s forehead. She had to know. The dryad closed her eyes and pushed delicately forward with her mind.

*Can you hear me, Makoto? Can you hear us?*

Makoto shifted in her sleep. Sasanna caught blurred images of things she did not fully understand, things she guessed to be part of the strange world- yet-to-be from which her guests originated. Her mind could not hold the more bizarre images, but she saw faces, faces for which Makoto felt many things. Different for each, but for all there was a sense of devotion, trust, friendship. And the dryad saw images of plants, heard echoes in Makoto’s awareness that had originated from those plants.

*Yes,* Sasanna said to herself. *The plants of her time reach out to her, even if she is not aware of it. They hear her, call to her, as do we. But why does she not answer?*

Sasanna pushed deeper, and then paused, startled, as her mind encountered something vast and powerful, a force that sizzled in her consciousness like fire and was filled with the low rumble of distant thunder. Immense energy filled Makoto’s body and mind, more than the dryad had ever encountered in any one creature before, more than even her own dear other-self had taken in over the turns of their life. She froze, afraid that if she tried to push past, she might trigger some defense.

The sense of the building storm passed. Either it had not detected her presence, or it knew she was there, and just did not see her as a threat. Breathing a sigh of relief, Sasanna continued on. The sense of Makoto’s presence was all around her, now, blending together every side of her existence in a ceaselessly shifting jumble. Strength and gentleness, fierce devotion and stubborn will—oh, she had spirit, this one! She had... shame? Why was she ashamed of... her height? Her body? What was this?

*No, what was THAT?* Sasanna broke off in search of a brief flicker of something that did not feel right. There it was. Hidden behind bright smiles and gruff toughness... loneliness? And it led to something else, something buried very deeply. Sasanna followed the trail down into Makoto’s mind, down towards the source of everything. It was close now, it was...

A scream erupted in Sasanna’s mind, paralyzing thought, shattering will. Loss/pain/grief/rage, it all tore through the gentle dryad’s defenses in a wave. Overwhelmed, Sasanna’s awareness grabbed desperately at her only lifeline, the eternally present sense of her other-self, Glossolyndaraberonasym. Her mind seized the bond between dryad and tree and held on for everything she was worth as it pulled her back to her own body.

The rejoining between mind and body was not gentle; Sasanna shook and fell backwards with a barely-stifled sob as her body registered what her awareness had encountered.

*Are you whole, little sister-self?*

*Glossolyndaraberonasym? Is that... you?*

*Who else would it be?* The mind-voice of the mighty old tree held a touch of amusement.

*Where are the others?*

*Our brothers have decided to break off contact for now,* he said gently. *When we realized what was happening to you, they knew they must shield their own sister-selves as best they could. They asked me to convey their apologies for asking this of you.*

*We had to know,* Sasanna replied.

*And do we?*

*We do.* Sasanna shivered. *Oh, brother-self, I haven’t felt so much pain since the last time one of our sisters lost her tree. She seems as strong as the tallest tree on the surface, but inside, she feels like a sapling whose roots have been torn out. How can she stand feeling like that? How can...*

*Sasanna! Stop it! You’re hurting yourself!*

Sasanna felt a sharp pain in her right hand and realized she was biting it to keep from screaming. The physical pain stabilized her against the remembered pain; she focused on the marks on the back of her hand, on the dull throb as reddish-clear liquid spread and oozed to a slow stop, and felt herself calming down, regaining control.

*Are you all right?*

*I am, brother-self.* She smiled ruefully. *My hand hurts, though.*

Glossolyndaraberonasym chose not to answer that. *What did you learn?*

*Makoto has the potential to speak to us, brother-self; she remembers doing so when she was a sapl... a child. She spoke to plants and heard them speak to her when she was younger, but she has since convinced herself that it was her imagination. She does not hear us or speak to us because she does not want to.*

The tree hesitated briefly, then asked the question. *Why?*

Sasanna showed him the memory that had been at the heart of the maelstrom.

Plants do not have parents in the sense that most animals do. Seeds are cast off to fall where they may, and if they take root close to home, the parent competes as fiercely with its offspring for food and water and sunlight as it does against any other plant. The concept of a ‘family’ is therefore meaningless in the botanical world, except as a scientific term for classifying different species.

Dryads and their trees, on the other hand, have a sense of family. There is no real equivalent in human existence for the bond between a dryad and her tree, but they also share emotional ties to other dryads and other trees, ties of trust, respect, and affection. Their shared origin makes them family even if their ancestry is wholly separate, hence the use of the term ‘sister’ towards other dryads, and ‘brother’ towards the waking trees.

A great, rustling sigh rattled through Glossolyndaraberonasym’s branches as he absorbed the information Sasanna had gained. *So,* he said at last. *Her family was taken from her. It is very sad, Sasanna, but it does not explain why she has blocked us out.*

*There was a strong association in Makoto’s mind between plants and her mother, brother-self. I think her mother cared for flowers in some fashion; the child remembers speaking to many of them, but many of the times that she did so were in her mother’s presence. It was a game to both of them.*

*And when her mother died... yes, I understand now.* The tree considered the situation with a slow, patient intellect honed by centuries of life and learning. *You were in her mind, sister-self, so you must tell me; can she be made to hear us again?*

*Perhaps,* Sasanna admitted. *I like her, brother-self. I don’t want to hurt her, but anything we try _will_ hurt her. Can’t we just let it go?*

*You know better than that,* Glossolyndaraberonasym chided her. *Neither of them knew what you were when you met; this tells us that our kind is either very scarce or completely lost in their world-yet-to-be. Neither is acceptable; our promises cannot be kept if none remain to remember those promises. This girl may be our only chance.*

*I know.* Sasanna sighed. *I will speak to her tomorrow.*

*Speak with both of them,* Glossolyndaraberonasym advised. *It is easier to face fear when you are not alone, and even if we cannot hear her thoughts, this girl Ami seems to have a worthy enough mind. For an animal creature. If she can be made to understand, she will know better than you how to convince Makoto.*

Sasanna hid a mind-smile. The brothers were always a little smug about the fact that they had the deep-rooted wisdom of centuries to draw upon, experience no animal creature lived long enough to obtain. Glossolyndaraberonasym’s assessment of Ami’s intellect was high praise indeed; even most dryads were considered a little ‘silly’ by their trees. Of course, a lot of dryads considered their brothers to be stuffy, intractable, overbearing... ah, the things we put up with out of love.

*I heard that.*

Sasanna did something that was the mental equivalent of sticking out her tongue, then got up and dusted herself off. She looked back into the alcove-bed, and gently patted Makoto’s nearest shoulder.

“Sleep well, almost-sister. I think tomorrow will not be easy. For either of us.”

Then she went back downstairs.

# 

The council of elders listened quietly as Beradi made his report. When the one-handed man had finished, the six men and three women sitting before him in a semicircle looked at each other.

“Beradi,” one of the men said carefully, “you’re the best fighter, hunter, and tracker in the tribe. There isn’t a person in this camp who doesn’t owe you their life or the life of someone they care about, one way or another.” He was a skin-and-bones skeleton of a man, utterly bald and with dark brown eyes.

“But you think I’ve been out in the sun too long, right, Haran? Just come out and say it, man; you can’t hurt my feelings by being honest. I saw it with my own eyes, and _I’m_ still having trouble believing it, but that three-eyed body we brought back is as solid as proof gets.”

“Is it at all possible that it was a trick of some sort?” Another man, older than Haran—or made to look so by the whisps of his grey hair and beard— and missing his left leg below the knee, he still looked tougher than anyone there except Beradi. A worn wooden crutch lay next to him. “We’ve both seen the badlands, Beradi; you know as well as I do that anything’s possible out there.”

“I do, Kado. I do. I remember the thing that took your leg, and the one that took my hand; what they did, how they moved. The beast was definitely one of those. But these three girls?” Beradi shook his head. “I’m not sure how to explain it, Kado, but trying to picture them as being something out of the badlands... it just doesn’t sit right.”

“Perhaps they are not from the badlands,” one of the women said, a lined faced not hiding the faded traces of youthful beauty, “but they are still dangerous, yes?”

“No question about that, Ari.” Beradi tapped his hook with his good hand. “The thing that cost me my hand took down two men and had a belly full of blades before it finally died; the one that got Kado didn’t go down until it had a forest of arrows in its back and a knife through its ears. Usually takes at least a half-dozen well-armed and experienced fighters to kill just one of those monsters, and odds are you’ll lose two or even three of your people—or bits of ’em—in the bargain. Those three girls took that critter out as easy as if it was a rat they were slinging stones at, without getting a scratch in return. And _how_ they did it...” Beradi shook his head.

“Dangerous people bring trouble we don’t need,” Ari said. “Should we try to drive them out? Or will they go if we ask?”

“They might leave, Ari, and they might not. As for driving them out...” Beradi shook his head again, more firmly than before. “With the way they move, even if we had a working gun in the camp, I don’t think it’d be enough to stop one of them, let alone all three. But more than that, if it comes down to asking them to leave, I’m honestly not sure I’ll be able to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“They said they were strangers, and lost. Tough as they are, they wouldn’t last too long out there without some place to find food and water. I just couldn’t do it.”

“It has never been the custom of this tribe to send people who have done us no harm away to die,” one of the men agreed softly.

“The tribe has never encountered people who can throw fire from their hands or call a sword out of thin air before, either.”

“What are their names, Beradi?” The soft voice belonged to the oldest of the elders, a woman just as skinny as Haran and almost as bald. Her skin was as wrinkled as a raisin, spotted with grey and brown, and her eyes, once blue, were covered by white film. “Their names, boy; answer me.”

Beradi’s mouth twitched—this was the only person in the camp who could call him ‘boy’ and mean it, let alone get away with it—but he answered respectfully. “I don’t think the names they gave me were their real names, Naruno, but they call themselves Mars, Uranus, and Neptune.”

The old woman’s indrawn breath rattled through her six remaining teeth with a hiss. “Bring them, Beradi. Bring them here now.”

# 

“Do you need anything? Food, water?” The young man glanced at Neptune’s skirt and added, “There are spare blankets, if you’re cold.”

“No, I’m fine. We’re fine. Thank you. I just wanted to see if the stars or the moon had come out.” Neptune sighed and let the tent flap fall.

“Problem?” Uranus asked from where she sat, on a plain, worn-looking rug on a floor that was otherwise all sand. The small fire burning at the center of the little shelter reflected off her sword as she tried to polish out a greenish-black stain on the blade.

“No. Not really. I just wish they’d stop trying to wait on us hand and foot every time we so much as glance outside.”

“This from the girl who grew up in a household full of servants.”

“We had two maids, a butler, and a man who tended the yard; I hardly think that constitutes a ‘household full of servants.’ And I did my own chores, thank you very much.”

“Mmmm. What about you?” Uranus asked, turning to Mars. “Any thoughts on the whole ‘waited-on hand-and-foot’ business?”

“I prefer to carry my own weight,” Mars said absently. “Grandpa insisted on it when I went to live with him, and I’m used to it by now.” Mars sat cross- legged on one of the three small cots that filled most of the tent, staring down at the Book in her lap while lightly tracing the symbols on the cover with her fingers. She looked up at the sounds of gravel crunching under booted footsteps outside.

“Beradi,” one of the two young men on guard said respectfully. Neptune thought it was the one she’d spoken to a moment before. “Have the elders reached a decision?”

“Not yet, Rama. Not yet. They want to meet our guests in person.”

“Is it really necessary, Beradi? I don’t mean to tell the elders their business, but it’s getting very late, and we have no way of knowing how far these three have come to reach us.”

“It’s necessary, Rama. Don’t worry; they’re tougher than they look.”

“The elders or our guests?” the other guard asked. Beradi just chuckled and pulled aside the tent flap.

“Ladies, the elders will see you now.” He glanced at Uranus and Rei. “You can bring the book if you want, but the sword has to stay here.”

Uranus smiled at him and sent the Space Sword back into its pocket dimension before she stood up. Beradi’s expression shifted a little when the golden weapon vanished into nowhere, but he said nothing as they exited the tent.

The young guard—Rama—shrugged off his cloak and offered it to Neptune. “It’s a long walk to the elders’ tent,” he explained, “and it’s chilly tonight.”

Neptune resisted the urge to sigh. She could tolerate the chill at the bottom of the sea for hours; a little walk in cold wind wasn’t going to affect her. But, she reminded herself, he was just being polite. She accepted the heavy cloak with a gracious “Thank you,” and held it closed as they walked off. Her look clearly dared the others to make a comment.

Uranus fought down a snicker, and Mars rolled her eyes. Beradi just kept walking.

# 

Mars had always thought her grandfather was the oldest man she’d ever seen. She wasn’t sure how old; even in her earliest memories, he was the same crazy, leathery, more-than-slightly perverse old fool waiting for her back at Hikawa now. Maybe Grandpa was the oldest _man_ she’d ever seen, but Mars suspected the title of oldest _human_ would have to go to Naruno. She had to fight an urge to kneel when she and the others were introduced; her sixth sense worked as well on ‘ordinary’ humans as it did on Senshi or monsters, and the wrinkled, withered old body before her radiated a powerful aura. That strength of spirit must have faded with time, as her body weakened from age, but if so, Mars could scarcely imagine what the woman must have been like in her youth.

Respect wasn’t the only thing she felt, though. There was another disturbing quality about Naruno that Mars couldn’t put her finger on. Not a bad thing, by any means, but... it was right on the edge of her mind, but Mars just couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Mars, Uranus, and Neptune,” the old woman lisped. “Old names, those. Old back before the fall of the great cities, even back before the building of the cities, if the stories I remember are true. Names of gods, a long time forgotten, given to stars by those who came later.”

“Not stars,” Neptune corrected. “Planets.”

“Ah, planets, is it?” Naruno seemed pleased for some reason. “There were... how many? Six, seven?”

“Nine, counting Earth.”

“Yes, nine. And the moons. Mustn’t forget the moons. Too many to remember conveniently, but they’re still there.” She chuckled, a wheezy, rattling noise. “Mars; an old god of war, of fire and destruction. Beradi says one of you used fire on the beast you killed. Uranus; an old god of the wind, of the sky and the endless heavens beyond. Beradi mentioned a sword, too, howling like the cold wind in winter. Neptune; an old god of the water, of the deep sea. Beradi didn’t mention water.”

“Is there a point to this?” Uranus demanded.

Rather disconcertingly, Naruno looked straight at her. “Always is, girl. Always is. You know how old I am? Care to guess? No? I’ll tell you; a hundred and thirty-six, plus a few moons. My old gran had that beat by two years when we buried her; I was ten at the time. Gran was twenty-two when she buried _her_ gran, and always said the old woman was past a hundred and fifty. Shouldn’t be possible, these days, to live so long.” Her voice fell. “Not always a good thing to, either; see too much, hear too much, hurt too much. I won’t mind when my time’s up.”

Naruno shook her head and went on. “There was a story my old mama and gran used to tell me. They said they got it from gran’s gran, who said she got it from her mama way back when, before the cities fell. Interesting story. Probably not much like the way gran’s gran heard it anymore, but still interesting. Not a lot like the other stories we have of the cities, either; told it to my kids, but they didn’t tell it to their kids, and wouldn’t let me tell it, either. Said it was silly nonsense, the cities were never like that.” She barked a laugh. “But since none of us have ever lived in a city, who’s to say these days what was and what wasn’t, eh?”

“Well, according to gran’s gran’s mama, there was a city called ‘Toko’ or ’Tuko’ or some such. Big. Lots of people. Creatures, too, supposedly, a lot like the ones we’ve got now, but smart. Organized. Always causing problems, hurting people for reasons nobody ever quite knew. Story goes that there were people— women—getting in their way all the time. They had names like the planets, too, could do strange things people aren’t supposed to be able to do. They and the monsters were around for a while; gran had lots of stories about them. Then one day they were gone, just like that. Nobody saw the women again, and the monsters stayed away for a long time, until after the cities crumbled.”

“Thing is,” Naruno added, “and this is something mama and gran swore has been kept the same for as long as the family’s had this story, that before the women left, one of ’em told a very old, very close friend they’d be back. Supposedly, the ‘friend’ was the mama of gran’s gran. A lot of stories end like that, heroes going off and promising to come back, but most storytellers got better sense’n to try to claim one of the people in the story is an old family member. But there it is.”

“What were the names?” Mars asked quietly. *It can’t be. What are the odds that... there’s just no way!* But looking at this ancient woman, Mars had a terrible suspicion that it could be, and was. She took a very firm grip on the Book. She didn’t want to drop it.

“Well, the woman in question was supposed to be the leader; Moon, she called herself. I always thought that was odd, with the rest of ’em named for planets, but gran and mama said that was the way it was. Her other name, though, the one her friend knew her by until she went away at the very end, was Usagi. The name of gran’s gran’s mama, now, that sort of got handed down over the years; easier to remember since we were all named for her. Changed a bit each time, but originally, it was...”

“Naru,” Mars said. “Osaka Naru.” She closed her eyes, covered her face with one hand, and shook her head.

Naruno’s unseeing eyes blinked. “It was. Well, damn. So I was right, was I? Imagine that. Guess old gran knew what she was talking about after all.”

Uranus and Neptune looked at each other, and at Mars. Then Uranus frowned. “Naru? Wait, you mean that skinny redhead who always gets stuck in the middle of at least three attacks every six months? The one who’s dating that guy with the oversized novelty glasses?” Some of the elders looked up at that, clearly startled and more than a little suspicious about Uranus’ use of the present tense with regards to a woman dead for almost four centuries.

“Not now, Haruka,” Neptune whispered. “Mars,” she went on, still keeping her voice down, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” *At least that explains what was bugging me; she looked familiar.* “Naru was... _is_ the odango-atama’s friend, not mine.” *The mother of the grandmother of the grandmother of a woman who’s over a hundred and thirty?* “I’m starting to understand what Usagi must have gone through when she found out ChibiUsa was her daughter.”

“Just a bit strange?” Uranus said.

“‘Strange’ doesn’t even start to describe it.” Mars shook her head and looked at her friends. “You do realize where we are, don’t you?” It was an utterly ridiculous question, but under the circumstances, it was the best she could come up with.

“Oh yeah,” Uranus replied with a twisted smile. She raised her left hand, fingers forward, until it was just below the level of her eyes and said, “Up to here. So. You’re the one people go to for answers; Neptune’s the brain. What do we do now?”

Neptune and Mars exchanged a look. “We talk very, very fast,” Neptune said.

“And pray very, very hard,” Mars finished.

# 

Princesses are not supposed to chew their nails, but the temptation to do so was particularly strong in ChibiUsa at the moment. She kept her hands clasped behind her back and hoped she wasn’t cutting off the circulation to her fingers by squeezing them too tightly.

She was in her quarters, looking out over the city from the balcony and wondering whether or not she was going to see the whole city suddenly flicker and vanish. With Venus here, in the future, and the rest of the Senshi scattered who knew where in space and time, it was a very real possibility.

“If you’re waiting to see the fabric of the universe unwind,” a voice said, “I think you’re in for a bit of a disappointment.”

ChibiUsa gulped, turned, and gave her best curtsey. “Your Majesty.”

“Nice try, dear, but it’s a little late to start earning brownie points with formality. Now stand up straight.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“That’s better. And stop pouting,” the queen added.

ChibiUsa looked up. Jupiter had told her that Serenity was hearing appeals in the royal court when she and Venus dropped in, and that meant formal attire; formal crown, robes of state, scepter, everything. The Princess had been expecting an equally formal audience, hence her choice to change into her best gown. But her mother must have literally flown out of her things, because she was only wearing one of her white gowns. She’d even discarded the lighter circlet she usually wore in place of the heavy crown. That could be good news, or bad news.

“Before you say anything else,” Serenity ordered, “the key.”

“Yes, Mother.” ChibiUsa drew the crystal key out from the neck of her gown, slipped the chain off over her head, and meekly handed it over. “I suppose this means I won’t be going back...?”

“Let’s review, shall we?” The queen started ticking items off on her fingers. “You went back in time. You endangered the course of our history by bringing your friends to the Time Gate. They’ve been scattered up and down the length of Time, doing who knows what kind of damage, and at a point when there is no Guardian to prevent or correct their mistakes. _And_ you brought Venus with you, someone who has events in her life that haven’t yet taken place, but which _must_ take place if our history is to remain intact.” She looked up from her hand to her daughter. “Did I leave anything out?”

“I... um... I sort of told Hotaru-chan... a few things. Not about herself,” ChibiUsa added hastily, as a flinty quality entered her mother’s eyes. “Just about me, what it’s like being a princess, what I have to do. And a little of what the other Senshi are like. But that was it. And what are you going to do about it?” ChibiUsa snapped. “You were there, Mother; you and all the rest went right along with my suggestion! You can’t punish me now for what you agreed to then!”

“Can’t I?” ChibiUsa felt her stomach turn to ice at those words. “Where the laws of Time are concerned, dear, the term ‘retroactive’ takes on a whole new meaning. And not even a queen is above the law. I could probably plead ignorance of the facts and mental imbalance due to my condition at the time; you, on the other hand, were in perfectly normal health, and knew _exactly_ what you were getting into.” Serenity maintained the stern mask for another moment, then relaxed. “Fortunately for you, Saturn knew enough to keep her mouth shut. Everything else was supposed to happen.”

“WHAT?! You...!” ChibiUsa spun around for a second to compose herself. When she turned back, she said, “I’m not in trouble?”

“No. We know exactly where each of the Senshi were sent, what they did there, and what effect it all had. If you look at it in a certain light, your little ‘mistake’ saved our future.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“It has to do with the changes Pluto made to the timeline,” Serenity explained. “The things the Senshi have done in those past locations were the last things that _had_ to be done to ensure that _this_ Crystal Tokyo is the definite future.”

ChibiUsa was stunned. “But... in the past, there are monsters popping up all over the place, Setsuna’s lost her memory, someone’s bringing daimons back...”

“I know. I remember. And it brings us to a choice you have to make, Usagi.”

“A choice?”

“Yes. Pluto and Saturn found a way to combine their powers and travel through time in order to retrieve the other Senshi; putting it simply, Saturn provides the power, and Pluto navigates. Ryo was with them, and they were all in the most distant past, so he was able to look ahead of the time he was in and see where and when we all were. They’re coming here first, and...”

“Here? Why? This is the safest place in the world! Shouldn’t they be finding the rest of you first?”

“Think about it,” Serenity suggested. “Pluto is supposed to know what happens already. Ryo sees the future all the time. Bringing Saturn was unavoidable, but they won’t be here long enough to see anything dangerous, and she’s already proven—or will prove—that she knows how to keep a secret. But what about the others? The more people there are who see things they aren’t supposed to, the more likely it is that someone will slip up...”

“Oh.”

“And we really have to get Venus out of here, anyway,” Serenity added wryly. “She’s too unpredictable for anyone’s peace of mind. That’s probably why she wound up here with you instead of some other period in history; at least _we_ could keep her out of trouble.” The queen shook her head with a fond smile. “But as I was saying, you have a choice. When Pluto and the others arrive, you can go back with them. Or you can stay here.”

“Now listen carefully before you say anything,” Serenity said, cutting her daughter off at the first preparatory breath of speech. “I told you that everything Crystal Tokyo needs to be done has been done; what’s going on in the past will not _prevent_ this future, no matter how it turns out, but it might _change_ certain parts of it. And that’s where your choice comes in.”

The queen’s tone took on a lecturing quality. “Pluto has made a lot of decisions in her life, Usagi, and she was allowed to become the Guardian of Time because her choices balanced each other out. She was born with some control over Time, and proved through her choices that she could do what had to be done instead of what seemed right, better, or easier. Her choice to help you changed that balance, and everything that’s happened to her was able to happen because of that change. Don’t blame yourself; it would have happened to her anyway. It had to.”

“In the past that I remember, Setsuna survived, but she never regained her memories, and she chose to remain behind when the rest of us went to sleep. If you choose to stay here, that’s what will happen to her. I have it on the best possible authority that she’ll have a very long and happy life before she dies—quietly, in her sleep. And the next time we see a Senshi of Pluto, it’ll be someone else.”

“And if I do go back?” ChibiUsa asked.

Serenity frowned. “Then it gets risky. You _may_ be able to help Setsuna remember herself completely, but you’ll also be putting your own life in danger in the process. And there are no guarantees about this part, because you’ll be changing history again. Setsuna might be able to redeem herself and resume as the Guardian of Time, and she might not; she might regain her memories and still choose to stay in the past, or she might remain as she is but decide to come with you—or us—to this time. Or none of those. And...” The queen hesitated. “And there’s a chance you might not come home.”

ChibiUsa was silent. “There are only three more things I’m allowed to tell you,” her mother said. “One is that if you choose to go back, you can’t take the key with you; you’ll be there until someone takes you to the Time Gate and opens it for you. The second is that time will pass equally on both sides of the Gate; for each day you spend in the past, one day will go by here. It’s been like that since you left to visit Hotaru.”

“I know,” ChibiUsa said, glancing at her desk, a large piece of translucent crystal with a control board and a currently opaque monitor built into the top. “I checked the calendar. And the third thing?”

“The third thing... do you remember that vision Setsuna and Ryo had in the hospital? About Hotaru having a daughter?”

ChibiUsa nodded. “Yes, I remember. Hard to forget, considering that Ryo-kun nearly had a seizure at the time.” They both chuckled at the memory. Then ChibiUsa brushed a strand of hair out of her face and added, “They said the other girl in it was probably mine.”

The queen nodded. “If you stay here, she will be. If you go and manage to come home, she will be. If you go and don’t come back, she’ll be mine.” Serenity took her daughter’s hand and placed it over her belly. “And I’m one month pregnant.”

They were both silent for a very long time. Then ChibiUsa spoke. “I have to go back, Mama. Pluto did all this for me, and it isn’t fair that she should get punished just for being nice to me. Even if... even if it is dangerous, I can’t leave her like that. I won’t.” ChibiUsa looked up at her mother. “You understand, don’t you?”

“I understand,” Serenity replied, drawing her daughter into an almost fierce hug. “I knew you’d make the right decision, Usagi, and I’m very, very proud of you.”

“Thanks, Usagi-mama.”

“You’re welcome, Usagi-chan.”

After a moment, ChibiUsa asked a question. “What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“Her,” ChibiUsa said, pointing. “You said the past will change. Maybe I’ll come back, and maybe I won’t, but if I had just one more reason to try, it could make all the difference. Have you and Papa decided on a name yet?”

“Oh.” Serenity blushed, suddenly looking as if she were sixteen again. “Actually... um... I haven’t told him yet.”

“AGAIN?!” ChibiUsa got up and started making a great many wild gestures. “Mother, what _is_ it with you? You could have called him when you were carrying me, and you didn’t. You knew about Phoebe and Phoebus for six weeks, and you didn’t tell him. I thought for sure he was going to have a heart attack when he got back from that conference at Neptune and found out about Selene and Serena— FOUR months along! What’s he going to react like back _then_ when you...” She stopped then, as one of the images from Ryo’s multi-vision at the Time Gate came back to her. All the Senshi except Pluto waiting to greet Mamoru as he got off the plane, and a slimmed-down Usagi in the lead... “You _did_ tell him about me, didn’t you? _BEFORE_ I was actually born?”

Elbow on the armrest of her chair, chin resting on that hand, Serenity smiled. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

ChibiUsa glared at her. “You scheming sneak.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, you spoiled brat,” Serenity retorted immediately, getting to her feet.

“Loudmouthed glory-hound!”

“Annoying spore!”

“Oh yeah?” ChibiUsa pulled down one eyelid and stuck out her tongue. “Biiii!”

“Yeah!” Serenity duplicated the gesture. “Nyah!”

“Mom?” Still making faces, they both turned towards the door, where a sturdy boy of about eight stood half-in, half-out of the room. He had sandy blond hair and sun-darkened skin; eyes of a similar golden brown hue as his hair were looking curiously at Serenity. “Why are you in here? And why are you making faces at...” Then the boy noticed the other figure standing behind his mother, and his eyes lit up. “Usagi! You’re home!” He leaned back into the hall and yelled, “Hey, everyone! Usagi’s back! She’s home!”

“Phoebus!” Serenity snapped immediately. “What have I told you about shouting in the halls?”

“Awww, m-o-m...” The whine, the hands clasped behind the back, the little dig at the ground with the right foot... it was almost pure Shingo, though ChibiUsa personally thought it was much cuter coming from an eight year-old.

While Serenity scolded her son, a girl who was a more delicate and fair-haired version of him entered the room. Right behind her came a pair of six year-old girls with sky-blue eyes and blonde curls that were closer to white than gold. With a lot of delighted squeals and almost no pause, the three girls slipped past their beleaguered brother, ignored their mother’s half-shouted reprimands about screaming, and charged at their older sister. Predictably, they didn’t trip over their own feet until they were close enough to drag ChibiUsa down with them.

Near the door, Serenity broke into a smile that was just a little teary-eyed. Behind her, Phoebus sighed the sort of exasperated sigh that is the sole province of much set-upon older brothers and moved to try and pull apart the pile that was his sisters. He only needed about three seconds to hug ChibiUsa, but if he didn’t get the others off her, he’d never get the chance.

At the bottom of the pile, ChibiUsa laughed and tried very, very hard not to start crying. Leaving—even to try and save Setsuna—was going to be a lot harder than she’d thought.

# 

The trip through Time via Saturn and Pluto express was nothing at all like traveling through the Time Gate.

Imagine for a moment that Time is a river. It flows endlessly from somewhere that doesn’t precisely exist, to another somewhere that is just as unreal. It moves in one direction, and is always changing.

History, now, is a wheel next to that river, being pushed along in an endless cycle by the water. The part of the wheel that is in the river at any given moment is the present; the rest of it, the part that is out of the water, is either the past or the future, depending on how one chooses to look at it. The part that has just left the water is the past, and the part that is on its way into the water is the future. Eventually, the past becomes the future. Or perhaps more accurately, the future repeats the past.

But the wheel, too, is always changing; it wears down from the action of the water and is forever being put back up again by an army of innumerable tiny, industrious creatures living in it. Since they can’t see the entire wheel, the creatures can’t rebuild it exactly as it was, and some of the little buggers are so confused from all the turning around and around and around and around... ahem, from the endless revolutions of the wheel that they actually do more damage than help; but in general, the creatures keep the wheel going.

The ‘creatures’ are the timeless souls of all those forms of life intelligent enough to recognize the passage of Time, which includes most humans, a surprising number of the so-called ‘animal’ species that dwell on Earth, and several thousand species whose very existences the majority of the human race currently has no clue about whatsoever. That ignorance can be a grievous loss or an unparalleled blessing, depending on which alien species you’re talking about—but that is a tale for another time.

The Time Gate, as has already been mentioned, exists in the very instant of the present, where past and future merge; in the terms of the picture provided above, it’s right at the point where the wheel and the water touch. Using the Gate, one is effectively jumping off the wheel and standing in the river until the moment intended as the destination comes around, at which point one jumps back on. Traveling into the future is easy, since it is done naturally, and all the Gate has to do is speed the process up; going into the past is a little trickier since it involves—to extend the metaphor—pushing back the wheel and reversing the flow of the river. Both goals are accomplished by the use of a Mobius Loop, a device/condition/quality in which Time is funneled back into itself, but since the workings of such an effect are beyond the grasp of anyone who hasn’t spent at least a hundred years or so in devoted study of the sometimes quirky nature of Time, they won’t be gone into here.

Suffice to say, the Time Gate turns the full force of Time Itself against the full force of Time Itself. The wheel stops, perfectly still, and the slightest amount of force in either direction is enough to break the deadlock and move it. Simple willpower will do the trick, so anyone who can reach the Time Gate can go zipping off through the far ends of history—which is why most people aren’t permitted to even know that it exists, and why Pluto is supposed to drive off the rest.

The two Senshi and Ryo, unable to use the Gate thanks to the Court and Pluto’s ongoing amnesia, have instead effectively jumped right into the river that is Time; they are, in essence, swimming along through the current and trying to reach the wheel. The most obvious risk is that they could easily be swept away by the river and lost somewhere—or nowhere, again depending on how you look at it—in Time.

A less-apparent problem is that, although going into the future is—by means of a tachyon field and a sub-quantum matter/energy flux that Pluto and Saturn are producing—turning out to be quite simple, going into the past will shortly prove to be a hell of a lot harder.

# 

As the weird lights and sounds faded, Ryo sneezed, sniffed, and announced, “We’re here.”

Pluto’s and Saturn’s eyes blinked open. ‘Here’ was an unfamiliar room with high walls of a shimmering blue-white material that didn’t quite look like glass, a more familiar floor of ceramic tiles, and a few pieces of furniture whose composition ranged from wooden to more of that odd crystalline material.

There were a half-dozen or so women and one man standing at the other end of the chamber, with ChibiUsa and Venus in front of them. They all looked extremely familiar, of course. After a moment, Ryo realized most of the female members of that group were looking at him oddly, with smiles that ranged from mildly amused to speculatively mischievous.

*Oh. Right. The clothes.* Ryo did his best to appear indifferent to the attention as he pulled his shirt back on and rolled down his pant legs, but he was pretty certain the spectacular heat in his face gave him away. Mercury—who seemed somewhat taller than he remembered—blushed nearly as outrageously when Jupiter nudged her in the ribs and winked. The two Saturns, meanwhile, were looking at each other with a commendable calmness.

“You,” Pluto said immediately, pointing straight at Venus. Pluto’s finger moved to indicate a spot on the floor just in front of herself. “Here. NOW.”

Venus tried to grin, then sheepishly bowed her head and walked to the designated spot, muttering about the injustice of it all, being locked up and treated like a common criminal when she hadn’t DONE anything wrong... ChibiUsa came with her.

“I’m going back, too,” the girl said firmly. Pluto and the three displaced past-personages looked at her, then at the queen, who nodded.

“Stay close,” the younger Saturn said as she and Pluto again joined hands and raised their weapons.

Reddish-violet energy swirled up around them; through it, Ryo caught a glimpse of Mercury pulling out her computer and switching on her visor with a very familiar look of fascination. Most of the others just stood there and stared, but the queen—*Hard to believe that’s Usagi*—raised one hand in a gesture of farewell, which ChibiUsa returned.

There were unshed tears in both of their eyes, and as the world blipped out, Ryo suddenly felt extremely worried.

# 

Rei, Haruka, and Michiru had been living with the tribe of survivors for almost a month before their friends appeared.

It’d taken quite a bit of that fast talking Neptune had mentioned to convince the elders that they weren’t all-powerful deities, vengeful spirits, or legendary heroes returned from the past, but just travelers lost in time. They hadn’t come to save humanity. They couldn’t get rid of the monsters. They had no idea where a truly safe haven might be. They couldn’t wave their hands and make everything right with the world; they had enough trouble just adjusting to the lack of indoor plumbing.

But they did what they could to make life a little easier in this harsh wreck of a world. All of them patrolled frequently, of course, several hours each day and night, and they found trouble more often than not, but they helped out in other ways, too.

Water was difficult to find, and many of the meager streams and shallow pools of this time were contaminated with scum or age-old but still deadly chemicals. Neptune solved that problem easily, drawing gallon after gallon of fresh, pure water from the air to fill the storage barrels. The construction of a particularly massive underground tank had been started shortly after the Senshi’s arrival, and once it was complete, she filled it with enough drinkable water to last for years. She conducted a similar ritual in the tribe’s well- protected fields each day, providing water to animals and plants that desperately needed it. She was glad to help, but found the gratitude of so many people more than a little embarrassing.

Haruka spent a lot of her time teaching people how to fight more effectively, whether with their hands and feet or makeshift weapons. She also worked quite closely with the tribe’s collection of blacksmiths, tinkers, and would-be scientists; her experience with technology was mostly oriented towards vehicular mechanics, but even that was more than they had, and she probably prevented a dozen or more disasters just by being on hand to shout “Don’t do that!” or “Not like that!” or “RUN!” She had spent some time in the fields as well at first, breaking apart the well-nigh perpetual cloud cover with her control over wind, but the effort involved in moving that much air had worn her out after just a few days.

Rei devoted a large amount of effort to teaching people—adults as often as children—how to read and write, skills which only a few had even heard of, let alone possessed. She also made prodigious use of her visionary abilities during those three and a half weeks, once to track down a patrol whose return was five days overdue, another time to locate a boy who had fallen into a sinkhole and broken his leg while chasing a runaway cow, and then again, and then _again_... Rei also picked up a few ‘apprentices’ along the way: a boy no older than six; a pair of girls barely into their teens; and a young woman only a few years older than herself. All four of them possessed mental abilities somewhat similar to her own, and she taught them as much as she could. Most of her effort was focused on the woman, Katina, who would have to take over the role of teacher once Rei left.

Even in this harsh a world, life was not all endless toil and thankless struggle. Children still played strange games; people still sang songs and danced from time to time; young couples still fell in love. The three Senshi had no problems dealing with the first two. All children played strange games, and every few nights, Michiru and Rei would hold most of the tribe spellbound with duets, Michiru playing a borrowed, surprisingly well-maintained fiddle, Rei using her powerful voice. Haruka occasionally missed her piano during these mini-concerts, but kept amused by parodying some of the songs Rei sang, to the absolute delight of everybody except Rei herself. The dances—an odd but interesting mix of formal ballroom and informal folk styles—didn’t go over too badly, either.

The most popular of those was a massive free-for-all involving fifty or more people, paired off according to height so that the tallest couple stood in the middle of a broad spiral, each successive pair getting a little shorter. There was a series of ten steps, at which point the dance called for a most peculiar exchange of partners; the tallest of a given pair would move outwards one space on the spiral, while the shorter would move inwards one space, at which point the ten steps were repeated. After just one pass, children wound up dancing with adults, women with women, men with men, and it only got more complicated and confusing as people kept moving up and down the spiral, always according to whether they were taller or shorter than their current partner. The dance—called, appropriately enough, Mad Spiral—usually ended when the two end couples—the tallest and the shortest—linked up again on the other side of the chain, but getting there could take an hour or more, depending on who was dancing.

Most of the other dances weren’t nearly so complex, although the fact that Haruka consistently—and successfully—tried to lead caused some problems now and then. But by and large, the night-time celebrations were no trouble, and a lot of fun.

Where the three Senshi kept having trouble was the bit about people falling in love.

A lot of it probably had to do with the miniskirts, but Michiru absolutely devastated the unmarried young men no matter what she was wearing. They were forever going out of their way to be helpful to her, particularly the guard, Rama, who had given her his cloak that first night. No matter how many times Michiru tried to politely get the point that she wasn’t interested across, Rama was constantly on hand to see if she needed something, to stand guard on the tent that had been set aside for her, or to provide an escort when she made her daily circuit of the fields. Haruka teased Michiru about the business with Rama mercilessly, and was no less amused by the attention she picked up herself. These people had given up a great many social prejudices in order to survive, and they’d been hardened by their tough existence, but despite that—or maybe because of it—there was still a clearly visible distinction between men and women. *Uranus* was obviously female, but *Haruka,* as always, blurred that line for all she was worth, earning some considering glances from men and women alike—all of them puzzled—and loving every second of it.

Rei was not particularly aware of the fact that she was having an only slightly less overwhelming impact on members of the male population than Michiru. From school, she was used to people taking notice of her; from Yuuichirou, she had built up a tolerance for male foolishness; and from her long ago, not-quite relationship with Mamoru, she had learned to get over her own silly crushes. But between the effort she put into teaching her various students, making patrols, and trying to figure out how to open that damned annoying Book of Ages, she didn’t have the time to deal properly with her admirers. For that, as Yuuichirou could have told them, they should be eternally grateful.

Neptune was just finishing up a morning’s work in the fields—with Rama keeping close by, of course—when a boy from the main settlement came running up at top speed. Neptune caught him just before he ran into her.

“What is it, Lumo?”

“West field,” the lad said between gasps for air. “Scouts saw... weird light... sent me... find you...”

Neptune looked towards the north pass, the only gap in the mountain range which separated this little community from the badlands, then to the west field. Most of the monsters in this time were bizarre mutations of familiar animals, fighting with tooth and claw, but a few had demonstrated energy manipulation powers. Whatever Lumo was talking about couldn’t have come through the pass; there were enough traps and people in defensive positions up there to stop an army, and she would have heard the warning horns even at this distance. But the possibility that something might have found a way to reach the settlement from another side wasn’t a reassuring one, particularly since Mars and Uranus had both gone out on patrol that morning, and weren’t due back for another hour at least.

Neptune handed Lumo over to Rama with a curt instruction to look after him before taking off at top speed. Ground that it had taken her half an hour to walk across flew by in hardly more than a minute—Lumo must have run flat-out to reach her so quickly—and she was moving along the cliff ridge above the village shortly after that. She caught up with a group of twenty heavily-armed men and women at the edge of the empty west field, which was too rocky for crops and cattle alike. Beradi was leading.

“Lumo found you, I see,” he said in greeting. “Haven’t seen anything since the initial flash. Weird, that; just lasted a second, a lot of red and violet streaks.”

“Are there any passes to the west?” Neptune asked.

“Not for nine days’ walk,” Beradi replied, “and you hit the sea after that. I suppose something could have swum around, though. Hang on.” He pointed to a gap between two large rocks, where something that flashed in the light of the partly-obscured sun was waving back and forth. It was too far to make out the exact shape, but the thing was definitely metal. “Who goes there?” Beradi hollered.

“We come in peace,” a voice yelled back. Neptune’s eyes widened a moment before she broke into a wide grin.

“You can put your weapons down, Beradi. They’re friends.”

# 

Saturn flew into Uranus’ arms the moment she and Mars got back to the village, and the blonde Senshi had a nervous moment of trying to juggle her enthusiastic adopted daughter and the gleaming length of the Silence Glaive.

“Air,” Uranus croaked. “Air.”

Pluto smiled wearily at the display, and at the only slightly-less exuberant greeting Venus was giving Mars.

“You don’t look so good,” Neptune said from Pluto’s left.

“We hit a bit of a snag on our way here,” Pluto explained. “Bringing ourselves and three passengers back to this point from Crystal Tokyo was harder than moving to Crystal Tokyo from about eighty million years in the past with just one other person.”

“Was it the extra people,” Neptune asked, “or the direction of the trip?”

“A little bit of each, I think, but mostly the latter. Skipping over six hundred years should have been a piece of cake compared to crossing eighty million.” Pluto yawned. “I think I could sleep for a week.”

“You could, you know. If we can travel through time...”

“No,” ChibiUsa said immediately. “We have to find the others and get back to Tokyo as fast as possible. Mama told me before I left that Time was going to move at the same rate in the past as it did in the future; I think that for every minute we spend on our way home, a minute will have gone by there, too.”

“You’re sure?” Neptune asked in a sinking voice. “We’ve already been here nearly a month as it is. Does that mean a month’s going to have gone by when we get back to Tokyo?”

ChibiUsa opened her mouth to respond, but closed it again and looked pleadingly at Pluto, who merely shook her head. “I have no idea. I hope not.” She closed her eyes and murmured, “God, I hope not. I’ve lost enough time already.”

Quite a few members of the tribe were gathering around to watch the reunion. There were smiles, but also some sad looks as they realized that their three friends would be leaving. Beradi looked around and shook his head.

“I realize this might not be the best time,” the one-handed man said to Neptune, “but you have to know by now that these sentimentalists are going to want to throw you a good-bye party.”

Neptune sighed. “I wish we could stay, Beradi, I really do. But our other friends may be in trouble, and we’ve got to find them. More than that, we’ve got to get home.”

Beradi nodded. “Still, if you could spare just one hou... hey!” He directed that at Saturn, who had come over from hugging Uranus to yank curiously at his replacement ‘hand.’ ChibiUsa smothered an outburst of giggles as Beradi pulled his hook out of Saturn’s reach and readjusted it. “Do you mind, girl?”

Saturn looked at him for a moment, then turned a slow gaze at the people gathered all around. Some of them backed up a step or two when they spotted the eerie violet glow in her eyes. “May I see your arm for a moment?”

Beradi looked for a moment as if he were going to say something, but the weird light in Saturn’s eyes stopped him, and he raised his stump-ended left arm. Saturn took it in both hands and examined it closely.

“Hotaru,” Neptune said, knowing immediately what the girl was about to try. She didn’t get any further than that.

Energy swirled out from between Saturn’s gloved fingers. She was no longer holding Beradi’s arm, but when he tried to pull it out of the spherical web of dark, sizzling threads, it didn’t budge. He roared wordlessly as the hook rusted solid, bent in on itself, and crumbled away into flakes that were gone before they hit the ground. Then the anger faded away as the most peculiar look crossed the tough man’s face; he looked like he was trying to hold in a laugh.

“Damned thing itches worse than if I’d stuck it in fireweed!” he snapped.

“Stop being such a baby,” Saturn said in a heartless sort of voice. Beradi’s eyes bulged, and whatever else he had been about to say jammed in his throat; ChibiUsa doubled over, compressed snorts of laughter getting past the hand she held over her mouth.

Saturn’s gaze narrowed, and the energy hissing between her hands began to take on an indefinite shape. Very suddenly, she moved her fingers, a quick, flexing motion that pulled them slightly apart; the web of energy collapsed and was gone.

Anybody close enough to see gasped in astonishment as Beradi held up a left arm that ended in a whole, callused hand, the perfect mate to his right. He flexed the fingers, even struck them across his knee; the grin on his face just kept growing.

Saturn smiled.

# 

It was about three hours later.

The settlement was in the middle of perhaps the largest party its inhabitants had ever thrown. Everyone who wasn’t needed on guard duty was singing, dancing, preparing or eating food; those who were on duty traded posts every half-hour so that they could all enjoy the sudden celebration.

This was also one of the strangest parties the tribe had ever held. It was supposed to have been a farewell for three friends, but it was turning into the biggest revel any of them could remember. Formerly stiff-jointed greybeards danced with the spry ease of their long-faded youth; a little boy who had been in bed most of the week with a fever was up and as energetic as any of his friends; old veterans like Beradi laughed and showed off to each other the hands, feet, or even the odd eye that they had not possessed scant hours ago.

Saturn sat at the edge of the village square, watching with her dark, too-wise eyes as a Mad Spiral formed up. She smiled as, near the center of the pattern, Uranus and Neptune and three tall young men tried to explain the steps of the dance to Pluto. She laughed as, further down the spiral, Venus tried to improvise a few steps of her own.

ChibiUsa sat down next to her friend. “How did you do that, Hotaru? I’ve seen you heal before, and I know how much it takes out of you. How did you manage to heal all these people?”

“I realized something about my power when we came forward,” Saturn replied. “I move things, ChibiUsa. That’s all I do. I can take a solid object and scatter it into a billion pieces, or I can take those same pieces and put them back together. With inanimate objects, it doesn’t really make much difference whether they’re in one piece or a billion, because they’re still there. Living beings are a little trickier. Take them apart, and the energy inside that _makes_ them alive escapes, or gets shut down; even if you put the body back together, the energy isn’t there anymore. Usagi can restore that energy, create it over again, if she has to; I can’t. But while the body still contains its energy, is still alive, I can _move_ the energy around, gather it from all parts of the body and send it where it’s needed to heal. That was the mistake I always made before.”

ChibiUsa blinked. “I don’t follow you.”

“I always tried to use just my own energy,” Saturn explained. “Healing wore me out so much because I was projecting _my_ life-force into someone else’s body. When I try it that way, not all of the energy gets there—it must disperse into the environment or something like that—so I have to use a lot to get even a small effect. As Michiru-mama would say, it’s inefficient. This way, I’m just moving around the natural healing force in a person’s body. And it’s so easy,” she added in a wondrous voice.

They both looked up as a shadow appeared. Beradi. “Enjoying the festivities?”

Saturn smiled. “Very much.”

“Your tall friend with the red eyes said you’ll be leaving after this next dance. Before you go, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. If you don’t mind.”

Saturn and ChibiUsa watched as a small procession approached, four young men carrying a small litter, on which rested a very, very old woman. She was obviously blind, and grumbling under what breath she had about being carried around like a sack of potatoes as they carefully set her down.

“This is Naruno,” Beradi said. “We would have brought her out to you earlier, but it’s not safe to move her very much any more, and with all the people that were coming and going, we decided it was safer to wait. I was thinking... well, if you can give me back a hand and other people back lost legs or eyes, is there something you can do for her?”

“Foolish boy,” the old woman croaked. “I told you, I don’t want any miracles for myself. I’m used to how I am, now, and it’s not like I’m going to be here all that much longer anyway.”

Saturn looked at Naruno, let her eyes shift into the dark glow that accompanied her life-vision. She saw a faded blue-gold flicker around the stick- thin body, and sighed. “She’s too weak, Beradi. Her body... there’s just not enough strength left in it to hold together if I start tampering with things.”

“Wait,” ChibiUsa said. “Saturn, you said you could move energy from yourself into someone else. I know you couldn’t heal her by yourself, but what if... Usagi and the others combine their energies all the time when there’s a big fight. Could you use some of the life-force of people here to...”

“I can’t do that!” Saturn gasped, horrified at the thought. It was exactly the same sort of thing that monster after monster had done in Tokyo. Just thinking about doing it made her feel ill.

“I don’t mean steal it,” ChibiUsa said soothingly, knowing exactly how her friend would feel. “Beradi, how many of your people do you think would be willing to help us try to heal Naruno?”

“Now just a minute,” the old woman rasped.

“Probably quite a few,” Beradi said, ignoring the elder. “But what exactly can we do that you lot can’t?”

“Saturn’s just one person, but there are dozens of you. She and Naruno don’t have enough energy between them to do much, but if enough of your people will agree to let Saturn borrow a little of their energy, she might be able to do something.”

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Saturn grabbed ChibiUsa’s sleeve and dragged her aside. “What are you doing?!” she hissed. “I can’t take away people’s energy, ChibiUsa, not even to help an old woman! I won’t do it!”

“You won’t be _taking_ it,” ChibiUsa said. “We’ll explain it so that they understand what we’re doing, and if they agree, they’ll be _giving_ you the energy, freely.” ChibiUsa looked at her friend. “It isn’t using other people’s energy to do things that makes our enemies monsters, Hotaru. They’re monsters because they take without asking; we’re going to ask first, and only go ahead with it if people agree.”

The question of personal choice was such a slim difference—but, Saturn had to admit, an important one. She nodded. “All right.”

The music and dances had stopped as most of the people gathered around; men and women and children, even Ryo and the other Senshi, nearly the entire population filled the square. Saturn looked around at the crowd and gulped. Usagi did this sort of thing all the time; how hard could it be?

*Pretty damn hard,* she told herself. With the ginzuishou as a focus, Usagi could create and amplify energy on an immense scale; the power of Saturn could shift energy, relocate or scatter it, but not create it. This might be very hard, indeed.

Naruno was frowning as Saturn knelt down next to her. “You’re going to go ahead with this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“We’ll put the matter to a vote,” Beradi said, looking back at the crowd. “All those in favor of doing whatever the hell it is we’re about to do, say ’Aye!’”

“Aye!”

“All opposed?”

Silence. Naruno grunted. “Fine. Get on with it, then.”

Saturn sighed and laid the Silence Glaive across her knees, putting one hand over the old woman’s heart as she looked around at the crowd. “Everyone listen carefully.” Her voice was not that loud, but her power carried the words clearly to every ear. “Try to focus your thoughts on Naruno. Just her, not anything else. I’ll do the rest. You may suddenly feel a little tired, but try to ignore it; it won’t hurt you, and it won’t last long.” Saturn closed her eyes and opened her mind.

She envisioned the life-energy all around her as spots of light, a subtly different color for each individual person. The light coming from the other Senshi was particularly bright; the light coming from Ryo had a curiously dark outer edge that she still couldn’t understand. But no matter.

She reached out with her power, picturing coiling arcs of violet-black light expanding out to touch all those colors, a huge web of dark energy centered over the faded light in front of her. Very slowly, the web began to hum, each light shooting a tiny pulse of itself into the pattern, all of them racing to the center to gather in a bright white orb. Saturn tried to even out the flow so that she was draining a proportionate amount from each person, making them all equally tired, instead of taking the same level of energy and thus risking damage to the weaker members of the link. Then she focused on the power ball, willed it to sink into Naruno’s body. It did so, and all the successive pulses of life-force followed it.

With her eyes closed, Saturn couldn’t see what was happening, but those nearest to the center could and did. The web and lights Saturn had pictured in her mind had appeared in reality, surrounding each person with an individual aura. Naruno’s body blazed with light. Skin shifted, losing its many sags and wrinkles; the discolored spots shrank, faded, and were gone as a healthy pink tint began to build. With each pulse of energy, her body was a little less frail. New hair grew from her almost-bald scalp at a tremendous pace, first white, then darkening steadily to grey, brown, and finally stopping at a burnished red. Her remaining teeth straightened as new ones slowly emerged from her gums. The white film that had clouded her eyes grew more and more colorless until it was transparent, and flowed down the sides of her face as nothing more than tears, leaving functional blue eyes behind.

Other things were happening, too, inside, where only Saturn could see them. Veins and arteries that had been on the verge of collapse shivered and strengthened; the old, faltering heart behind them grew slightly larger, its rhythm steadying and each beat louder. Worn out tissues renewed themselves as crooked, crumbling bones straightened and solidified.

When the aura in front of her was as bright as any of the others around her, Saturn stopped the flow, sent the remaining energy back to where it had come from, once again doing her best to divide the force equally. As the last of it trickled away, she recalled her own power and opened her eyes.

By looks alone, the woman in front of her couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. The traces that had made Mars so uneasy at their first meeting, those age-faded qualities inherited from Naru, were far more recognizable now that Naruno was closer to the age of the girl the Senshi knew. She looked down at herself, running smooth-skinned, straight-knuckled hands down a healthy, whole body.

“My goodness,” she murmured, in a smooth voice that was no longer harsh or scratchy. After a moment, she started to laugh, grabbing hold of Saturn in a powerful hug, laughing until she cried. “I never thought... I would never have asked... oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Someone tapped Saturn on the shoulder. She looked up and saw Pluto and the others standing close at hand. “It’s time to go,” Pluto said. Saturn nodded.

“Everyone stand back,” Venus warned, “unless you want to end up being yanked along through another dimension, a dimension of sights and sounds you probably don’t want to see or hear.”

Mars, Uranus, and Neptune were saying their good-byes. Mars hugged Katina and wished her good luck, telling each of the three children to listen to their new teacher before tucking the Book under one arm and joining the other Senshi. Uranus shook hands—left hands—with Beradi and a number of the other soldiers, giving the disaster-prone band of tinkers a last look and a resigned sigh in passing.

Neptune’s farewells took a bit longer, since just about everyone in the village wanted to hug her, to thank her for the precious gift of the water. The last to approach her was Rama. After a brief and formal embrace, Neptune paused, shrugged, seized the astonished young man by the shoulders, and dragged him into what was easily the most profound kiss of his life. A lot of the villagers blinked; so did most of the Senshi. When Neptune finally let go, she smiled faintly at Rama and then walked back to her friends.

She stopped in front of Uranus, put her hands on and her hips, and said, “Well?” in a challenging voice.

“I didn’t say anything,” the taller girl replied.

“Good.”

Pluto and Saturn were already well into their routine. As the swirling energy built to a peak, Uranus glanced sidelong at her partner and grinned. “Of course, you must realize that you’ve probably just destroyed that poor man’s entire future romantic life.”

They blipped out before Neptune could respond with anything more than a flat look.

# 

When reality came back, they were standing in a forest. Ryo sneezed as soon as the laws of nature had reasserted themselves. Pluto leaned heavily on her staff, and Saturn would have fallen over completely if ChibiUsa and Uranus hadn’t caught her.

“That hurt,” Saturn whimpered.

Mars looked around at the trees. “Where and when are we?”

“We’re about forty thousand years ahead of Tokyo,” Pluto replied wearily. “Mercury and Jupiter are here.”

“What about Usagi? And Luna and Artemis,” Mars added, somewhat belatedly.

“Usagi and Artemis are about thirty-five thousand years after this point; Luna’s either with them or here with the other two. And I brought us here first,” Pluto said before anyone could ask, “because these jumps are getting harder to make the more people we have or the further back we try to go. From here, we can slide forward to find Usagi, and then to our own time.” She raised her communicator and activated the homing device. Eight beeps went off; one for each Senshi with her, and one for Mercury and Jupiter.

“Venus to Mercury, Venus to Jupiter. Ami-chan, Mako-chan, are you there?” Venus paused. “Come on, you two, wake up!”

“They can’t hear you,” Pluto said. “The jumping through Time has done something to our communicators, and I don’t know how to fix them.”

“Oh. Then I guess we start walking.” Venus set off her own homing device, then pointed. “That way.” She started off without looking back; the others exchanged wry looks, recalling the line about fools rushing in, but followed her anyway.

 

# 

_(Fade in on Queen Serenity—the dead one, on the Moon)_

**Her Majesty** : In light of the difficulties with the last episode’s moral, and since the Senshi are still unavailable to do this segment, the author’s asked me to stand in. Young Shingo, as I understand it, is otherwise occupied.

_(Cut to a scene of Shingo playing ‘Sailor Moon: Revenge of the Phantom Senshi’)_

**Shingo** : Yeah! Take that, you ugly mutants! Man, this is so cool! Hey, no fair trying to sneak up behind me! Eat this! Hahahaha! What?! Where’d that come from?! No fair! Arrrrrrggggghhhh...

_(Fade back to Serenity)_

**Her Majesty** : Must be genetic... oh well. On with the segment. After a great deal of careful thought and re-reading, the author—who you must understand is interested mainly in a good story, and doesn’t usually have any moral instruction in mind when he sets out to write—has decided to cast this episode’s moral under the category of ‘acceptance.’ In the past, Ami and Makoto are accepted as friends by a creature who hardly knows them and isn’t even the same species; in the future, Rei, Michiru, and Haruka are given a similar degree of trust, despite some initial uncertainties. Give people a chance, no matter how different or strange they are, and you may be surprised; refuse to let them get close, and you’re alone forever.

**Off-Screen Voice** : And cut! Right, thanks, Your Majesty.

**Her Majesty** : Anytime.  _(She fades out. Change scene to Shingo’s room, where Serenity has reappeared, and is learning how to play video games. Scene fades out with Shingo cheering her on through a barrage of phantom menaces.)_

23/07/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_A full-length episode in one week... wow._

_Still to come:_   
_-Makoto learns a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘tree-hugging’;_   
_-The Senshi go in search of their absent leader and advisors; and_   
_-Our heroines—and taggers-along—finally get home. After a few wrong turns on the highway of Time, that is..._


	12. Difficult Companies, or Lessons in (Not) Minding Your Own Business

# 

Usagi had never ridden a horse in her life.

From the way that she knew exactly what to do—how to talk to the horse to keep him calm, how to mount up, how to sit and arrange her skirt in a ‘ladylike’ fashion—she understood that _Serenity_ must have gone riding in _her_ lifetime. However, Usagi also got a sense that the Moon Princess’ skill on horseback—or on the back of whatever other animals had been in use as steeds at the time—had been mediocre, at best. And she had certainly never been in a position to go riding while pregnant.

Luna, on the other hand, had gone riding any number of times, and gotten quite good at it. But all of those times had been over a thousand years ago, and she was still getting the hang of walking around in human form again; simply put, she was out of practice.

Mahdib was a patient and smooth-stepping horse, and Akhmed, walking up ahead and leading his faithful mount along by the reins, was not setting a particularly hard pace, but even so, both women were more than a little sore by the end of the first night of travel.

Stretching her back to work out the beginnings of stiffness, Luna considered Akhmed. She had to admit, the young man knew his business, and was extremely stable, mentally speaking; she’d only had to tell him three times last night that he wasn’t dreaming or going mad, and he had been the soul of courtesy towards Usagi. And not once did he question why the girl had been walking around in the desert in just her socks. (Her shoes were back at Michiru’s house.) But as helpful and polite as Akhmed was, Luna wasn’t sure they could fully trust him.

He spoke Atlantean. So did she, but she’d learned it as a fading, almost-dead language, the base of several modern tongues during the Silver Millennium. Akhmed spoke a dialect Luna wasn’t entirely familiar with, and he spoke it with the comfortable ease of lifelong use.

All the histories Luna remembered reading on the Moon had simultaneously praised and condemned Atlantis, at once the greatest pinnacle of scientific and sorcerous achievement and the blackest stain of greed, pride, and violence in human history. An empire five times larger and ten times older than anything the Queens of the Moon had ever ruled, world after world conquered and enslaved by the single most powerful military force ever known. Masters of magic and machinery who lived for ten times the life-span of ordinary humans, who created wonders undreamed of and yet never truly understood what it was they were doing, men and women whose arrogant power gave them license to do as they wished without fear of consequence, without concern for right or wrong.

Details were sketchy on what had finally brought Atlantis down; even the authors of the oldest records on the Moon, people who had lived to see the fall of the mighty empire, had disagreed over the cause of its collapse. Some said invasion from without, others said treachery from within; everything from financial collapse to divine intervention had been put forth as a possibility, each supposition with just enough evidence to seem as likely as the next. Luna had never really bothered herself with the details, for it had all been very long ago. As long as the dark mistakes of the past were remembered and not repeated, that was enough. The rest could stay where it was, buried.

But now she was in that buried past, in a time when she knew—from a few carefully-placed questions she’d put to Akhmed—that Atlantis was still at the height of its power. The possibilities inherent in that did more than scare Luna; they flat-out terrified her. If someone had noticed their arrival, there might already be magic-seekers after them, and even if the strange beings at the Time Gate had arranged to have them dropped here undetected, every day, every _hour_ they spent in this era increased the risk of discovery. Akhmed had already told her that neither she nor Usagi had coloration common to this region, and that alone was going to make them stand out; with at least three full species kept as slaves, Atlantean culture had not ranked among the most racially tolerant. As long as they kept a low profile, Luna thought they might be able to get by, but should someone take more than a passing interest and decide to investigate these two strange foreign women, they were bound to call on the services of a wizard.

Even the lowliest spellcaster of this era would be able to tell immediately that Luna was not what she appeared to be; the Nekoron had never been slaves—that human thing for cats, she supposed—but as a citizen of the Empire, she would be expected to give answers. Even worse was the possibility they would pick up on the immense power Usagi was carrying around, realize that it was not at all like the magic they understood—and desire to capture it. One thing all the history books had agreed on was that the ginzuishou had been created at the very _end_ of Atlantis’ reign, and might very well have played a part in the empire’s collapse; if it fell into the hands of even a half-capable Atlantean-trained mage NOW, the timeline was going to be ripped apart.

Luna had been very careful not to lie to Akhmed, for there were ways to use magic to detect falsehoods, but she had put the truth through some very complex paces by the time she finished ‘explaining’ things to the young man. She told him Usagi was the daughter and heir of a family in a distant part of the empire, taken from her home and dropped here by magic for reasons unknown. Either by accident or intent, the cats had been dragged along; as retainers of the family, it was their duty to protect Usagi until her bodyguards could find her and return her safely home. They couldn’t risk going to the authorities, but needed a place to stay out of sight.

Akhmed had extended an offer of lodging at his family’s home, and Luna had cautiously accepted it. There really weren’t any other options, stuck in the middle of a desert as they were, but the idea of spending any amount of time in an Atlantean-dominated city would have put her fur up, if she still had any.

They spent that entire day at the little oasis, sleeping for the most part, before setting out late in the afternoon, traveling slowly to make things easier for Usagi and for Mahdib, who was, at Akhmed’s insistence, carrying both women. He explained that his home city, Khairoah, was less than a day’s ride off, but it would probably take two nights to reach at this pace, so he was heading for another oasis he knew of, where they could spend the next day before making for the city. Luna thought the three thugs she had chased off might have had something to do with Akhmed’s caution, but decided to put off asking about it until they stopped.

It was now well past midnight, and Usagi snored as she leaned back against Luna, who was considering the strangeness of once again having arms to put around this madcap girl, how comforting it was to actually do that. Artemis was seated across Mahdib’s broad back, pointedly ignoring Luna. He sat up when the horse came to a slow stop.

“We’re here,” Akhmed said, pointing down to a green patch amidst all the sand, a patch with a spot of blue at its heart, gleaming under the moonlight. There were dark shapes around the area, and dancing, flickering lights scattered amongst the dark shapes.

Luna looked at those lights and frowned. “Those are campfires.”

“Yes.” Akhmed sighed. “You heard last night, what that oaf Tukkad said about papers? My family is a minor house, but we have very prosperous merchant connections, and more than one of our rivals—such as Tukkad’s master, Imnho— would like to take some of those connections from us. There was a meeting amongst four of our partners in the city of Meimphein two weeks gone, and the papers I am carrying detail a number of important shipments due to be made in the next few months. If someone like Imnho were to get his hands on that information, it would go very badly for my family.”

“That oasis we were at last night isn’t on any of the trails,” Akhmed continued. “I didn’t even know it existed until I spotted it yesterday afternoon, but Imnho clearly did, and if he sent Tukkad there, he probably had all the other watering-holes covered as well. He’s certain to have men at the city gates, most likely bribed members of the watch with orders to arrest me, confiscate my father’s papers, then release me later with many apologies.” Akhmed glanced back at the two of them. “Under the city’s laws, they cannot harm a noble—even one of my minor standing—without answering stiffly for it, but you are strangers, with no such protection. And the sort of men Imnho hires...” Akhmed shook his head in disgust.

“What does all of this have to do with that camp down there?” Luna asked, instinctively tightening her arms around Usagi.

“My father and I came up with several plans for how I should make this trip. One of them involved a caravan made up of two of our merchant allies, their best guards, and several of my father’s most trusted men, who would be waiting at this oasis in case I needed an armed escort. They were scheduled to wait three days; this is the fourth.”

Luna looked at the tents below. “So that could be anyone?”

“Perhaps.” Akhmed looked at her, brushing black hair away from his dark brown eyes. “I know cats see better at night than humans. Can you tell me what the emblem on the flag flying over the largest tent is?”

“It’s a nine-pointed star,” Artemis said shortly, the first thing he had said all night. “There are dots at each tip and a shape of some kind in the middle. I can’t tell what, though, or what the colors are.”

“That’s them,” Akhmed said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Here.” He removed his cloak and handed it up to Luna. “Wake up Usagi and put that around her. Make sure she keeps the hood up until we’re in a tent.” He grinned wryly. “I trust these men, but I also trust some of them to talk when they drink, and her hair will be the subject of a great deal of comment if they see it.”

“Usagi,” Luna said, shaking her gently.

“Mmmm... wha?” Usagi yawned and, in a sleepy voice, asked, “Is it morning already, Luna?” Her eyes opened and took in the obviously nighttime sky. She yawned again. “Why’d you wake me up? Are we in trouble?” she asked, sitting up suddenly.

“Not yet. Here, put this on. And keep the hood pulled up. I’ll explain later.” Luna was more than a little pleased to see that, for whatever reason, Usagi didn’t argue with her. She had to wonder whether that had more to do with their current situation or with _her_ current form; if the latter, then this shape-shifting might be useful after all.

They were spotted long before they got near the tents, and a half-dozen armed men moved up the sandy slope to meet them. The three time-travelers were nervous right up to the last second, when the leader of the group came up with a wide grin and hugged Akhmed in the rough, good-natured manner most men use to greet old friends. Most of the men looked curiously at the dark-haired woman and the cloaked figure on the horse, but Akhmed spoke quickly, forestalling questions.

Then they were moving again, down into the heart of the camp.

# 

Dryad cuisine was unusual, to say the least.

Ami had not actually stopped to think about the matter the previous day, but when she woke up the next morning—looking up at a moss-covered wooden ceiling from a bed made of more moss, vines, and leaves, and wearing a light, slightly overlarge dress of some very soft and probably entirely organic material—she realized three things:

(1)— It hadn’t all been a dream;

(2)— She was hungry; and

(3)— Makoto snored. Not as badly as Usagi, by any means, just enough to be noticeable. And thus, just enough to be annoying.

There was really nothing she could do about (1), and she dealt with (3) by getting out of Sasanna’s vast bed and heading downstairs, where—hopefully—she could do something about (2). It was at this point that the question of what, if anything, dryads ate occurred to Ami. Lots of fruit and vegetables, she supposed, and probably some mushrooms—and that distilled tree-sap sweetwater, of course. Well, as long as she kept Makoto from drinking too much, Ami supposed a few days on a dryad diet wouldn’t hurt either of them. Unless of course, Sasanna literally ate dirt; she _was_ half-plant, after all.

The substance of the bed put the best box-spring mattresses Ami had ever encountered to shame, shifting around and readjusting itself so perfectly as she climbed out that the rhythm of Makoto’s soft snores didn’t change even slightly. She paused for a moment and debated whether or not she ought to have a shower first, but a pointed growl from her stomach settled the matter. And in all honesty, she wasn’t entirely sure she was up to tackling the dryad’s rather... um... unique facilities just yet. Besides, Makoto was still asleep, and between her typical morning funk and the strong likelihood of a hangover, the girl was going to be grouchy enough without Ami waking her up.

So Ami padded down the smooth wooden stairs on bare feet, the hem of the borrowed dress whisking along on the floor and threatening to trip her until she pulled it up an inch or two.

“You are awake,” Sasanna said in greeting.

“And hungry,” Ami added. The dryad smiled. “Is there anything around here to eat?”

“For me, yes. For you and Makoto, I am not entirely sure, so I have asked Glossolyndaraberonasym to provide a little of everything we have for you to try.” Sasanna grinned when Ami looked around and saw nothing. “He is working on it. Come. Sit. Drink.”

“Um, that reminds me,” Ami said as they sat together at the table. “Do you have any ordinary water to drink? I’m not sure if sweetwater affects dryads like it did Makoto, but I’m definitely sure she and I shouldn’t drink too much of it.”

“Glossolyndaraberonasym can provide several things for us to drink,” Sasanna reassured her. “Besides sweetwater, there is ordinary water, and juice from several kinds of fruits. There is also woodwine, but that is made from mixing sweetwater and at least one kind of juice, then leaving them to set for a time so that they are stronger. And there is mossbrew, which is even stronger.” She giggled suddenly. “Mossbrew, even a little, does some _very_ strange things to my kind, not much different from what happened to Makoto yesterday.”

“Water or juice will do,” Ami said firmly.

Sasanna nodded, got up to retrieve the drinking-bowl, filled it, and returned to the table. As Ami sipped at the slightly minty-tasting water, the dryad looked up and nodded. “Glossolyndaraberonasym has finished. Watch your head.”

Ami looked hastily up and saw a large piece of the wooden ceiling descending slowly towards them over the center of the table; it would, Ami saw— as she hit herself mentally for unintentionally making such a bad pun—leave a relatively wide space around the edge if it came right down to the table. A very large, slightly woody vine connecting the disc to the space in the ceiling was obviously the mechanism—or whatever—which was lowering the thing, and the rest of the surface was covered by twelve bulges made up of a half-dozen or so leaves each, rather like flowers that had not yet opened to face the day. Once the disc settled to a softly thumping stop, they bloomed.

Inside each of the little flowerlets was a different mix of food. As Ami had guessed, fruits and vegetables were present in abundance, and she saw mushrooms in one of the odd compartments. She was a bit surprised to see little quasi-cubic bits of meat in one pod, and there was actually _steam_ coming out of three of them. Everything within the small chambers rose—another terrible plant-related pun, Ami realized with an inward groan; she must be coming down with something!—on leafy little platforms connected to tinier versions of the main stem. Two small vines extended down out of the stem as a pair of long, slender, and sharp-looking thorns slowly poked out from the rim of the disc.

“How...” Ami began. “I mean, what...”

“Like this.” Sasanna snapped off the two thorns and handed one to Ami, then reached out and lifted one of the flower-like food containers completely off the tray. She set it down between them, then used the long thorn to spear a succession of vegetables. “It is handy if we are going to make a trip,” she explained. “The carry-bloom can live for several days away from its root and holds liquid as well as food. The holdwood,” she added, indicating the disc, “can turn to bring over other blooms. And the dripvines will provide what you wish to drink, or a few other things Glossolyndaraberonasym can make to add flavor to the food.”

Ami considered the selection, then decided to start with a bloom that was filled with fruit. “I wasn’t sure if you ate meat or not,” she said, carefully pulling a wedge of what looked to be apple off the sharp end of the thorn so as not to stab her tongue with the thing. “I take it you hunt, then?”

Sasanna nodded with a wordless sound of agreement and pointed past Ami; turning, Ami saw a closet-sized chamber on the wall in the middle of swinging open. She hadn’t noticed it before, likely because the pattern of the grain on the ‘door’ and the ‘wall’ matched each other perfectly. Inside the closet were a number of larger versions of the little thorns she and the dryad were using to each. Four of them were as long as Ami’s arm, and a fifth was as tall as Sasanna herself. There were also about a dozen or so smaller thorns with short, oddly-shaped leaves fixed to the thick end—arrows, of course, which meant that the curved piece of wood next to them was probably the matching bow.

“We do not need to eat much meat,” Sasanna noted, “but we find a little every now and then to be tasty. Mostly rabbit and fish. Some birds. Every once in a while, some of us will gather to hunt a larger creature, but we usually stick with the small animals. Easier to catch, less trouble to carry home. I have not gone hunting for the last few days, but there is some rabbit left in that carry-bloom there, if you would like.”

Ami sampled the small bits of rabbit—which tasted slightly of minty syrup—and the contents of most of the rest of the table over the course of the next half hour or so. She skipped over one of the carry-blooms when it turned out to contain a selection of insects sealed in hardened, sweet-tasting tree sap, and decided it would be safer to forgo the mushrooms and mosses altogether. On the other hand, the fruits and vegetables turned out to be very satisfactory, and one of the blooms held bug-free bits of the hardened sap—flavored with different juices, as Sasanna explained—rather like a bowl of candy.

Ami did have a bit of trouble with what the dryad had called the dripvines, since the great tree controlling them could not hear her to understand exactly what she was asking for. She ended up soaking a shish kebab of veggies with something that was close in flavor to tropical punch, and when she tried to ask for a drink of water, she got instead a mouthful of what tasted like a Cajun Insanity hot-sauce Minako had once insisted they all try. Sasanna seemed to find both incidents absolutely hysterical.

Makoto made her bleary-eyed appearance some time after that, trudging down the stairs with one hand on the wall and another over her face, most of which was hidden by her unbound hair. The borrowed dress whose twin had been too long for Ami only reached slightly past mid-calf on Makoto, and wasn’t quite as loose-fitting.

A dull eye looked out from behind hand and hair, examining Ami and Sasanna. “What time is it?”

“Six fifty-two, local time,” Ami replied after a quick check with her computer. “You’ve been asleep for most of the last fourteen hours. How do you feel?”

There was a pause of about three seconds while Makoto’s brain processed that question. “My head hurts,” she said finally, sitting down to Ami’s right. A third vine and thorn extended out of the growth Sasanna had called ‘holdwood’; Makoto broke the thorn off before the dryad could explain its purpose, picked out a bloom containing a mix of glazed slices of fruit, and started to eat. Ami was more than a little surprised when Makoto took a drink from the overhanging vine without even asking what it was or how it worked. Glancing over at Sasanna right then, Ami saw that the dryad was slowly nodding her head, almost as if she’d expected Makoto’s instantaneous proficiency. Between that and some of what had happened the day before, Ami knew something was up.

Whenever she broke off speaking to either of them to communicate more directly with her tree, Sasanna unconsciously tilted her head at a slight angle; she was doing so now, looking at Makoto but clearly listening to something else. The minor change in posture reminded Ami of something, but whatever it was refused to reveal itself. That bothered Ami.

When it came to schoolwork and studying, a clear and quick memory was at least as important as sheer mental muscle, and Ami had always prided herself on the range and focus of her own powers of recall. Many of her friends and classmates relied on flash cards, elaborate codes, complex studying routines, and a hefty dose of luck when preparing for a test. Ami studied not so much by memorizing the contents of her books as by fixing certain details of each page in her mind: an illustration of a bird’s wing on this page; a crease in the paper on that page; a spot of whiteout on this batch of notes; a silly little doodle courtesy of Usagi or Minako over here. By focusing just on that single quality, Ami could rapidly reconstruct the contents of an entire page, without even thinking about the information itself.

It worked in other situations, too. She could remember perfectly the events of her sixth birthday by thinking of one of the presents, a picture her father had made of her, a pencil sketch done over with watercolors in shades of blue, gold, and pale green. She could recall events from that whole year, and even from a year or so previous, without flaw or failure. And yet she couldn’t place what it was about Sasanna’s little tilted-head manner that seemed so annoyingly familiar.

There were only three places in Ami’s memory where her usually masterful recall broke down. Events from her fifth or sixth year were usually disjointed and fuzzy, and anything before that was pretty much nonexistent. The year which they had ‘replayed’ after fighting Beryl was also confused, since it was two separate sets of events slammed into one another, but with so many similarities between the two that telling them apart was rough going even for her. The other spot of trouble was her life on the Moon Kingdom, and Ami suspected that this was where the source of her current annoyance was located.

The girls didn’t talk about their former lives very often. It wasn’t exactly like they had huge amounts of spare time laying around to spend in reflective reminiscence, for one thing, and for another, there was something decidedly sad in thinking on the Silver Millennium. It was a wonderful time, yes, but the terrible way in which it—and they—had ended cast a pall over the whole period. But more than that, none of them remembered very much about the time. Usagi’s recollection was likely the most complete—and what that suggested about the rest of them didn’t bear repeating. Ami couldn’t even remember what her own name had been, and the very few bits she did have access to were hazy, almost as if she were seeing them through a blue-tinted mist. Yesterday had been the first time she’d heard the name ‘Amalthea’ applied to Makoto.

Illumination, as was so often the case, came in a sudden flash of memory. Makoto’s past life, Amalthea, had been able to communicate with plants, and when listening to them, she had carried herself with the same slightly tilted-head posture as Sasanna was now using. Did that mean that...?

No. Ami couldn’t remember very much about Amalthea, but the girl had been almost identical to Makoto in every physical detail, except that, in the few memories Ami could latch on to, Amma had been a little taller, a little older than Makoto was now. And there was something about the color of her eyes that was different. But certainly, she had not been a dryad.

“Who was not a dryad?” Sasanna asked curiously.

Ami blinked, then blushed. “Oh, uh... um... I was just thinking out loud. It’s the way you move your head when you speak to your tree; it just reminded me of how... well, that is... Amalthea used to do the same thing.”

Makoto froze in the middle of lifting a few slices of apple towards her mouth, and her head turned slowly so that she could stare at Ami in wide-eyed shock. She hadn’t thought about it—had in fact purposely _tried_ not to think about it—but Ami was right; Amalthea had been able to speak with plants. Everyone in the royal court had known it, though nobody was exactly sure how or why. Some of the older court scholars had thought it might have something to do with her Jovian heritage, and the long-term effects of the planet’s intense gravity and powerful electromagnetic field on the human form of life. They had done a study, and...

“Yes,” Sasanna said, answering a question Ami had asked while Makoto was not paying attention. “The pigmentation of our skin is usually this faded green, or a soft brown, like the leaves and bark of our trees. And we all have these,” she added, tracing the pointed line of her left ear with one finger. “There have been sisters in the past with very pale skin, but if Amalthea did not have at least the ears, then she was not a dryad, just as Makoto is not, now.”

...Amalthea had grown up in a world—_on_ a world, or at least on some of its moons—where it was normal for everyone to be tall and strong, so no one had ever teased her about her height or made her feel like some sort of overdeveloped freak of nature. The Jovians were not as numerous as some of the other offshoot tribes of humanity, so they did not put much weight on differences of cultural status. The lords and ladies worked and fought alongside their subjects, and any Jovian was welcome in the household of another; in many ways, the people of the sixteen moons had been like a large extended family. Nobody had ever questioned little Amma’s gift with growing things—especially since she could tell at a glance what was wrong with this field of crops or this stand of trees—and they had all been very proud when she was called into service as the next Senshi of Jupiter. For all their strength, the Jovians could be an almost ridiculously sentimental people, and...

“...think she might have had a dryad ancestor?” Ami asked. “I know you can’t have children by yourselves, but what if a dryad and a human male... can you?” she asked rather abruptly, blushing. “What I mean to say is, is it physically _possible_ for you to have children?”

Sasanna’s blush was as spectacular as Ami’s. “We are not entirely sure. Rheanna felt very strongly for the human she met—his name was Adan—and they certainly... um... tried... but they did not have any children in some fifteen years. This is not exactly an area in which we have much experience,” the dryad admitted hastily. “And even if it is possible, we do not know what such children would be like.”

...Amalthea’s father had been killed fighting a monster of some sort when she was in her second year of Senshi training on the Moon, and the news had hurt her deeply, but she still had her mother, and all her almost-aunts and not-quite-uncles among the Jovian people. She had her friends to help her deal with the loss—and she had the burning comfort of revenge when, years later, after her training was complete, she was able to track down and destroy the creature. Amalthea had made another friend on that journey, as well; Makoto recalled the name ‘Alexia,’ could picture a tall, striking woman with silvery-green hair and eyes, and was convinced there was something important she was forgetting about that friend...

“Mako-chan?”

Makoto gave a start as her attention was pulled back to the relative present. “What?”

“I asked you how you knew how to use that,” Ami said, pointing to the dripvine.

Makoto’s mind raced. “I... I saw you using the others when I came downstairs, and...”

Sasanna shook her head. “We were not drinking then. And even if we had been, how did you know what the vine could provide? How did you know to choose between water or juice or the seasonings? How did you tell Glossolyndaraberonasym to give you water, and not something else? Ami could not.”

“Maybe Ami’s not as smart as she thinks she is,” Makoto mumbled, absently moving her arm to block the elbow jab Ami had intended for her ribs. Suddenly without any appetite, she put down the thorn, got to her feet, and walked away from the table to stand by the window.

“Or maybe you heard Glossolyndaraberonasym telling you what to do,” Sasanna suggested.

Makoto shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything.” That was half true; she’d been hearing some sort of faint whisper since waking up, but she hadn’t picked up any kind of meaning out of it. Certainly nothing about how to make sense of this unusual kitchen. “Plants can’t talk.”

Sasanna sighed; she’d been expecting that, too, sooner or later. “Makoto,” she said, rising and following the girl across the room, “I know that what happened to your parents hurt you very much, but you must stop allowing that pain to interfere with...”

“What did you say?” Makoto whispered, turning from the window to stare at Sasanna.

*Be careful, sister-self,* Glossolyndaraberonasym cautioned.

“How did you know about my parents?” Makoto glared at Ami. “Did you...”

“She did not tell me. You told me. Last night, when I looked into your mind to try and understand why we could hear you but not get through to you ourselves.”

“When you... you looked... you went inside... my mind...?” Makoto repeated. A flicker of memory asserted itself, images she thought had been a dream brought on by worry and homesickness and too much to drink. There had been a very definite sense of another mind at work, a presence that was not hostile or threatening, merely curious.

“We were unsure what to make of you,” Sasanna said. “It was only when I found out about your parents and how your mind associates your mother with plants that we began to understand...”

*Sasanna, look out!*

Makoto’s right hand hit the dryad across the face, hard. The blow wasn’t precisely a punch, but it was a lot more substantial than a slap, and it had the full force of Makoto’s arm behind it. Sasanna was nearly as tall as Makoto, but considerably slimmer; the impact knocked her down and slid her backwards along the floor. A moment later, in the middle of her new appreciation for the strength in that arm and the solid texture of her brother-self’s floor, Sasanna found herself being jerked roughly upwards by fingers which had seized a handful of material at the front of her dress.

“You ‘understand’? How the hell can you understand?! You said yourself that you were born out of this tree! You don’t have parents! You can’t begin to imagine what it feels like to lose them! And what the hell do you think gives you the right to go rummaging around inside other people’s minds without even _asking_ them for permission first?!”

“I’m sorry,” was about the only thing Sasanna could think of to say. Makoto’s reaction to those words was to slam her against the floor as if she meant to push the dryad right through into whatever lay beyond the wooden surface.

“You’re _sorry?!_ That’s supposed to make it better?! You’re SORRY?!!”

“Makoto,” Ami said sternly, moving towards her friend and the dryad, “calm down! You’re...”

“SHUT UP!” Makoto roared, letting go of Sasanna as she whirled to face Ami. Her right hand flashed out again as she moved, the knuckles striking along Ami’s chin with enough strength to send her staggering to the side even as she spun to absorb and lessen the force of the blow. Ignoring the ringing in her ears, Ami slowly turned to face Makoto, one hand automatically going to her already-throbbing chin.

Makoto stared back, her still-outstretched hand beginning to shake violently as the anger on her face melted into shocked horror. “Ami,” she whispered, “I... I didn’t... I’m sorry.” She turned away, her own words—*That’s supposed to make it better?*—echoing inside her head.

“Are you all right, Sasanna?” The dryad got to her feet and nodded mutely. “Good. I want to have a shower, and I need you to tell me how that thing you have upstairs works. Kino-san”—Makoto flinched at the neutral formality—“is going to finish eating and then clean up herself. And after that, we are all going to have a talk.”

Without another word, Ami headed upstairs.

# 

They’d had no trouble getting into the city once they’d joined up with the caravan. Passing through the gates shortly after dawn, Luna had spotted two or three men in the armored uniforms of city guards giving Akhmed undisguised looks of frustrated enmity. Two or three armed men do not customarily argue with ten times their number; at least, they do not do so and _win_ said argument. The bought guards appeared to recognize this fact and let Akhmed by without comment.

Reaching his family’s house in the east end of the city, near the river, had not taken long, and the two strangers—and their cat—had been quickly hurried inside by a number of servants. They were shown to a small but lavishly- decorated apartment in the north wing of the house, given many humble bows, and quietly locked in.

Confronted with a large marble tub and a helpful young maid who gave her name as Meria, Luna had understood the situation immediately; they were to be presented to Akhmed’s family as soon as they could be _made_ presentable. Meria sighed in envious admiration when she saw Usagi’s hair—her own close-cut curls were a rich shade of brown—and made almost as much fuss over the fact that she was pregnant. Channeling Serenity, as it were, Usagi accepted the maid’s assistance with her bath with an air that was pure royalty; Luna’s reaction wasn’t quite so casual, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she had to undress to get into the water. The concept of nudity doesn’t really mean much to a creature whose natural form doesn’t wear clothes, though in spite of that, Luna found herself momentarily grateful that Artemis didn’t follow them into the bathroom.

What really bugged Luna was the water itself. Cats, by and large, don’t like water except to drink. They _can_ swim, but normally, only a few of the larger members of the family will do so by choice, and most of them do it only when necessary to catch a meal that might otherwise get away. Once Usagi and Meria had actually managed to get Luna into the tub, though, she recalled a number—a very great number—of baths back on the Moon, and sat back with a happy sigh. Both girls looked at her in astonishment as she began to make a sound in the back of her throat that was very much like a purr; Usagi had finally asked if she wanted them to leave her alone, and Luna’s response was to flip a handful of water at her. That proved to be a mistake as, after a moment to consider the water dripping down her face, Usagi splashed back. Retaliation quickly led to escalation, and they shortly had a full-scale water war going.

After declaring peace and drying off, they dressed. Usagi’s twentieth-century clothes weren’t really up to the task of a formal meeting even with minor nobility, but Meria provided a simple white dress which, even when let out to accommodate Usagi’s waistline, was more than satisfactory. Luna astonished both girls again by conjuring up a high-necked, sleeveless dress with narrow, divided skirts. The material was the same blue-black shade as her hair, and Usagi was startled to see a knife of some sort hanging lightly from the thin belt at Luna’s waist. The curved blade and hilt were both silver, and there was a white pearl set into the pommel. Meria tried so hard not to look at the knife that she might as well have just stared at it.

Luna considered her reflection in a tall mirror and momentarily narrowed her gaze; just like that, earrings and a necklace were added to her ensemble. The earrings were silver crescents hanging from one point, while the necklace seemed to be a string of oddly-shaped pearls. After a moment, Usagi realized that the curved shapes were not pearls but feline teeth, large enough to have come from something like the panther-form Luna had taken on the other night, and polished until they shone like jewels. Between them and the knife, there was something distinctly businesslike, and perhaps a little feral, about Luna’s new dress. Artemis raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

Meria had no idea how to redo Usagi’s hairstyle, so Luna did it for her and shooed away Meria’s attempts to fix _her_ hair instead, knowing that her own impossibly long tresses would respond to a simple mental command to ‘look like this.’ While Luna worked, the maid produced a small assortment of jewelry, but Usagi shook her head even before Luna told her to decline the offer. She had left her earrings at Michiru’s, but her engagement ring and the ornamented locket holding the ginzuishou were enough to fit with Luna’s true-but-not-true story of an heiress in hiding.

Once Luna had finished arranging Usagi’s hair, Meria had shown them to a sitting room and quietly withdrawn, smiling timidly at Usagi and glancing nervously at Luna—and even more so at Artemis.

“All right, Luna,” Usagi said as soon as the door slid shut. “What are you up to? What’s with the knife?”

Luna shushed her and looked at Artemis, who nodded and padded silently over to the door; Luna looked out the window. The skyline was undeniably beautiful, a mix of slender towers and elaborate palaces, all of them built from white marble, glittering crystal, or a gleaming, smooth-edged opalescent stone. She could count no less than four mana nexi among everything else, and shook her head at the sight before turning back to the room. Artemis had the equivalent of a frown in his eyes, but shook his head. Luna knew Artemis was upset with her for not reminding him about their ability to change form at will, but at least he was being mature enough to recognize the danger and put aside the inevitable argument for a better time.

“We’re in a lot of trouble, Usagi. Do you remember Serenity’s history lessons about Atlantis?”

Usagi frowned in concentration, then looked up sharply. “We’re THERE?!”

“Better to say ‘then.’ This is definitely some point during the Atlantean era, if not on the island itself, and if we’re going to get out of here with ourselves and the timeline in one piece, we’ve got to be very, very careful about what we do. This”—Luna hefted the short, wickedly curved knife—“is called a meehara. Do you remember what that means?”

“It’s the ceremonial weapon of the Feri’al,” Usagi said, her eyes closed as she recited something out of her past, “a warrior sect of the planet Mau...” Usagi’s eyes flashed open. “YOU?!”

Luna put her hands on her hips. “Yes, me. Did it ever occur to you to wonder how a _cat_ knew so much about training _humans_ to fight?”

“Well... I just thought... I mean... do you really know how to use that thing?”

“Yes, Usagi, I do. And I know how to fight without it. I could probably take Jupiter or Uranus in a straight hand-to-hand match, if I really had to.” Luna tilted the knife so that the pearl in the hilt was pointed forward, the curving arc of silver that held it gleaming in the light from the window. “There are nine levels of expertise in the Feri’al ranks, and the silver-capped white pearl is the mark of a sixth-rank fighter. Our society goes back almost twenty thousand years, so the Atlanteans will know what this means, and it’ll make it easier for them to accept the story I gave. Helpful little Meria’s probably giving them a report about it right now.”

“Why didn’t you choose a black pearl?” Artemis asked curiously. “You’re entitled to it.”

“Seventh-rank experts don’t normally take bodyguard assignments for anyone short of royalty, Artemis. And since we’re not claiming that Usagi is a princess, if they saw a black pearl, they’d have probably thought I was here to kill someone.”

“Good point,” Artemis admitted, scratching behind his right ear.

“Are you one of these Furry-Alls, too?” Usagi demanded.

“Feri’al,” Artemis corrected. “And no, I’m not. It’s a female society; no males allowed. I was trained as a Garheer, if you really want to know. Not that it makes any difference,” he added, intentionally souring his tone as he remembered that he was supposed to be angry with Luna, “since I can’t change form.”

“But _they_ don’t know that,” Luna pointed out. “If they see me walking around with a sixth-rank meehara, they’ll figure you must be at least as skilled; Meria kept looking at you like she expected you to turn into a half-ton tiger and start tearing the place apart. If you play the role they’re looking for, they’ll see the fact that you haven’t bothered to take on human form as an indication that you haven’t seen any worthy opponents around.” She smiled. “That _is_ the sort of arrogance Garheer are known for, after all.”

Artemis gave her a flat look filled with flaming daggers.

“Time out,” Usagi said, signaling with her hands before they said or did anything else. “Now, will one of you kindly explain to me exactly what the plan is?”

“We bluff.” Luna considered Usagi. “Our story would be a little more believable if you spoke Atlantean, but that would have its own problems, and we can’t do anything about it now anyway. When we meet Akhmed’s family, try to act like Serenity would have when greeting someone of equal rank. Bow just a little, smile, and greet them respectfully. Don’t mumble or try to make jokes; they’ll probably have someone with a translation spell waiting. After that, play along, keep your mouth shut, and Let Me Do The Talking.”

A knock at the door precluded any further discussion. Meria reentered the room and bowed. “Lord and Lady Neraan will see you now. If you’ll follow me...”

Luna helped Usagi get to her feet and guided her out the door, walking slightly ahead and to the left, holding Usagi’s arm. Artemis trailed a short distance behind and to the right, somehow managing to look dangerously alert through his usual lazy stroll. None of the other Senshi except Venus would have recognized him just then.

Meria led them to a pair of massive wooden doors, heavily inlaid with silver and gold over many elaborate carvings of spectacular beasts. The girl knocked three times, and the doors opened; Meria opened her mouth to speak, and then hesitated, looking a little nervous. She was obviously under orders to make a formal declaration of their arrival—an attempt by one or all of the people in the chamber to find out Usagi’s family name, and whether there was any advantage to be wrung out of it—but Meria had no more idea than her masters what that name was.

“We can announce ourselves,” Luna said, in a voice loud enough to be heard across the wide room beyond the doors. “You can go, Meria.”

The maid smiled thankfully at Luna and curtsied respectfully, first toward the occupants of the room, then at the guests. She smiled at Usagi one more time before scurrying off.

“Ready?” Luna murmured. Usagi straightened her back and squeezed Luna’s arm as an affirmative reply. “Here we go.”

There were four guards stationed in the room, one to either side of the door and the other two flanking a dais on the far end. Their armor was limited to mesh-like vests which had the unusual symbol from the middle of the nine- pointed star emblem sewn over the left breast, but they all had swords and the appearance of knowing how to use them.

The dais had four seats on it—all occupied—and there were three other people there besides. Akhmed was one, dressed in finer and less-dusty clothes and blinking in surprise when he saw the two women again. Two of the seated men looked like older versions of Akhmed—or more precisely, Akhmed looked like a younger version of _them_—which told them that the one in the finer chair was his father, Lord Neraan, and that the other man must be the Lord’s brother. The black-haired, hard-eyed woman to the Lord’s right was most likely his wife, but there was no way to be sure who the bald, black-bearded man in the chair at the far right was. There was a slender young man with dark blue hair and eyes standing at attention next to him. All of them were finely dressed and very important-looking; Lady Neraan seemed angry about something, while the rest, at least on the surface, ranged from mildly intrigued to utterly disinterested.

It was the robed and cowled figure in the corner behind Akhmed and his uncle that worried Luna as she and Usagi came to a stop before the group. She kept one eye on it as they both bowed; as a servant, hers was a real bow, whereas Usagi’s was more of a gracious head nod. Artemis sat back on his haunches near Usagi’s feet and looked around the room with a slow, lazy ease, shedding arrogance like fur.

“By what right does a lowly servant order the retainers of another house?” Lady Neraan snapped.

Luna rose from the bow and fixed a mostly neutral expression on the woman. Mostly neutral. “I spoke on the authority of my mistress, Lady. And on my own.” The placement of the meehara on her right front hip was quite deliberate, since it made the weapon impossible to miss. The brother Lords certainly noticed, and exchanged a considering glance.

Lady Neraan didn’t appear quite so observant as her husband and brother- in-law. “The authority of a child who claims noble heritage and yet travels with only one servant and a pet?” she said, sneering. “The self-styled heir of an unnamed family apparently so crude in its ways as to be unable to teach its children the use of a civilized tongue?”

“If this, my hostess, is your definition of ‘civil,’ then I am pleased—nay, I am proud to admit to ignorance of your mode of speech.” Usagi’s unexpected words nearly gave Luna a heart attack even as they tipped her off to the shadowed wizard’s use of a two-way translation spell. She kicked herself mentally for failing to notice that she’d been hearing the offensive Lady Neraan’s words in her own native language instead of Atlantean, even though she’d been expecting a spell of this sort to be in use.

“Since you knew of my inability,” Usagi continued, “I can assume that you have listened to your son recount the details of our initial meeting. I know from his courtesy during our short travel that he is a man of integrity, so I can also assume that he would have recounted in full the reasons my guardian gave him for what prevents my lack of a formal introduction. Tell me: is it the word of ‘a lowly servant’ that you disbelieve, or the word of your own son?”

Lady Neraan’s jaw opened, clicked shut, and opened again. “The former,” she said shortly.

“Ah. Then I will say to you now that Luna is no mere servant. Her rise to the sixth rank of the Feri’al sisterhood of claws is in itself sufficient testament to her loyalty and trustworthiness; she is, moreover, the daughter of a proud line of her race and a noble in her own right, with the same honor to be found in any human bloodline—honor which you have twice questioned. She has been my guardian and teacher for years, and I consider her one of my dearest friends; I can think of no one more qualified to speak on my behalf where I otherwise could not speak at all. And by the magic of your wizard, you know my words to be true.”

Luna was suddenly so proud of Usagi that she thought her heart might burst. The girl had wrapped herself fully in the attitude and manner befitting a queen, not only answering the challenges made by Lady Neraan but blowing them entirely out of the water and launching an all-out assault of her own. She had been respectful to the still-silent Lord Neraan by complimenting his son, while neatly stringing the Lady up for her rudeness. She had given Luna the full and unquestionable authority to speak in her place and neatly sidestepped the need to repeat a story whose details she was only half-comfortable with. She had reminded them of the fact that having a wizard employ spells on a guest without first obtaining the guest’s permission was a breach of etiquette, but had at the same time turned that minor insult to her advantage, verifying the truth of her statement.

Stepping forward, the wizard pushed back his cowl, revealing a youngish face with prematurely white hair and green-blue eyes that were a little too wise for his apparent age. He raised both hands, backs to Usagi, thumbs pointed outwards and with his fingers extended, then bowed his head respectfully between them. Luna recognized it as an apology of the most profound kind, since the display of the man’s fingers prevented him from casting most spells without everyone seeing, which would leave him at a decided disadvantage should the slighted party desire to make a more physical answer to his insult. It was also the gesture of a student humbly acknowledging the skill of a master. Usagi’s return nod was formal acceptance of the apology; her following smile and roll of the eyes silently added that she didn’t hold it against him.

The not-quite young wizard smiled faintly, then bowed to the three men on the dais and murmured, “With your permission, my Lords.” He turned to Usagi, bowed again with the words, “My Lady,” and then left the room, taking his magic with him.

After the wizard had gone, Luna turned to the Lords. “Shall we begin again, gentlemen?”

“That might be best,” the elder brother agreed, ignoring the outraged look from his wife. “Will you and your mistress accept chairs?”

“I prefer to stand,” Luna declined politely, “but my lady would be most grateful for a seat.”

The Lord nodded to his brother, who gestured to the nearest guard, who quickly retrieved a relatively plain wooden chair from another room and set it next to Usagi with a bow. She nodded her thanks to the Lords as Luna helped her settle into the seat.

Lord Neraan introduced himself and the other individuals on the dais. His given name was Jormen, his brother was Jherahd, and his wife’s name was Sheryndra. The bearded bald man was Grand Master Merchant Kullen Da’duin, the wealthiest and most personally influential of Neraan’s trading allies. The young man next to Da’duin was his aide, introduced as simply ‘Lund,’ and of course they already knew Akhmed. Lord Neraan didn’t mention the departed wizard. Luna, in turn, gave her standing with the Feri’al, and introduced Artemis as a Garheer m’ram’ha; it meant something like ‘mighty-clawed elite stalker of the shadows’ when translated into any human language, and was in fact his actual rank, about three steps away from the top of his order.

The noble brothers and the merchant apparently realized that, since their eyes flickered briefly to the cat.

“As your mistress pointed out,” Lord Neraan said next, speaking carefully, “Akhmed has already given us his account of your meeting in the desert, including how you came to be alone in the middle of nowhere in the first place. It is not a practice in this household to question the word of a noble guest”— he was very careful not to look at his wife while saying this—“but you must admit, your story is... difficult to accept.”

“Not only difficult,” Luna agreed, “but also dangerous. If, for example, you choose to believe that we are lying, then you must question all our actions carefully and determine who and what we really are; runaway slaves, disguised bandits, agents hired by your financial rivals, or perhaps worse things. Naturally, you would need proof of the falsehood and our true intentions to safely bring the Emperor’s justice on us, for otherwise it would be your word against my mistress’ claim, and if she turned out to be telling the truth, you would have affronted her entire family. On the other hand, if you accept her claim as genuine, then you also accept the rest of her story; if you choose to aid us, you run the risk of becoming involved in potentially dangerous affairs that do not concern you, but if you do _not_ aid us, then you are again faced with the ill will of her family. Did I leave anything out?”

“No,” Lord Neraan said simply.

“You see our dilemma,” his brother added. “If we accept your story without confirmation, we risk jeopardizing our own interests, yet if we try to seek confirmation, we are faced with the same problem.”

“I understand the situation this puts you in,” Luna replied, “and I give you my word, in both my mistress’ name and my own, that our only desires are to remain out of public attention and return safely to where we belong.” She thought hard and fast, then decided to risk the rest of it. “In all honesty, I must add that, while I myself will take almost any means necessary to ensure the safety of my charge, so long as you do not actively seek to cause us harm, no action will be taken against you even if you choose to withhold your support from us. Similarly, even if you do decide to provide us aid and shelter, you will not receive any reward or compensation for it; once we return home, I would be very much surprised if you ever saw or heard of us again.”

“I see.” Lord Neraan looked at his advisors, then turned back to Luna and Usagi. “Well, it seems we have much to think on. Until we reach a final decision, I can at least extend the temporary hospitality of our home to you all.” He signaled the two guards at the doors. “Ihanus and Bedan will see you back to your rooms, and Meria will be there if you need anything. I will send Akhmed to give you our decision in due course.”

Luna bowed. “Thank you, Lord Neraan.” She helped Usagi to stand, and they left the room with one of the guards leading, the other following at a respectful distance. Midway through sauntering out the door, Artemis stopped to consider both guards from head to toe, then flipped his tail in a supremely dismissive manner and seemed to forget all about them.

After the door closed, Lady Neraan let out a vicious sound. “The impertinence! The utter gall!”

“My thoughts exactly,” Da’duin observed in an dry undertone, glancing at his allies to let them know who he was really talking about. Lady Neraan missed the look, nodding fiercely as she took the master merchant’s statement for a declaration of like thinking.

Jormen suppressed a sigh. His wife had a jealous streak which was as wide as the desert, and not nearly as merciful. She also adhered to a rigid code of social conduct with a near-religious intensity; the strange foreign girl’s almost ethereal beauty would have set off Sheryndra’s former trait even if the Nekoron female hadn’t insulted her by what the Lady saw as a failure to follow protocol.

Nothing to be done about it now, though. “Any thoughts on who the girl really is?”

“If she’s not a noble’s daughter,” Jherahd said, scratching at his cheek thoughtfully, “then she’s the best actress I’ve ever seen. There are Ladies of the Great City itself who can’t pull off a tenth of that poise even half as well as she did.”

“Indeed,” Da’duin agreed. “I’d say the daughter of a planetary governor, at least, or perhaps one of the subject sovereigns on the outer worlds, but with that hair... I just don’t know.”

“With two such highly-ranked bodyguards,” Jormen mused, “could she be from Mau itself?”

Da’duin, who amongst them had the most knowledge of distant worlds, admitted it was possible. “But I would tend to doubt it,” he added. “A peculiarity of the shapechanging powers of the Nekoro is that their hair remains the same color no matter what form they take, and _that_ color just isn’t in their bloodline. Lund?”

“She is entirely human, my Lords,” the young man said, “as is her unborn child. A daughter, I think, but I can’t be sure.”

The brothers and the merchant exchanged another look, and Da’duin turned to his aide. “You can’t be sure?” Lund had certain limited gifts of the mind which did not rely on magic, and could tell things about people at a single glance that would normally take a great deal of effort to discover. Those gifts had earned him an honored place in Da’duin’s service, and had never failed him—until now.

“The two Nekoron are what they appear and claim to be,” the young aide replied, his eyes locked on a point beyond the far wall. “I detect no powers in either of them beyond what their heritage and training would provide.”

“And the young lady?” Da’duin asked.

“There’s an aura of some kind around her, Master; it interfered when I tried to get a lock on her powers. And...” Lund hesitated. “There was a moment, when she was declaring her trust and affection for the female Nekoron, that I caught a flash of something else. It was only for an instant, but it seemed to be coming from her, her unborn child, _and_ that curious locket she’s wearing, all at once. And it was strong, sir. Very strong.”

“A personal mana lens?” Jherahd suggested, referring to a type of device intended to focus and magnify the latent magical powers of the user.

“I don’t know, my Lord. I’m not sure I _want_ to know,” Lund added under his breath, so quietly that even his master didn’t hear.

“Possession of a personal lens would back up her claim to nobility considerably,” Jormen mused.

“Unless she stole it,” Sheryndra put in. “That would explain why she doesn’t want to go to the authorities.”

“Except that we have her word in support of everything her bodyguard told Akhmed,” Jormen reminded his wife. “And I think if we speak with Erridar, he’ll confirm that every word the girl said was true.”

“Which only leaves us to wonder about what she and the she-cat _didn’t_ say,” Jherahd observed dryly.

“True,” his brother admitted, “but even those omissions—whatever they were—only strengthen the girl’s claim. An impostor would have tried to give all the information she could about her supposed family, whereas most slaves wouldn’t have known enough to give any information of use. And Meria would have told us immediately if the girl bore a slave’s mark. As it is, her story tells us just enough of what we need to know, and leaves out just enough of what she needs to keep secret for her own safety, to sound genuine.”

“So you believe her?” Sheryndra demanded hotly.

“I do,” Lord Neraan said firmly. “I think...” There was a knock at the door, one of the guards moving to answer it even before anyone on the dais could tell him to do so.

“Papa? Mama?” A girl with dark blue eyes and long, jet-black hair entered the room, the trailing ends of her pale blue dress weaving around behind her. Her face, filled with the beauty of youth but also an odd pallor, lit up with a spectacular smile when she looked at Akhmed. “I saw Mahdib out in all the commotion in the yard and thought you might be back, Akha.” She pouted, pursed lips a red rose against the white of her cheeks. “Why didn’t you come to see me?”

Akhmed smiled. “I had to speak with Father about something very important, Kaiya, but I was going to go straight to you once we were done, I promise.” He walked over to the girl—she was a head shorter than he, with the same kind of delicacy in her body one expects to see in tiny crystal sculpture—and enfolded her in a hug. “Forgive me?”

“I’ll think about it.” Then she giggled and returned the hug. “Oh, silly, silly, Akha. Of _course_ I forgive you. But who’s the woman you came in with? Or the one in the cloak?” She glared around him at the adults on the dais. “You haven’t made my favorite brother go and get married without telling me, have you Papa?”

“No, Kaiya. I wouldn’t do that. Actually, the women—there’s two of them—were why Akhmed had to speak with me. The one in the cloak is a girl about your age; Akhmed found her and her guards in the desert, and they’re going to be staying with us for at least a little while.”

“Really?” Kaiya asked brightly. “I think I’d like to meet her, Papa.”

“I was just going to speak to her,” Akhmed said. “You can come along, if you’d like...”

“No!” Lady Neraan snapped. “I may have to put up with having that... that _creature_ stay under my own roof, but I refuse to let _my_ daughter be seen in company with a pair of alien savages and an ill-mannered, runaway child! Do you hear me, Kaiya? You are NOT to go anywhere near...”

“Sheryndra,” Jormen cut in sharply, “enough. You’ve made it clear that you don’t like the girl; fine. But she _is_ a fellow noble, and you _will_ show her the same respect you would show to any other guest in this house.”

Lady Neraan’s left eye twitched spectacularly. “As my Lord commands,” she said finally, speaking in tones of pure ice. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Kaiya...”

“...is going to be introduced to the young lady whether you like it or not,” Jormen finished.

There was a silence similar to that one hears right before a volcano decides to blow itself apart; then Sheryndra spoke. “As. You. Say. Husband.” Then she swept out of the room, radiating fury like heat from an oven.

Kaiya watched her mother go. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she? The girl, I mean. Mother wouldn’t be so upset, otherwise.”

“You know your mother,” Lord Neraan said, sighing. “And speaking of which, gentlemen, I think it might be best if I go after her, before she has a chance to start breaking things.”

“Go on,” Da’duin said. “Jherahd and I can go over the shipping schedules just as well without you.” Lord Neraan was already halfway out of the room, and the master merchant shook his head. “One reason why I never married,” he confided to Jherahd. “Too much of a distraction from the work.”

“Fun, though,” the younger Lord Neraan chuckled. “The study?”

Da’duin nodded in agreement, and they both stood. “Lund,” the master merchant said, turning when he was halfway across the room, “I’ll be busy for the next several hours; I’d like you to consult with Erridar and see what he knows about mana lenses and other magical devices. If that meets with your approval,” he added, glancing at Jherahd.

“I’ve no objections,” Jherahd said. “I’d like to be sure of what that device was, myself, if only for a little peace of mind.”

Lund bowed as the two older men left the room, then turned to the two siblings and bowed again. “If you’ll excuse me...”

“Just a minute,” Akhmed told him. “Kaiya, would you go on ahead? I’d like to speak with Lund for a minute.”

She smiled. “Okay, Akha. But don’t take _too_ long.” She drifted out of the room. Both young men watched her go, Akhmed with a fond smile, Lund with an expression that was almost expressionless except for something in his eyes.

“So,” Akhmed said, startling Lund, “what didn’t you tell them?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Nice try, my friend, but I saw you mutter something to yourself there after you were done talking. What did you see? If I’m about to take Kaiya in to meet someone who’s carrying a mana inversion bomb or some other awful weapon, I’d like to know.”

Lund sighed. “Nothing like that, Akhmed. If it were an inherently destructive power, that one flash might have been enough to level most of this manor. I didn’t feel threatened so much as... overwhelmed.”

Akhmed waited. “And?”

Lund sighed again. “You’ve picked up an annoying habit somewhere along the line, you know that?”

“So I’m told. What else did you see?”

“Nothing that makes any sense. I need to consult with Erridar before I can be sure of anything.”

“All right. But let me know what you figure out, okay?” Lund nodded.

“Akha,” Kaiya’s mock-stern voice came in from the hall, “you’re making me wait.”

“Sorry,” Akhmed called back to her. He turned back to Lund, said, “We’ll talk later,” and then quickly left the room, making many grandiose apologies before offering his arm to his sister and leading her away. Lund watched them go, his eyes never leaving the slender girl in blue until she vanished around a corner.

Face expressionless once more, Lund went looking for Erridar, silently trying to figure out a dozen things at once.

# 

In the time it took to go from the sitting room to the apartments where Usagi and the cats had been shown, Kaiya asked a hundred questions of her brother. What was their new guest’s name? What did she look like? Where did she come from?

Akhmed answered as many questions as he could. He gave Usagi’s name and the names of her two guardians, then explained to his curious little sister why first names were all the strange girl could give. The rest of the questions, he dodged, saying he wouldn’t want to ruin Kaiya’s first impressions. He did warn her that Usagi didn’t speak Atlantean, but if anything, that only seemed to make Kaiya more eager to meet her.

When they reached the apartment, Akhmed again asked Kaiya to wait, and went in first. Usagi and Luna had been talking in that unusual language, and looked up as he entered the main room.

“Well?”

“My mother had some objections,” Akhmed told Luna. Then he looked at Usagi and did his best to convey the rest of the message in a smile. “But you can stay.”

He was fairly certain Usagi understood even before Luna translated it for her. “There’ll be a formal dinner this evening,” Akhmed explained after Luna had finished. “Meria will be able to help you with clothes for the occasion, since you’ll be meeting the rest of the family, but there was one person who sort of wanted to meet Usagi right away.”

Luna froze momentarily. “Who?”

“My younger sister, Kaiya. She walked in on us right before Father sent me here, and she was curious about you.” Akhmed considered Luna’s alert readiness carefully; so did Usagi, who poked her friend in the arm and demanded to know what she was being so tense about all of a sudden. Akhmed caught his sister’s name in Luna’s reply, and Usagi’s face took on the same curious quality he had just seen on Kaiya. Akhmed suspected that meant that she wanted to meet his little sister, an impression confirmed by Luna’s reluctant agreement. He turned back to the door and opened it.

Kaiya drifted into the room. One of these days, Akhmed was going to ask his sister how she did that; her feet always touched the ground, but she moved around as if she were walking on air, silently, smoothly. He suspected that some of it had to do with how small she was, but lightness alone somehow didn’t seem enough.

Kaiya was sweeping into a polite curtsey almost as soon as she was through the door, eyes demurely lowered, so it was only as she began to rise that she actually saw Usagi. Her eyes went first to the hair, and seemed amazed, then to the belly, and became startled; Usagi touched both in a defensive manner.

“Akhmed,” Kaiya said suspiciously, glancing sidelong at her brother, “are _you_ responsible for this?”

Akhmed’s reply was to choke and go bug-eyed and stammering. Usagi looked at him and asked Luna what had just happened; she laughed when she got the translation. Getting Kaiya’s attention, Usagi pointed to herself—her belly, actually—then to Akhmed, and shook her head, holding up her left hand and wiggling the ring finger.

“Not Akhmed,” she said, still shaking her head. “Mamoru.”

“’Ma-mo-ru’?” Kaiya repeated, glancing at Luna. “Is that her husband’s name?”

“Her fiancee,” Luna replied. Getting the startled looks anew, she elaborated, again sticking to the truth in a general sort of way. “It’s been arranged since before they were born, and they’ve acted almost like they _were_ married from the first day they met. I think Usagi decided there wasn’t any need to wait and took the ‘act’ one step further.”

“I wish I could get away with something like that,” Kaiya said enviously.

“Kaiya!”

“Oh, hush, Akha. I’m not going to do anything silly. Mother would fall over dead if I tried,” she added with a roll of her eyes. Then she looked at Usagi. “May I?” she asked, glancing at Luna with one hand slightly extended.

Usagi understood the gesture, smiled, and pulled Kaiya’s hand forward. They both felt it quite clearly when ChibiUsa kicked or punched a moment later; Usagi frowned down at her unborn daughter, while Kaiya appeared amazed. And sad, somehow. Longing. Luna noticed it even if Usagi didn’t, took in Kaiya’s pale, too-delicate features, and did some mental math. A quick look at Akhmed—who was watching his sister with a mix of fondness and a different sort of sadness— confirmed part of the answer she’d reached, and Luna sighed inwardly.

Akhmed shook off his mood as the two girls began to talk back and forth, Luna working overtime to translate for both of them. From the looks on their faces, Usagi and Kaiya had decided to be friends, so he quietly excused himself.

Artemis followed him into the front room of the apartment. “That dinner you mentioned; what time will it begin?”

“The sixth hour past High,” Akhmed replied. “If there’s anything in particular your mistress would like, just let Meria know when she returns.”

Artemis thought about it. “Actually, it might be less painful for everybody if you and I went down to the kitchens right now and had a few words with your cooks. Luna would see to it, normally, except that”—he looked back at the three females, who were all laughing about something—“I don’t think any of them are going to be happy with us if we try to break _that_ up.”

The young nobleman nodded sagely, and they left the apartments together, heading down through the halls but not actually saying much.

“How exactly do two high-ranking warriors from a planet of cats wind up as bodyguards to a human heiress?” Akhmed asked suddenly.

“I’ve asked myself that question a few times. Particularly in the last couple of days,” Artemis added sourly. “We were actually in service to Usagi’s mother first. Luna’s family traveled quite a lot, and she met Usagi’s mother when they were both a little older than Usagi is now. I’m told they took to each other right away; I _know_ Luna spent several years drifting back and forth between her training on Mau and visiting the Mo-anor”—Artemis cursed mentally for the slip-up and hoped Akhmed would take the ‘mispronunciation’ of ‘manor’ as a feline accent—“before she finally entered the family’s service.”

Akhmed nodded. “And you?”

“Uh...” Artemis coughed, then mumbled, “Ilostabet.” Akhmed started to nod again, then looked down at Artemis with a thoroughly confused expression.

“A... bet?”

“Yeah. There’s a sort of undeclared rivalry between the nine warrior societies on Mau; our younger warriors hone their skills by running around and playing tricks on each other, and the older members of the societies generally do the same under the guise of ‘helping old friends stay sharp.’” Artemis couldn’t quite keep a note of pain out of his voice. He hadn’t been that old on his last visit to Mau—*How long has it been?* he thought with a swell of homesickness—but he was certainly the oldest member of his society now; the same went for Luna. If either the Feri’al or the Garheer were still around.

Shaking his head, he went on with the story. “One of the aspects of that undeclared rivalry, at least among the Garheer, is that a warrior has to show up a similarly-ranked member of another society before he can earn his advancement. Prove his skills, as it were. I was due for consideration when we heard that Luna had gone into service, and some of my friends dared me to try and sneak into the manor. I thought it was a terrific idea, so I submitted my proposed plan to the masters; I’d sneak in, leave one of our society medallions where Luna’s mistress was sure to find it first the next morning, then sneak out, all without the fourth-rank Feri’al ever realizing I was there. They approved, and I set out in a blaze of anticipated glory.” Artemis had his head up proudly.

“She caught you.”

The white cat’s head fell. “Oh yeah. I found out later that Luna and Usagi’s mother had their quarters connected, but I didn’t know at the time, or I would have gone in through one of the windows. As it was, I got four steps into the main room of the apartment when Luna came out of a side door, saw me, and pulled out that knife of hers. I was in human form at the time, too, so I managed to disarm her, but she hit me over the head with a flower vase and then went panther. I tried to do the same, of course, but that blow to the head must have jarred something loose, because I turned into _this_”—he shrugged his feline shoulders—“instead. Sort of like thinking ‘cat’ when I meant to think ’big cat.’ It took me a minute to realize what had happened, and she was already pouncing at me, so I ran for it. Naturally, Luna chased me, and with the tiled floor in that room, we were both sliding around and crashing into things, which brought about half of the household running. Luna caught me just as the lights went on, then turned back into human form and held me up by the scruff of the neck for everyone to see.”

’Everyone’ being Serenity, her mother and father and two older brothers, the then-current Mercury, Venus, and Neptune, and about fifty members of the royal guard. Getting out of that mess without causing an interplanetary incident was probably the single greatest achievement of Artemis’ entire life to date. Needless to say, the masters had not been impressed; Serenity, on the other hand, had laughed herself silly. Most of her assembled entourage had been fighting to keep a collectively straight face, too; that room had been _annihilated._

“After they finally let me go,” Artemis continued, “I went home and worked harder than ever. It was five or six years later when word reached Mau that Usagi’s family was looking for a new instructor for their soldiers”—the old Master of Arms had retired—“and the masters decided if I could earn that position, it would make up for the mess I’d gotten into before.” Artemis scratched at his left ear. “It was sort of a tournament-style test of skill, and I won, but you can imagine what happened when the family found out who I was. Obviously, they decided to let me stay, so I’d repaired the damage to my honor. And it had Luna in a taking for months, so I was pretty pleased with myself.”

Artemis didn’t tell Akhmed the real reason why he’d gone back. Shapeshifting creatures can usually recognize other shapeshifters when they get close enough, if not on sight; members of the same species can typically tell each other at a glance, no matter what form any of them are in at the same.

When Luna had appeared in that doorway, there had been nothing that would have suggested—to a human, anyway—that she wasn’t just a dark-haired girl in a creamy white nightdress, but Artemis had seen every one of her other forms as well, from the tiny housecat to the huge panther, all superimposed over and mingled with that girl. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful thing he’d ever imagined, and the utter fearlessness with which she’d attacked him—in a nightdress that barely covered her legs, where he was fully armed for a stealthy night mission—had captured his heart.

He’d been _so_ enraptured that she’d almost driven that bloody meehara INTO the heart she’d just stolen, although at the time, Artemis had believed he could have died happy. That, if anything, was a sure sign that he’d lost not only his heart, but his mind as well.

As Minako would say, he had it baaaaaad from day one.

“So you train the house guards?”

Artemis came out of his reverie and nodded. “And some of the family, too, from time to time. Mostly I work with their personal bodyguards—Usagi’s, for example, I’ve been training for the last four or five years. Some of them, anyway. And Luna helps out there, too, when she’s not busy with Usagi herself.”

Akhmed nodded. “I’ve had some formal training myself. Perhaps you’d care to spar with me at some point?”

*Uh-oh.* Artemis stopped, covering the sudden pulse of worry by sitting down on the floor and scrutinizing Akhmed carefully. How to refuse him without insulting him or tipping off the fact that cat-form was the only one Artemis could assume?

The white cat realized something; he hadn’t actually _tried_ to shift forms yet. He’d been too busy devoting his energy to being upset with Luna and disappointed in himself—to say nothing of the effort that had gone into trying to make sense of a lifetime’s worth of suddenly unlocked and kick-started memories—to even consider trying.

He did so now.

Aside from a momentary stiff feeling, the sensation of muscles that have been allowed to get out of shape now trying to do a task they haven’t attempted in a long time, it was incredibly easy. The radical change in sensory inputs—a less precise nose, ears that weren’t as sensitive and strangely-shaped besides, eyes that saw a few more colors than he was used to—only fazed Artemis for a moment, and the stiffness was countered by the knowledge that he’d worn this form almost since kittenhood, when the power of transformation first manifested in the Nekoron people.

The young man who had replaced the white cat was a little taller than Akhmed, somewhere in the comfortable area between ‘lithe’ and ‘muscular,’ possessed of a fine-featured, roguish handsomeness. Long hair, the same pure white as his vanished fur, reached to his shoulders on the sides and halfway down his back. The uniform that had appeared about him consisted of a loose- fitting white shirt and pants, with wavy patterns of silver thread along the arms and legs. The gold buttons of the shirt were open about halfway down to reveal a vest of extremely fine silver mesh and the edges of the white undershirt between that and his skin. His belt had a gold buckle in the shape of the smaller crescent on his forehead, and at each hip hung a s’srah, a triple-bladed weapon designed to mimic feline claws. The steel blades and grips—a combination of handle and guard for the knuckles—were worked with silver designs.

Artemis bowed. “I would be honored.” Then he smiled. “But in the meantime, I think I’d better change back, or I’m going to scare the wits out of your cooks when we reach the kitchen.”

They both laughed and continued on.

# 

The shower was made hot by the same process of pressure and energy as Glossolyndaraberonasym used to cook food. It wasn’t just water, either; Ami could feel a distinctly soapy tingle at work. Sasanna stood a short distance away, explaining some of the substances that were mixed in with the water, but she was extremely subdued as she did so, not making eye contact.

After drying off with a towel of highly absorptive moss, Ami looked around for her clothes or the borrowed dress, and Sasanna—still speaking softly, her eyes downcast—told her that the small chambers where she kept clothes also cleaned them carefully over the course of a day, so her things were only about half-cleaned. She had put the spare dress away as well, and quietly asked Ami to set aside the towel and stand in the middle of the chamber.

“Glossolyndaraberonasym can provide you with something that will fit better,” the dryad said. “If you will let him.”

Six corncob-shaped objects descended from the ceiling on thick lengths of vine, each of them trailing faint wisps of white from the point at the bottom. From those points extended dozens of very slender creepers, and Sasanna had the nearest one rise so that Ami could see the tiny hole in the tip. The dryad closed her thumb and forefinger on the tip and pulled back, drawing forth a nearly-invisible thread.

“I do not know how your kind makes clothing, but this is how we make most of ours. You may find the experience more than a little strange, but Glossolyndaraberonasym will not hurt you.”

“Just tell him to watch where he puts his creepers,” Ami said, feeling more than a little self-conscious.

The next six minutes were among the most unusual in Ami’s life. Some of the creepers took measurements—they had a very light touch, and would have landed the tree in SERIOUS trouble had he been human—while the others began to weave back and forth around each other in a rapid, impossible-to-follow pattern, rather like watching a hundred spiders at work at once. While the clothes took shape, Sasanna continued to explain things about dryad fashion. Of several things she learned during those few minutes, Ami wasn’t sure which was worse; the fact that the species didn’t wear undergarments, or that Glossolyndaraberonasym, having studied her and Makoto’s clothes, offered— through Sasanna—to try and provide some.

The tree wove everything in three major pieces—left, right, and back—according to the measurements, then brought those pieces together around Ami, assembling the pieces and making any last-minute corrections necessary. The end result was a short-sleeved blue dress, essentially the same design as Sasanna’s, scaled down to Ami’s smaller form.

As the creepers withdrew at last, Ami adjusted the dress slightly. It fit perfectly and felt _very_ soft, the fine thread more like silk than anything else she could think of to compare it to, although not exactly the same. At the same time, it was a distracting sort of thing to wear, because for the sake of a better fit, the dress clung in places Ami wasn’t entirely used to having her clothes cling; she took a moment to wonder what Ryo’s reaction would be, seeing her in something this lovely, but the pleasant image was quickly dispelled by a pointed self-reminder that Ryo was a very long way away, and she had more immediate problems to worry about.

Once the dress was finished, Sasanna handed over a comb—wooden, of course, with teeth that were thicker cousins of the pine needle—and a small patch of green moss. Ami wasn’t sure what the moss was for until she noticed a similar spot of the stuff covering Sasanna’s left cheek; beneath it, the swelling of the bruise had gone down considerably. Her own jaw was well into the stinging ache phase, so Ami pressed the stuff into place. It tingled weirdly, a little like the sensation involved whenever Hotaru healed someone, and most of the soreness went away.

“It will hold itself in place,” Sasanna said, “until it has healed the damage. That should not take long.”

They headed downstairs.

Makoto was gone. For the first time since breakfast, Ami looked directly at Sasanna.

“She went into the forest almost as soon as we went upstairs,” the dryad reported. “And she left this behind.” From a pocket somewhere in her dress, Sasanna produced Makoto’s communicator.

“She doesn’t want me to find her, is that it?” Sasanna shook her head. “Too bad.”

Once she had it set to scan for the proper life-signs, Ami’s computer had no trouble locking in on Makoto, the only other human for a hundred kilometers in any direction. She was moving northwest, at a speed which told Ami she’d transformed, and had been going flat-out this entire time. Catching up was not going to be easy.

“Ami,” Sasanna said, “please, let her have some time alone. She’s not in any danger; my sisters and I can...”

“You’re not exactly in a position of trust, here,” Ami reminded Sasanna bluntly, pulling out her transformation pen. “Any of you. I’m not much happier about what you did to Makoto than she is, and when I get back with her, you’re going to have some questions to answer.”

“I didn’t mean to do anything to hurt her,” Sasanna objected. “Linking minds is a natural thing for my kind; it is part of how we express friendship.”

“I don’t care if you declared your undying love, swore marriage vows, and offered her the crowns of three nations in the bargain!” Ami shouted, forcing Sasanna to back up a step. “That doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t have any right to do it in the first place without at least _asking_ Makoto if she wanted you digging around in her mind! And whether or not you meant to hurt her is completely besides the point, now, because you did hurt her!”

“I know,” Sasanna whispered. “I wouldn’t have understood it before I linked with her last night, but I know why she’s angry with me and why it hurt her so much and... and I didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Ami said flatly. “You made the wrong one, and now you’re going to have to live with it.” Sparing one last angry look at the sad-eyed dryad, she raised her pen. “MERCURY CRYSTAL POWER, MAKE-UP!”

Bolts of sub-zero energy hissed out from the gleaming mass of power gathered around her upraised right hand, exactly as they were supposed to, but when the coiling energy swung back in towards her, it shattered, like jets of water striking a solid surface. That was the only warning Ami got that something was about to go wrong, and when it did so a split second later, she screamed.

Ami always felt a momentary chill when she changed into Mercury, the brisk and invigorating rush of her gathering power, but now she felt as if her bones had frozen and exploded, icy knives erupting through her body from the inside. She dropped her computer—its alarm was going wild, too little and too late—but couldn’t let go of the transformation pen, its surface so bitterly cold she feared it had frozen to her hand. Sasanna raised her arms to shield her face and stared through the thin space between them in horror at the tiny blizzard that had taken shape around Ami’s nearly-vanished form.

When it worked properly, the transformation took only seconds, and this malfunction did not last any longer, but it ended by blasting out in all directions, an icy explosion that knocked Sasanna to the floor and sprayed snow and sleet across the entire chamber. She got back to her feet with a groan and quickly looked around.

Ice caked the walls and ceiling where the deflected bolts of energy had struck, the sort of white-rimmed black ice one finds after months of a hard winter. Sasanna ignored the new decorations and ran over to Ami, who lay prone in the middle of the room on a blanket of snow. Her pen had fallen from her fingers, and Sasanna kicked it as far away as she could, then carefully knelt down and reached out to check, not for a pulse, but for a thought, even an unconscious one.

Ami’s flesh was bitterly cold to the touch and nearly as pale as the snow around her; the sense of her mind was chaotic, her awareness reeling from what it had just been through, retreating behind barriers of willpower and going deeper and deeper. Sasanna was alarmed by the disorganization, and at how far Ami’s mind had fallen back; she had to go into her subconscious to heal, yes, but if she went too far, she might not get back.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Sasanna moaned bitterly. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Brother-self, what have I done? What do I do _now?_”

Glossolyndaraberonasym didn’t answer, but Sasanna understood the meaning behind the silence. Her brother-self didn’t speak because he didn’t have to; she already knew as well as he what had to be done next.

Sasanna sat on the floor and gathered Ami close, and spared a moment to look at the girl’s closed eyes. “I know you can’t hear me,” she said quietly, “but I was telling the truth. And I know you were, too. Maybe I did have to do it, but I could have waited, I _should_ have asked... and I can’t do either now. If you...”—she shivered and took a deep breath—“if you decide to hate me for this, I’ll understand.”

She put one hand on either side of Ami’s head, sent out a mental message— *I’m sorry.*—then closed her eyes, bowed her head, and entered Ami’s mind.

# 

Jupiter didn’t really know where she was going, or even why she bothered to run at all; even with her communicator back at the tree, Mercury could track her down in no time. That realization finally took hold in her mind, and she slowed, then stopped, transforming back to normal and sitting down with her back to a tree, knees drawn up and head bowed. She tried to think, but every thought that formed in her mind started on one problem and finished on another, after switching to a third about halfway through, something like ‘Mama/Papa-Ami- Sasanna’ going around and around.

Makoto’s body had caused her some problems in the past—for its height, its improbable strength, its almost blatant development—but although she had been embarrassed from time to time, she’d never hated it before.

She’d also never hit one of her friends before. Oh, she wielded a mean pillow at slumber parties, and she didn’t hold back when it came to their battle exercises, either, but this wasn’t the same thing at all. In her mind’s eye, Makoto could see Ami staggering to the side, could still see—and feel—her knuckles striking Ami’s jaw. Her right hand stung, partly from hitting Ami, partly from hitting Sasanna.

She wasn’t at all sorry for hitting Sasanna. Not one little bit. What the dryad had done went beyond a mere violation of privacy, and it was only the memory of Sasanna’s presence in her own mind—the certain sense that nothing was being forced or altered—which allowed Makoto to keep the psychological impact of that intrusion from crossing the line into rape. That the dryad had been gentle and understanding only made things worse; it had allowed her to get in deeper, to bypass the defenses Makoto knew her mind would have slammed down against an enemy.

It didn’t help matters that _those_ memories had been the ones Sasanna had seen. Pain was supposed to lessen with time. That was what the counselor said, the one her uncle had insisted she go see for months after the crash. Michiru said it too, and she had the personal experience to back the claim. So why hadn’t it happened? Each time Makoto confronted that memory, it was as strong as it had ever been; every important thing in her life only seemed to make the pain worse.

Other kids had teased her when she’d started growing—like a weed, they all said; little flower-girl Makoto’s growing like a weed—so much taller so much sooner than anyone else. Her mother had helped her deal with that, and again, later, as the rest of her body worked to catch up and the boys began bothering her. Then her mother and father died, and instead of letting her anger out at home or at the flower-shop, where her parents’ love and her little green friends were all around to help her, Makoto started letting the anger out with her fists. And she got transferred to Juuban, where she met Usagi and the others.

The idea that her parents’ deaths might somehow have been _necessary_ for her to find her destiny as Jupiter haunted Makoto’s nightmares; she didn’t want to think that the price for her friends had been her family, that her future had come at the expense of her past.

Thinking of her friends naturally led her back to hitting Ami, which triggered the memory of striking Sasanna, which in turn reawakened the reason behind that attack, and _that_ reminded her of her parents again...

“What’s all the noise about?”

Makoto looked up suddenly, aware for the first time that she’d been crying, but not bothering to do anything about it as she tried to find the source of the voice.

It was another dryad, though the only reason Makoto could say that for certain was because Ami and Sasanna had both already said several times that there were no other humans around; this new dryad didn’t look a thing like Sasanna, except in certain extremely general ways. She was only about as tall as Ami, and not as slender as Sasanna, with a woody brown tint to her skin instead of the pale, leafy green Sasanna had displayed. Her hair was utterly white except for a few streaks of grey at the temples, and she wore it unbound, kept back from her face by means of a wooden circlet polished so smooth that it shone nearly as brightly as metal or jewels would have. Her face was markedly different from Sasanna’s as well, with a nose that was somewhat longer, a chin just a bit more square, and eyes that were gold-flecked green instead of brown.

After a moment, Makoto realized that this dryad not only looked _different_ from Sasanna, but _older_ as well, and not just because her hair was white. There were faint wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and around her eyes, and her skin had the shiny, not-quite-smooth texture of an old apple. Her fingers and toes—which poked out from beneath the hem of her faded green dress, over which she wore a sash of a darker hue—were callused and slightly crooked.

Makoto remembered something else Sasanna had said; dryads didn’t start to show any appreciable signs of age until well into the latter part of their lives. If this one was old enough to _look_ it, then she must be very, very old indeed.

“I’m old enough,” the dryad replied. “Closer to two thousand turns than one, though in all that time I’ve never had such a rude wake-up call as this. What’s wrong, child? Why are you crying? Has something happened to your tree?”

“My... tree?” Makoto repeated, momentarily confused until she remembered the borrowed dress she still wore. *She thinks I’m a dryad.*

“Well of course I think you’re...” The old dryad frowned. “Wait a moment. You’re human, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” In spite of everything, Makoto was curious enough to ask, “Why didn’t you know? I thought Sasanna told everyone we were here.”

“Sasanna? I suppose she did at that—the girl always has been a chatty one—but there’s a difference between hearing about something and actually seeing it for yourself.” The white-haired head shook back and forth. “I never would have believed I’d mistake a human for a sister; I must be getting wooden between the ears.”

*You say that like it’s a bad thing.*

Makoto jumped. That rough, creaky old voice had come out of nowhere, and it had definitely been a man’s voice—but there _weren’t_ any men, not anywhere on this entire island! So where had it come from?

“That was just my brother-self trying to be funny, and...” the old dryad broke off with a strangling sound. “You HEARD him?!”

Makoto realized then that the dryad was responding to the questions in her mind as much as the ones she had actually asked aloud, but her higher consciousness pretty much shut down as the implications of the phrase ‘brother-self’ hit her. Makoto’s head turned to regard the tree she had been sitting against; it wasn’t a tree at all, but a highly vertical section of root connecting to another of those apparently cross-species forest giants, this one even larger than Sasanna’s tree. The words ‘huge’ and ‘ancient’ were insufficient when applied to this many-branched behemoth, its bark thick with moss and ivy, its roots home to a forest of flowers, its eaves shading an area large enough to blot out the center of a soccer field. The thing looked like it had taken root about two minutes after the dawn of time and just kept on growing since then.

And she had been sitting against it when she’d heard that voice.

Sasanna had been right. It was true; she could hear them. Not just the age-old tree, but the sense of every green and growing thing she could lay eyes on—even the dryad, who was looking at her in absolute bewilderment—registered somewhere on the edge of her mind. Makoto could feel the shocked amazement pouring out of that ancient mind.

Makoto fell back against the vast tree and laughed until she cried.

# 

*Ami?*

*Uhh... Mother... it hurts...*

*Shhh. Pain tells you it’s healing; you’ll be okay in a little while. Just relax.*

Ami could feel gentle arms cradling her head, and wanted to do as she was told, just let go and rest. But she had to know. *What happened? Why does it hurt so much?*

*I don’t know. I think something went wrong when you tried to transform. Has it ever done that to you before?*

*No. I-I’ve been having trouble transforming recently, ever since that mess with the mana nexus, but I don’t know why.*

*Why didn’t you tell your friends?*

*Luna said I’d be back to normal in a few days, and I didn’t want to give Usagi something _else_ to worry about... and it never hurt this much before.*

*I see.* There was a pause. *I also see that it made a similar mess of Makoto’s home, with the snow and ice everywhere.*

*Yes. I’m sorry about that, I’ll clean it... up...*

Ami realized a few things at that point, and opened her eyes. And her mouth.

“Hello, Sasanna. I’m sorry about your tree.”

Sasanna smiled. “He’s okay. We weren’t so sure about you. _Are_ you okay?”

Ami sat up, trying to form a coherent thought through the banging in her brain. About all she got for her trouble was a sharp shift in the pain as blood shifted; Ami clapped her hands to the sides of her head with a whimper.

Soft fingers touched her forehead, and the pain receded. Ami opened her eyes and looked into Sasanna’s, only a short distance away; the dryad’s lips did not move, but Ami clearly heard her voice asking *Are you okay?* within her own mind.

Forming a reply around the dull ache was difficult, but Ami managed. *I’m better than I might have been. Sasanna, what did you do?*

*Just now, or... before?*

*Both.*

*Just now, I linked our minds together, enough so that we can share emotions and strong thoughts. I feel a little of the pain in your mind, and you feel a little of the calm in mine, but it doesn’t hurt either of us quite so much as it did. Earlier...* Sasanna hesitated. *Earlier is complicated. You were hurt very badly, and...*

Ami cut her off with a weird mental impulse. *I know; I see it.*

Sasanna blinked as she realized Ami had somehow absorbed the full breadth of _her_ memories of entering the girl’s wounded mind: gently pushing the scattered thoughts and memories back into place; following the trail of thought down into the depths of her subconscious to find the core of the awareness that was Ami; guiding that awareness back towards the surface, towards consciousness. The dryad was startled at how easily the girl had picked up the trick of perceiving the thoughts of another while in a link.

*I’ve always been a quick study,* Ami’s mind-voice replied with a trace of humor. Then she became very serious. *Sasanna, if what I saw was accurate... I think I might owe you my life. Thank you.* A ripple of nerve impulses followed, triggering the purely psychic equivalent of a warm hug and a formal kiss.

*You’re welcome,* Sasanna said, returning the mental embrace. It faltered a little at the end. *Does this mean you’re not angry with me?*

*Not completely. I’m still not happy about what you did to Makoto, but I can tell for certain now”—she pushed gently against Sasanna’s side of the thought-divide—“that you really didn’t mean to hurt her, that you really are sorry, and that you _do_ understand that what you did was wrong.* Ami paused, then blushed slightly. *Besides, it’s hard to be angry with someone who’s just saved your life without feeling pretty foolish. And I...*

*...don’t much care for being foolish,* they thought together. Sasanna smiled, feeling a little better. Then she frowned. *Ami... have you ever done this before? Linked minds, I mean?*

*Only once.* Ami showed Sasanna the moment in which Luna had restored the four Inner Senshi to help Sailor Moon battle a cardian that was simply too much for her. *There have been a few times where we’ve joined our powers together, but it’s not the same thing at all; we’re _aware_ of each other when we’re linked like that, but not to this degree. And that one time, Luna was sending one-way; it wasn’t a link so much as a download. Or defragmenting the hard drive.*

*?*

*Sorry. Late twentieth-century techno-babble.*

*I see.* Ami was fairly certain—well, more than fairly; she knew—that Sasanna didn’t see, but she made no comment. *You’re really very good at this, Ami. Do you suppose your past life might have been telepathic?*

*I don’t know,* Ami admitted. *Except for little flashes now and then, I can’t even remember her—my—name, let alone what she was like or could do.* She couldn’t hide the faint sense of failure that went with that admission.

*It’ll come back to you,* Sasanna said reassuringly. *I didn’t see it, but if you can remember any of it, then it’s all there. You’ll find it as long...*

As the thought broke off, Ami felt a sudden shiver from the other side of the joined mind. *Sasanna? Are you all right? What’s happening?*

*I’ve lost my sense of Makoto,* the dryad replied, amazed. Ami caught a short-lived surge of impulses which her mind translated as a train station full of people all talking at once. *None of us can find her,* Sasanna said, now sounding very worried. *And we can’t find the three sisters and brothers who were closest to her!*

*Calm down, Sasanna,* Ami thought. She paused for a moment, certain that she’d heard—or almost heard—another voice saying those exact same words, a deeper, somewhat drumlike voice with definite male overtones. She shook her head and retrieved her computer from one of the puddles on the floor, the aftermath of her little short-circuit, then began running a series of scans: first for Makoto; then for the presence of unusually large trees in her area; and lastly for dryads in the same general places as the trees.

*Makoto’s fifteen-point-seven-one kilometers to the northwest. She’s alive. I’m also picking up seven overlarge trees and three dryads within a one- kilometer radius of her location.*

It took Sasanna a moment to translate the meanings behind the words—dryads navigated with help from the plants and use of landmarks, and their trees didn’t move at all, so specific measurements of distance were rather a new concept for them—but once she had figured out what the numbers meant, she let out a relieved sigh.

*That’s everyone. They’re okay.* Relief was replaced by a rough *What is going on out there?* before Sasanna got to her feet, breaking the mental link. Ami experienced a momentary head rush as her perspective of things went back to their usual single-opinion point of view, but she was pleased to note that the splitting headache did not return.

“Are there any circumstances under which dryads can lose contact with each other?” she asked, rising.

“It is harder to hear each other at a distance,” Sasanna replied, pulling things out of the weapon-closet Ami had seen earlier, “unless we have our brother-selves to help, but the only time we should lose contact this close is when one of us dies. Since you have been able to confirm for us that this has not happened, we have no idea what could be causing it.”

“But it probably has something to do with Makoto,” Ami said, looking at her computer’s readouts with a sigh. “I could cover that distance in no time at all if I could transform, but it’s going to take until noon to get there like this.”

“It will take as long as it takes,” Sasanna said. She had several small pouches attached to her belt by this point, and had filled two quivers, one with the dozen arrow-thorns, the other with the four javelins and the still-unstrung bow. She pulled a pair of low-heeled boots out of the closet next, boots which looked like they were made from very large, overlapping brown leaves. Sasanna belted the quiver of arrows about her waist, slipped the strap of the other one over her head, then retrieved the slender spear and turned back to face Ami, the boots in her other hand.

“We don’t wear boots except during the winter,” she said, handing the footwear over to Ami, “but our feet are tough, and used to walking around unprotected. I know yours may not be quite so resilient.”

Ami nodded and pulled the boots on, stomping on the floor to test the fit. It wasn’t perfect, but the softness of whatever material they were made from helped considerably. When she looked up again, Sasanna was over by the table, picking up one of the carry-blooms and attaching it to her belt. She motioned Ami over and had her slide a large, sash-like strap on over her dress; the dryad hung four of the carry-blooms on that, then picked up two more, carried them to the tap, and filled them with water. One she gave to Ami, to hang from her belt, and hung the second from her own belt.

Then they set out.

# 

She knelt in the center of a silver-blue tiled pattern of interlinked and fragmented rings, a tall, stern-faced woman with medium-length scarlet hair and eyes that were closer to silver than to grey. She wore a long white robe with a single symbol emblazoned on the front in a deep red hue that was darker than blood, a symbol which an observer from several millennia in the future would think to be a compressed form of the letters ‘P’ and ‘L.’ In her right hand, the woman held a tall staff fashioned in the shape of a huge key; a stone the same deep shade of red as the mark on her robe sat atop that staff, absorbing the light of the chamber rather than reflecting it.

“Rise, Lady Pluto, and present your report.”

Medea, the three hundred and ninth Senshi of Pluto, bearer of the Garnet Orb, Guardian of the Mobius Gate, stood and faced the five Lord Archmages of the Empire. Any of the three men and two women who stood before her—in image if not in true form—could have leveled a fair-sized city in short order, yet they all had a healthy respect for her, a woman whose abilities in conventional magic were not much beyond those belonging to a moderately talented apprentice.

That respect didn’t have as much to do with the fact that she was the daughter of a powerful noble family and an appointed representative of the Imperial Throne, empowered to speak on the Emperor’s behalf, as it did the fact that her unconventional magical powers, given half a chance and even a sliver of room, could have killed any one of them in a single blow.

“Lord Archmages, I have confirmed our initial fears; the energy disruption detected two nights ago was indeed the result of an unauthorized use of the Mobius Gate.”

“Was it a departure or an arrival?” one of the shadowed master mages asked.

“An arrival, in the northern Sharaha desert of Ahfaahri. Three travelers at least, possibly four, and definitely from somewhere in the future. The energy was erratic, though, suggesting that their trip was uncontrolled, so I haven’t been able to pinpoint their time of origin.”

“And the anomaly?” one of the two women asked.

“Still nothing definite on what it might have been. There’s a very good chance that who—or whatever came through is shielded in some manner; that would make scrying chancy at best, but with the residual energy of the Gate saturating the region, such powers have become next to useless, even with the Garnet Orb to focus them. I’ve taken the precaution of dispatching...”

The door behind her swung open unexpectedly as a young girl in a plain grey dress entered the chamber. Her vividly green eyes were humbly lowered, a few wisps of her short, platinum-blonde hair falling forward to frame her face.

“I left orders that I was not to be disturbed, Lydia,” Medea said flatly.

“Forgive me, Mistress, but I thought you would want to know at once. A report reached us from the city of Khairoah only a few moments ago; one of the city’s mana reactors has experienced a misalignment.”

“Of what interest is that to me?” Medea barked. “Either the reactor’s monitoring mages will be competent at their tasks and correct the problem, or they will fail and a minor city will be without proper weather or power for the few hours the realignment will take.”

“Mistress, the misalignment was not caused by a mechanical defect or improper maintenance of the system’s magic; the mages believe it was triggered by a brief increase in the local mana fields.”

“An _increase?_” one of the archmages said sharply.

“Is that even possible?” her neighbor asked.

Lydia’s already-bowed head ducked even lower. “That is what the report claims, Lord Archmage. It bears the testimony of the three mages who were on duty at the reactor when the misalignment occurred, and a statement by their overseer, who has confirmed that all three were successfully truth-scryed.”

“Khairoah is the closest settlement of any kind to the location of the temporal rift,” the tallest of the five wizards reminded his colleagues. “Is it a coincidence that we receive this report now?”

“Two days,” the second of the female wizards noted, “is roughly the amount of time it would take to reach Khairoah from the central point of the rift, if one were to travel on foot.”

The five archmages looked at each other, then turned their collective gaze on Medea. “We must know what is happening, Lady Pluto. You are the foremost expert on any matters relating to the Mobius Gate, and already duty-bound to investigate this incident.”

She nodded. “As you say, Lord Archmage. I will depart for Khairoah as soon as I have informed the Imperial Court.”

The gathered archmages nodded and then faded away, the magic which maintained their images having been canceled. Medea waited until the last flicker of energy was gone before turning to Lydia.

“Find the nearest officer you can and inform him that I need ten of the finest guards he has and at least one competent mage-inquisitor ready to leave within the hour. Once you’ve done that, see to the preparations for our journey.”

The girl nodded as her mistress headed out of the room. Medea stopped and looked back. “Oh, and Lydia?”

“Yes, Miss...” The girl was hurled backwards by a sizzling bolt of blood-red energy which erupted from the leveled staff. It held her pinned against one of the great marble columns of the room for several painful seconds before it ended, letting her fall to the floor. Lydia felt a horrible sensation in her left arm and saw that it had been reduced to a withered, near-lifeless shell of itself, aged a century or more in the space of a few heartbeats. It stayed like that for what seemed an eternity before more of the reddish light flickered across it, restoring youth and usefulness.

“Don’t ever disobey my instructions again.”

Lydia managed to whisper a frightened, “No, Mistress,” as Medea swept out of the chamber.

*Useless girl,* the fire-haired woman thought in disgust. *If I could just find a way to be safely rid of her... bah!*

Medea dismissed the not-infrequent daydream and focused on more immediate, obtainable goals. This strange, unknown power that had appeared so briefly from somewhere in the future, for instance. They already knew it was strong, but if Lydia’s impossible statement had been accurate, if the thing—whatever it was—could actually _create_ mana energy...

Duty be damned. For a chance at that kind of power, Medea would let the entire timeline burn.

And once she had it, she wouldn’t need Lydia anymore.

 

# 

_(Everything is mist. Zoom in on the Time Gate, where the Court has gathered. Life, Evil, and Order are playing cards around a table while, off in the mists, Death, Chaos, and the three faces of Time are getting in a round of golf; Past, Present, and Future are arguing amongst themselves who gets to take their collective turn playing this hole. Good is still absent, and Balance is up in his podium, apparently playing a game of chess against himself and somehow managing to lose.)_

**Life** : Got any twos?

**Evil** : -Go fish-

**Order** : Go fish.  _(Life takes a card, compares it with her hand, sighs, and nods to Order.)_

**Order** : Got any nines?

**Life** : Go fish.

**Evil** : -Go fish-  _(Order reaches for the deck.)_

**Chaos**   _(off-screen)_ : siXTeeN!

_(A small golf ball which looks suspiciously like a skull flies into the table and bounces away. Order glares out at the figures in the mist; Death shrugs, drops another ball from somewhere in its robes, and swings at it with flat side of its wickedly sharp scythe. A short distance away, Future clonks Past over the head with a four wood; while that’s going on, Present tries to sneak away with the clubs, but Future sees it coming and both she and Past are there to intercept their sister.)_

**Balance** : So, king’s rook to king’s knight six... if I move the king’s knight to queen’s bishop four, that’ll...  _(looks up at the camera as someone off-screen coughs)_  Oh. Sorry, almost forgot. For once, there actually is something of a moral point made in the course of the story, and it’s...

**Evil** : -Serve Evil. Serve yourself ahead of all other interests-

**Life** : No, the moral is that Life...

**Order** : Order is absolute, unyielding. Without Order, there is only the madness of Chaos.

**Chaos** : BLue LIghT specIal, aIsLe sIX sheets TO ThE wiND!  _(swings at a ball with an arm that looks vaguely like a golf club. Death, of course, says nothing; Past is slipping around in a small field of golfballs, Present has been tied up with bent clubs, and Future is staggering around trying to get the golf bag off her head and shoulders, so none of them are in any condition to comment on the moral question.)_

**Order** : I rest my case.  _(takes a card from the deck)_  Your turn.

**Balance**   _(glares around for silence, and gets it)_ : That’s better. Now, as I was going to say, the moral question for this episode has to do with privacy. What exactly constitutes it? What lengths are permissible to protect it, and when must it be set aside? Does anyone have the right to enforce their idea of privacy on others? To take away their right to choose for themselves what they hold private or make public? The two cats, for example, are playing rather fast and loose with the facts in order to protect themselves and Usagi, and while they are technically telling the truth, they are in reality lying by omission. Is this a good thing?

**Evil** : -Yes-

**Balance** : I wasn’t asking you. Then there’s the issue set off by the dryad. _Her_ concept of privacy is very different from the human one, and when the two ideals clashed, the result was... well, you’ve already seen it.

**Order** : Needlessly disorganized. Far too random. A little planning would have prevented the whole business.

**Life** : A little disorganization and conflict every now and then is what allows beings to grow.

**Evil** : -They’re all fools. The dryad doesn’t use her gift to its maximum effect, and she’s stupid enough to let herself get caught. And those girls are far too nice; that silly weakness is going to get them killed. Again-

**Chaos** : foRE-WOrD!  _(Death is winding up for another swing. The scythe slices; so does the ball, knocking Past unconscious. Present and Future—who’s just managed to get out of the golfbag—both send eye-daggers at the shrouded figure, which tugs nervously at the collar of its outfit with one bony finger.)_

**Balance** : Don’t make me come down there.  _(thinks for a moment)_  In the final analysis, while privacy and all the rights attached to it differ according to whom you talk to, the very fact that you _can_ talk about it, that it even has a name, means it’s a concept everyone acknowledges and values to one extent or another. Secrets and lies, although decried as evil by many, are in certain senses essential aspects of reality, and not merely because they protect the valued concept of privacy; keeping a secret prevents information from falling into the wrong hands, and a lie that is properly wielded can save lives. The trick is knowing when to use what: the truth; a half-truth; a flat lie; or silence. That’s where most people get into trouble.

**Evil** : -Got any jacks-

**Life and Orde** r: Go fish.  _(Evil does that, and a slash of a smile grows on its form as it tosses two jacks down to the table)_

**Evil** : -Got any twos-

**Life**   _(sighs)_ : Yes, here you... hey, I just asked you... let me see those cards!

**Order** : This is a disruption of the rules, Life! Sit down and...  _(glances at Evil’s cards in spite of itself)_  You miserable cheat! A two AND a nine!

**Balance**   _(getting down from the podium)_ : Now that’s enough! Break it up at once, or...  _(a golfball crashes into the chessboard, knocking the pieces helter- skelter. Balance looks over at the field and sees Chaos waving at him; oddly enough, he doesn’t seem disappointed by the ruined state of the game)_  Well, I guess we’ll have to start over.

_(Ami appears, seated on the side of the podium)_

**Ami** : That’s okay. I remember where the pieces were.  _(she quickly resets the board)_  It’s your move, by the way.

_(The other gathered members of the Court look at their leader with a variety of blank expressions; Balance is sweating as the screen fades to black.)_

11/08/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_Okay, so I said they’d get home, and they didn’t. Sorry. Next time for sure. I hope... gotta try to get back into that ‘one episode per week’ writing spree..._

_Up next:_   
_-The time trek WILL be wrapped up;_   
_-Those potholes on the highway of history I mentioned but didn’t get around to WILL make their appearance;_   
_-Our girls WILL get home, except for ChibiUsa, who of course is going to be with the rest of them for some time yet._

_Now just watch me NOT meet ANY of my goals by the end of the next episode... ;)_


	13. Life of the Party, or Not Quite Out of the Woods Yet!

# 

There comes a time in any flow of tears beyond which it is simply impossible to continue, a point at which overworked tear ducts will not produce any further liquid without rest, when runny noses and half-choked throats force an end to sobbing, and the person crying just sits in the emotional fallout of whatever triggered the tears in the first place, feeling perfectly miserable.

Makoto had passed that point some time ago, and was now sitting with her back to the thick root of the enormous, ancient tree, hugging her knees to her chest and watching clouds drift by beyond the great canopy of leaves above.

If somebody asked her about her daughter’s tendency to talk to the flowers in the little shop, Makoto’s mother always said that it was just a game, something Makoto had done as a little girl, something she continued to do just to tease her. If they worried that Makoto seemed to spend all her time in the shop and not enough making friends, well, her mother would admit that sometimes she worried about that, too; then she would point out that everyone made friends in their own way, their own time.

And Makoto did have friends who weren’t plants or her parents. Little Fuunnoko, Fuun-chan, or just ‘Fun’ to her friends, constantly getting into trouble even though it really wasn’t ever her own fault, but always with a ready smile for everyone around her. Iki, quiet and gentle and as timid as a rabbit—one that didn’t have odangos, anyway—and her twin brother, Senjiru, loud and fearless and short-tempered, and incredibly protective of his sister. Kiki, almost as wise for her age as Ami must have been and the closest thing Makoto had ever had to a big sister, even though Kiki was short and scrawny, plain on her best day, and defiantly proud of all three facts. And then there was Shinozaki, a friend from almost as far back as she could remember, so familiar as to be almost a brother and far more than a boyfriend, her personal guardian angel.

Her mother said it was just a game. She said friends would always be there for you. She said _she_ would always be there.

She was wrong, wrong, wrong. The Kinos died, and in that one terrible stroke, Makoto lost her family, her gift, and her friends. She wouldn’t let herself hear the plants anymore because it reminded her too much of her mother, and her friends began to drift away:

Kiki, short, stick-like, and singularly unpretty, the only person other than her mother or father capable of calming Makoto down when she got angry. Her family moved away at the end of that same school year, less than two months after the plane crash, and Makoto never saw or heard from her again;

Fuunnoko, the eternal spark of good humor and bad timing. She became jealous as Makoto grew so tall and strong and _interesting,_ drawing the eyes and attention of half the boys in school, and the spark of humor in her eyes was replaced by a burning antagonism;

Senjiru, who had accepted her as an equal at an age when most boys didn’t want anything to do with girls—and when most girls felt the same about the boys—who had played with her soccer and tag and a hundred games invented on the spot, but which always involved a lot of running, jumping, climbing, and shouting. He seemed to think that their long camaraderie was more than just friendship, and had been one of the first boys Makoto had fought to protect herself;

Iki, the shy, gentle girl Makoto had always looked out for, who had shared her interest in and care for plants. Already frightened by her longtime protector’s growing tendency to resort to violence, Iki had been pushed completely away by Makoto’s short-lived fight with Senjiru. In a voice that was nearly a scream, the loudest sound Makoto could ever remember hearing the normally soft-spoken girl make, Iki told her to stay away from them both.

In the end, only Shinozaki had been left, enduring black moods, intermittent fights, and even a few bouts of weeping. He stayed with her through everything, but even he changed, a little; he never said or did anything differently, but sometimes—just sometimes—Makoto caught a strange light in his eyes. It wasn’t like the way other boys looked at her, the ones who were just drawn to her body. This was deeper, taking in everything she was or had been, a look that remembered the little girl with dirt under her fingernails and grass-stains on her feet, saw the fierce, lonely teenager in spirit as well as in body. The last time she had noticed it, Makoto had met the strange look, and seen deep in Shinozaki’s eyes something that she didn’t fully understand, something that was comforting but confusing, soothing and subtly frightening all at once; it was not the sort of look she wanted to see from someone who was almost her brother.

So she stopped looking. And after transferring to Juuban, she slowly managed to convince herself that it had just been a figment of her imagination, to forget the disturbing feelings that Shinozaki’s quiet, serious expression had triggered in her own heart.

She thought about it now, though, it and everything else. Watching the clouds, Makoto sent out a sad, silent call to her mother, four and a half years in the past, thousands of years in the future. *You were wrong, Mama.*

“Was she, child?”

Makoto’s bleary eyes fell on the old, white-haired dryad. “Stay out of my mind.”

The dryad—she hadn’t given her name yet, and Makoto didn’t really want to ask—shook her head. “I don’t think that’s possible anymore, little one. As long as you believed you couldn’t hear us, that kept us out. But after this morning, after everything that happened with Sasanna tore down the blocks you’d put up around yourself... I’m sorry, Makoto, but there’s no going back.” The old dryad hesitated, then asked, “Is it _really_ that bad for you, being able to hear them?”

“It isn’t normal,” Makoto said. The dryad snorted.

“Maybe not for humans, but it’s beyond normal for my kind. And you’re not exactly a normal human to begin with, are you?” Green-gold eyes narrowed. “What is it about this that’s really bothering you?”

Makoto let out a single harsh laugh. “Why don’t you just look around in my head like Sasanna did and find out for yourself?”

The dryad shook her head. “You really don’t have any idea how it actually works, do you? Makoto, when you walk into a room full of people who are all talking at once, do you automatically understand every single thing that is being said? No, you don’t; you know the words are there, but you have to pay attention to make any sort of sense out of them. It’s the same thing with the mind-powers my kind possess.”

“Then how did she know?” There was no need to name names.

“How do you pick out that one voice among a dozen?” The white-haired dryad shrugged. “In that same way as the mind can ignore other sounds to focus on just a few, _we_ can focus our minds upon the awareness of just one creature. It’s not an easy thing for us to do with animal beings, because no matter how much we _look_ like you, we’re still very much plants. That applies to how we think, as well.”

“Plants _don’t_ think,” Makoto said. Then she stopped.

“You begin to see,” the old dryad said with an approving smile. “Ordinary plants do not think because they _cannot_ think, only feel, so our mind-gift is attuned to emotion, not true thought. It works equally well for plant-creatures and animal-creatures in that respect, but we can only hear the thoughts of our sisters and brothers with any kind of clarity—and even then, it works more easily if we are close. For an animal creature, we must link to learn anything.”

“Link?”

“A joining of minds. Our minds divide from our brother-selves when we awaken, and it is part of our being that we will eventually return to them. Out of that, we...”—she gestured with her hands, searching for a word—“we do not ’learn’ so much as ‘have’ the ability to touch the awareness of another being, to blend the edges of our own mind with the other. Through that, we can perceive some of the thoughts of the other mind; things directed at us or charged with strong emotions are easy to see, whereas things that the mind wishes to remain hidden are very difficult to find.”

Makoto shook her head at that statement. “I don’t talk about... that... with my friends; I don’t even think about it very often. So how did Sasanna find it so quickly?”

“Your _conscious_ mind does not think about it,” the dryad corrected. “Are you so certain about the rest? I am very old,” she admitted with a weary sigh, “and I have seen and endured my share of pain down the long turning of the seasons. I have seen brothers and sisters die before their time, and lost others to the final sleep; I have felt the pain of wounded plants and dying animals beyond counting. I’ve survived that pain, and eventually come to terms with even the worst of what I’ve seen.”

“Is there a point to this?” Makoto asked bluntly.

“The point is that pain is a natural part of life, and that we have healing to match it and keep it in check. Healing of the body is easy; healing of the mind is more complex, and it requires many things.” Her voice and eyes softened. “Child, if it hurts you so much to think about your parents even after so much time has passed, then you are still grieving, somewhere inside.”

“It’s been four years!” Makoto shouted, clenching her fists and looking away. In a lower voice, she asked, “Isn’t that long enough?”

“For some people, perhaps. But you have been hiding from the pain, Makoto, ignoring it and driving it into the depths of your mind; you haven’t allowed yourself to grieve properly, to let the pain go. You can’t heal, can’t stop hurting so much, until you do that.”

“What are you, now, my psychiatrist?” The dryad’s features became somewhat more wrinkled as she scrunched her face up in confusion over the reference.

*You are afraid.*

Hearing that disembodied voice for only the second time, Makoto jumped before turning her attention to the tree. “I am not afraid. I’ve handled small gangs and monsters and even dying; what makes you think I’m scared of a few silly plants?”

*It is not the plants themselves that you fear,* the tree’s old-man voice replied. *You are afraid of the comfort of their presence. You fear that it will weaken your feelings for your mother and father; you fear that their dependence on you is a duty you will not be able to live up to.*

*GET OUT OF MY MIND!* Makoto screamed. Astonishingly, it seemed to work; the light sense of another awareness somewhere at the edge of her own faded. She imagined—or felt?—a strange, outwards-moving ripple in the greenery around her, as if the grasses, the bushes, the trees, and everything else were struggling for a brief moment to pull away. There was even a momentary shiver amongst the leaves of the great tree above her, or so it seemed.

“Now that will be _quite_ enough of that,” the dryad said sharply. Makoto felt a much stronger sense of the old creature’s mind then, an almost visible aura spreading out from inside the white-haired, brown-skinned head to soothe the agitated plant life. Something of the wave of pacifying emotions washed over Makoto herself, but she clung hard to her anger and refused to be calmed. The dryad cast an exasperated glance at Makoto, and the plants linked to her through the emotion-aura shivered again. “You’re determined to make this difficult, aren’t you, girl? We’re trying to _help_ you, Makoto.”

“I don’t want any more ‘help’ from you—any of you. And I don’t need it. I’ve learned to deal with my other powers, and I can deal with this, too. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or use it.” Makoto glared at the dryad and the tree, and added a quick look around at everything else that was even a little bit green. “Stay. Out. Of. My. Mind.” She turned to walk away.

“Do you know what happened to the first sister who ever tried to live with another thinking race?” the old dryad asked conversationally.

In spite of herself, Makoto turned around. “What do you mean? I thought the only human you’d ever seen before us was that Adan guy.”

For some reason, the dryad chuckled. “Yes, Adan was the first human we had ever met. But I wasn’t talking about humans. You’re not the first thinking animals to ever appear on this old planet, Makoto, not the first by a goodly measure. I doubt you’ll be the last, either.”

When Makoto didn’t answer, the dryad told her story. “That first sister’s name was Kureenia Fenar Marmosswyndwillow, and the creatures she tried to live with called themselves ukhtheee’Nkth’t.” The old dryad made a weird noise in the back of her throat and somewhere in her nose at the same time, a sound Makoto knew she couldn’t have duplicated in ten thousand tries. “They looked very much like us—or you—but claimed they were descended from insects, which explained why some of the things about their culture, appearance, and language were so unusual. They’d known about our kind for a long time, and they were very happy to have Kureenia live in one of their hives, but about two months after she joined them, she fell into a very deep sleep and couldn’t be woken. The ukhtheee’Nkth’t got worried and took her back to her brother-self, and she recovered very quickly.”

“What happened to her?”

“Our kind live in each others’ minds as often as not,” the old dryad said. “And we feel the emotions of everything around us. But most of what we live near are plants, or unintelligent animals, and every so often one or two thinking animals. The emotions of a thinking creature are much stronger and more complex than an unthinking one, and living among so many at once, Kureenia’s own mind was overwhelmed; she couldn’t think or feel for herself, and even came close to loosing touch with her brother-self before the ukhtheee’Nkth’t brought her back to him. Once we’d figured out what had happened, of course, we developed a trick for keeping ourselves while among large groups.”

The gold-flecked green eyes made Makoto shiver when they fell on her. “Your mind-powers are nearly as strong now as those belonging to a sister of Sasanna’s age, but you don’t have the slightest idea how to control them. It only took a colony of a few hundred other minds to overwhelm Kureenia, and what I hear in your thoughts of your world shows me a number of thinking minds to make that seem like a blade of grass next to a tree. Makoto, if you don’t learn at least how to keep your own thoughts and emotions before you go home, your own powers could very easily kill you. Or worse; you could live, physically, while your mind plays out the composite thoughts and emotions of every thinking being around you. Would you like that, girl? To spend the rest of your life trapped in your own mind, surrounded by the emotions of others? Or perhaps as an out-of-control hurricane of madness, acting on every errant impulse that touches against your awareness?”

Numbly, Makoto shook her head.

“Then will you stop fighting us and let us at least tell you how to protect yourself?”

“How? How will you tell me? For all I know, my friends could arrive in the next hour, or the next week. There isn’t enough time...”

“We teach in the same way that we remember,” the dryad said. “We exchange memories. What one sister deems important, she passes on to all other sisters that she can reach, and they in turn share the knowledge with others, until all of our kind have learned it. The ocean”—she gestured to the east and west— “cuts us off from our sisters on the mainland in thought as well as body, but Kareenia’s experience with the ukhtheee’Nkth’t was from before the islands split away, and we have preserved it.”

“I don’t want you in my mind,” Makoto replied.

“Stubborn,” the dryad muttered, shaking her head. Her words and her smile had that oddly approving air Makoto had noticed before. “I will not be in your mind, Makoto; that is how one learns, by seeing the thoughts of another. _You_ are the one who is supposed to learn.”

Her stomach flipped over. “I can’t.”

“You will see and take only what we wish you to see and take,” the dryad said. “You will remember only what you choose to remember. And before you protest again, child, remember that this is part of what my kind are. The joining of minds does not bother us the way it bothers you.”

“What... what do I... have to do?”

“Sitting down might help,” the dryad said with a dry smile. She helped Makoto settle back down among the roots. “Now. Before we start, you need to understand that our memory-history isn’t preserved by the sisters, but the brothers. An animal-type brain simply can’t hold all the information, whereas the brothers are able to store the knowledge not only in their own minds, but within all the trees around them. I’m not going to explain how they do it—if you really want to know, you’ll probably see it—but you do need to know that you’ll be looking into my brother-self’s awareness, not mine. This will go very quick if we only have to do it once, so keep at least part of you in contact with part of him, or you’ll lose the connection and we’ll have to try again.”

Makoto placed one hand on a bump in the root to her right, and the sense of the tree’s vast awareness returned. She drew away from it at first, and then, when it—when he—did not advance, pushed cautiously forward. There was a momentary sensation of some sort of dividing line being crossed, and Makoto caught a brief thought-glimpse of a connection between the mind ahead of her and the other one off to the side. Then she was in the tree’s awareness.

Her own mind reeled as she came to understand just how far back this memory-history of the dryads reached. The thoughts of the insect-race, the ukhtheee’Nkth’t, were from a time before the islands that were to become Japan had been separated from the mainland of Asia. The march of years from that point to her own was staggering, and it was nothing compared to the earliest, dimmest memories. A trumpeting bellow of an enormous, lizard-like creature rang in her mind and made her shiver in a remembered fear that wasn’t her own.

*It’s a dinosaur,* Makoto realized dumbly. *The dryads were alive THAT long ago?*

Not just the dryads, either. She saw other creatures of similar natures, beings born of natural materials that had somehow been infused with vast amounts of raw energy. A dryad-memory showed her a large tree suddenly uprooting itself and striding off on foot-like roots, and another let her behold a pile of rocks and dirt and a few flashing gems plodding along almost as if swimming through the soil beneath. Makoto felt more flashes of someone else’s fear as the scum covering a half-dead lake erupted upwards in the manlike shape of a long-nosed, long-armed thing with sharp teeth and claws, as a raging volcano unleashed something that looked like a small, red-skinned reptile, but which burned hotter than lava. Makoto saw the ocean, saw a huge, amorphous shape out among the waves wrestling with a funnel cloud that seemed to possess arms and eyes. She saw another body of water, a small, ice-rimmed pool of pure, blue-white liquid at the base of a tiny waterfall in the middle of some ancient winter, and felt the surprise of another dryad as a tendril of the cold water coiled itself up from the pool and suddenly took on a solid shape that mimicked her own, only in shades of blue and white instead of green and brown. Makoto remembered cowering in fear within a tree—her tree—as something huge soared by overhead, one flap of its wings carrying the force of a hurricane, its roar as loud as a thunderbolt.

In the back of her mind, Makoto felt Amalthea sit up and take notice of those memories. Makoto wanted to turn around and ask her past self what they had been, why she reacted so strongly, but it was taking all of her concentration to keep from being swept away by the dryad history, and that didn’t leave enough for a friendly chat with who she used to be.

And it _was_ hard, she realized, keeping anything she saw in her own mind. The old dryad had been right; there was just too much here for her brain to take in more than a little at once, let alone make any sense of it afterwards.

The memories were somehow aware of her as well, the fading echoes of the long-dead sisters of Sasanna and that old dryad who hadn’t even mentioned her name, but whose mental presence was hovering not very far away, linked to the huge, patient intellect Makoto was stumbling around inside. The dead dryads seemed to get inside her head as much as she got into theirs, each in turn becoming aware of who, what, and where Makoto was, and what she was thinking. They were all startled to find that she was a human, and the echo of Amalthea was reacting to them in some way Makoto couldn’t begin to understand, one past life acknowledging the presence of others. They laughed at things she had laughed at, approved silently of things she had done, scratched their nonexistent heads in perplexity over things they couldn’t understand.

When it came to some of her thoughts-slash-memories-slash-dreams about boys, Makoto got the distinct impression that the minds around her were blushing furiously. A few quickly turned away, while others seemed fascinated.

One thing all the memory-ghosts did was to touch briefly against the deeply buried pain inside her mind and fall back, shaking at the intensity of the emotion surrounding it. But as they slipped away into the immense stretch of their history, each left a feeling of shared tears in Makoto’s thoughts, grieving with her.

All the emotional tumult was wearing her down, making it harder and harder to concentrate. Worse, Makoto realized that another section of her mind, the part where the essence that was Jupiter rested when not in use, was reacting nearly as strongly as Amalthea, somehow sensing her distress and trying to protect her. It wasn’t fully active yet, but it was getting there, and from the way the rush of dryad-ghosts slowed and stopped, she realized they were afraid of what might happen if that power was triggered while she was in here with them.

Makoto gritted her teeth and tried to focus on what the old dryad had been talking about. Kareenia and the ukhtheee’Nkth’t, the shielding of the inner mind, the... there!

She grabbed hold of that information and felt almost as if it had been thrown to her by the ancient tree’s awareness; he was worried about her power, too. After all, it was _his_ mind all this was taking place in.

With the knowledge in hand—or mind—Makoto turned and tried to will herself out of the tree’s consciousness, but she had gone in so deeply that she didn’t think...

Just like that, she was out, the mind-link dissolving into two separate awarenesses behind her. Makoto realized she was clutching at the root hard enough to make her fingers—or perhaps the root itself—creak from the strain. The old dryad was looking down at her with a very worried expression.

Makoto reached out and caught hold of the dryad, not in order to attack her, but to bury her own face in the creature’s shoulder and start crying. The shock of this experience was far worse than the last one had been, and she needed to hold onto something—anything—that was alive and not made out of wood.

The old dryad seemed to understand, and held Makoto close, gently patting her back, not saying anything but letting all the peace and compassion she could muster flow out of her own mind to battle the girl’s shock. When the tears subsided—again; what a lousy day this was turning out to be—and her breathing slowed to normal, Makoto sat up.

“You didn’t... say anything... about the others,” she said with an angry sniffle.

“I didn’t know, child. I’m sorry, but I honestly didn’t. We don’t sense the awarenesses of our passed sisters and brothers when we search for knowledge, just the memories they left to us.” The dryad tapped lightly on Makoto’s forehead. “I think that’s the problem, in there. You, or rather who you used to be.”

Remembering the strange similarity between Amalthea and the dryad- memories, Makoto couldn’t disagree. “I... I got it.”

“I know. And that’s the last time any of us will try something like that with you, Makoto; I promise. The shielding is the most important thing you have to know, whether you decide to explore your gift or not. Everything else, you can learn on your own.” The dryad smiled and gave Makoto a motherly kiss on the forehead. “And I think we can trust your heart not to let your mind get carried away.”

“Thank you.”

“Now,” the dryad said, rising and helping Makoto to do the same, “let’s get you cleaned up and then get some food into you. You were in there for quite a while, and you used up a lot of energy; you’ll probably need to sleep again for a bit to recover, but it’s always easier to sleep when you’re clean and have a full belly.”

Glancing at the sky, Makoto could tell that the sun had moved somewhat since the last time she’d seen it; how many hours had she been in the tree’s mind? As the old dryad said, the experience had left her worn out in more ways than one, and the offer of food, a shower, and sleep were very appealing. But there was one other thing she really wanted to know.

“What’s your name?” she asked, following the dryad up the steps into her tree.

“Hmm? Oh. Tarnara. And this old stick,” she added, drumming on the nearest patch of wood with her knuckles, “is Kardelbanbororootyn.”

Makoto nodded. There was something about those names that sounded familiar, but she was too tired to recall what.

The inside of Kardelbanbororootyn was different from Sasanna’s tree. The lowest floor was a chamber with a huge stump-table surrounded by a moss-covered bench, evidently a meeting place of some kind for the local dryads. The next floor held four of the vast beds and two separate bathroom chambers, obviously to accommodate Tarnara’s guests after one of those meetings. Level three was more private, a single bed and bathroom sharing space with a much smaller table and the first actual chair Makoto had seen in this time, a great flowing mass of slightly-reclined, smooth-edged wood. All these levels were joined by stairs at the points of the compass, running from north to east between the first two levels, west to north between the second and third floors, and with a door in the south wall of the third chamber which Tarnara explained led to a platform high up among Kardelbanbororootyn’s branches where she could watch the stars.

Makoto showered first, asking the tree for a blast of cold water at first so she’d be able to stay awake long enough to eat something. Then Tarnara had her brother-self assemble a green dress to replace the borrowed one Makoto had been wearing; the fabric felt very nice, and the fit was wonderful, but Makoto thought it would be a long time before she was able to remember the touch of those weaving vines without blushing. After that, the old dryad had her sit down long enough to empty two of the food-filled blooms that descended to the small table. When she started to yawn not long after, Makoto didn’t bother to fight it, and drifted off to sleep among the moss cushions of the chair.

Hearing soft snores, Tarnara chuckled and retrieved a blanket from her bed, folding it over on itself three times before laying it over Makoto. Even then, the thing hung to the floor on either side of the chair.

“Burns and boring beetles,” she muttered, “but she really does look like one of us, doesn’t she, brother-self?”

*And yet she is not. No dryad could have done what she’s done today.* The old tree’s voice took on an amused note. *She’s probably better suited for the task than we are, when you get right to the root of it.*

“She probably is,” Tarnara agreed, “but I promised her we’d stay out of her mind, and I’m going to make sure that promise is kept. Between her little trip in your mind and that mess Sasanna managed to set off, I don’t think she’ll be able to handle any more mental shocks for a while. The others are just going to have to find another way.” She made a frustrated noise. “Woodrot and blight, but I’d like to have a few words with that girl! What was she thinking?”

*She was probably scared. It comes with the glands.*

The dryad’s eyes rolled. “Whereas you trees are always perfectly rational, is that it?” Her brother-self didn’t reply, and Tarnara smiled briefly in triumph. “Have you been able to reach any of the others, Kard? Any at all?”

*No. Whatever the girl did has its limits. We are here, and can hear them, but they cannot hear us, or anything for quite some distance around us. Sasanna and the other human are on their way here now to find this one.*

“Good,” Tarnara sighed. “I don’t know about you, brother-self, but I’m very tired.”

*I know, sister-self. I am weary as well.* The old voice took on the sound of a wry smile. *This hasn’t exactly been the easiest day of our life, has it?*

“No,” Tarnara agreed with a smile of her own. “No, it hasn’t. But it’s been more interesting than most of them.” She looked at Makoto, brushing the girl’s hair away from her face. “So much pain for one so young, and at the same time, so much power. And she hasn’t even realized the full extent of it yet. And just think; there’s nine more like her out there somewhere.”

*Terrifying thought, isn’t it?*

# 

Medea inspected each of the guardsmen carefully as they stood at attention before the terminal. These lesser soldiers didn’t wear the face-concealing mirror-masks of their counterparts in the Imperial Guard, something which Medea personally approved of; she hated not being able to see the faces of people she was talking to, particularly those subordinate to her. Although not trained to the pinnacle of near-perfection of the elite Imperials, each of these guards appeared to be adequate to the task. None of them tried to meet her gaze, but instead stood staring fixedly forward, reflecting a technique in which the user appeared to be oblivious to their surroundings but could in fact see everything ahead of them or to either side with remarkable clarity.

The only members of the party who didn’t stand with that rigid attention and focused gaze were Lydia and the mage-inquisitor, who had given his name as Vaurinn. He did meet Medea’s gaze briefly before bowing his head respectfully over one of the hand-salutes used by the various magical orders. Lydia kept her eyes on the ground the entire time.

All as it should be.

“Our destination,” Medea said in a clear voice, “is the city of Khairoah, in northern Ahfaahri. The object of this mission is to track down and contain at least three, possibly four unauthorized time-travelers.” She looked at each of the guards in turn. “We don’t yet know for certain who or what we’re dealing with, and their time of origin is likewise indeterminate, so the Emperor has authorized lethal sanction if it proves necessary to subdue the intruders. But let me make it clear; any man who takes action without express orders from myself or our mage-inquisitor will answer for it. Severely. Is that understood?”

The guards saluted as one, rumbling, “Yes, Lady!”

“Move out.”

The guards marched forward into the terminal in a column, two abreast, vanishing in the steely light of the travel portal. Medea watched them, aware of a rustle behind her as Vaurinn moved forwards, the plain, silver-trimmed grey robes that marked him as a hand of the Emperor’s justice hanging off his body in a curiously unnatural manner. He was a noble, of course, probably a younger son who’d sought by magic the fortune and power he would not have inherited by birth, and handsome enough, with short, dark hair and a matching beard, and eyes that hovered between brown and green, but as a rule, Medea didn’t trust any wizard. Particularly not one with such a close connection to the Imperial Court.

“You have everything you will need?” she asked.

“Always, Lady Pluto. What I know I will need, and what I feel it is prudent to carry as a precaution, all within easy reach.” Vaurinn watched the guards pass, and regarded Lydia with a curious interest as she followed the ten armed men into the portal and a quarter of the way around the planet. “If I may ask, Lady, why does your... young friend... accompany us? Is she to play some role in our task?”

“The girl is a slave of my household,” Medea said. “Yes, she does possess some limited divinatory gifts which may be of use to us, but the main reason she is accompanying me is for her own health.”

“Her... health?”

“It might be wise if you know,” Medea added in a considering manner. “Like my own abilities, Lydia’s gift is an hereditary one, which was what prompted my great-great-great-great-grandmother to acquire the family in the first place; she had hoped to locate her successor as Pluto with help from Lydia’s ancestor, not realizing at the time that it would turn out to be her own daughter. We’ve kept the family’s services over the years, so that we might study their powers and perhaps better understand our own.”

Vaurinn nodded. “A wise choice. But I take it the girl has an... ailment... of some kind?”

“The divinatory power is passed on to the eldest child in each generation, but its nature changes each time. The first member of the family, for example, saw the future, but her daughter saw the past, and _her_ daughter in turn did not see anything, but would know immediately which choice was the best or worst for a given situation. Another was a minor prophet. Lydia sees past, present, and future at random, but she also suffers a severe psychological shock in the course of each vision. Sometimes she simply passes out, but on a few occasions she has become violent, towards herself as well as others.” Medea reached up to tap the Garnet Orb. “For whatever reason, the presence of the Orb seems to prevent her more extreme reactions.”

“I see. Should she suffer one of these... attacks when you are not immediately available, what measures are necessary to subdue her without overt harm?”

“A simple sleep spell will suffice. If it happens that I am not on hand, don’t bother trying to locate me; I’ve long since taken the precaution of setting a warning spell to inform me when Lydia is overcome, and where she is at the time.”

“You are more solicitous of your slave than most nobles would be, Lady. I am... moved.”

Medea wished the man would stop leaving words to trail off like that. “Charity has nothing to do with it, mage-inquisitor. You’re as fully versed in Imperial law as I am, and you know that a master is held responsible for the deeds or misdeeds of a slave. I told you, the girl can become violent; I’m protecting myself as much as I am her.”

“Ah.” Vaurinn glanced at the now-empty terminal. “Then might I suggest that we hurry to catch up? Just as a precaution, of course.”

“Of course.”

# 

“Makoto?”

“Hmmm... Ami... I’m sorry... about before.”

“Never mind that now. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I...” Makoto opened her eyes and blinked when she realized Ami and Sasanna were standing next to the chair, watching her. “Oh. You’re here. I want to...”

“I need to...” Sasanna said at the same time. They both broke off and looked at each other, then both tried to speak again.

“Hold it,” Ami said, stepping in and pointing to Sasanna. “You first.” Despite the fact that she was armed—Makoto did a double-take, the assortment of wooden weapons the gentle dryad was carrying not having registered before— Sasanna seemed afraid.

“I need to apologize for what I did,” she said quietly. “I did not stop to consider that you might have different views on it than my kind do. I should have asked, first, or not done it at all, and I’m very sorry that it—that I— hurt you, Makoto.”

“I’m sorry, too, Sasanna. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me... and I shouldn’t have hit you. And Ami...”

“You already told me you were sorry,” Ami reminded her briskly. “Now, do you think you can handle walking back to Sasanna’s?”

“Sure, I... walk? Wait a minute, you mean you walked all the way here? Why didn’t you transform? You could have carried Sasanna and still caught up with...”

“I can’t transform, Mako-chan.” Ami admitted it with surprising calm. “At least, not safely.” She related what had happened and explained her theory that it had something to do with the mana nexus.

“Do you feel all right?” Makoto asked when Ami had finished.

“Mostly.” She was scared, but dealing with it well enough that Makoto could hardly pick it up.

*Damn it,* Makoto thought, clueing in to what she was doing. *After all that crap I gave Tarnara about not wanting to use this, I go ahead and turn it loose on the first person I see.*

“Ami-chan,” she said, getting up off the chair, “there’s something I think you ought to know. I...”

“Where did you get that dress?” Sasanna demanded in amazement.

Makoto looked down at the green dress, which up till now had been hidden by the large blanket. “Tarnara made it for me. Her tree did, actually. See, that’s part of what...”

“Tarnara,” Sasanna whispered, staggering backwards and sitting down heavily on the edge of the table. “That’s... that’s not possible.”

“Up until this morning, girl, I would have agreed with you. But then, up until this morning, you wouldn’t have been able to tell.”

They all turned towards the old dryad, who stood before the door in the south wall. Sasanna let out a frightened squeak, dropping her spear as her hands flew to cover her mouth. The word “How?” got out around her fingers.

“You have your tall friend here to thank. She was upset enough by that little stunt of yours that when she sat down outside, all the noise in her head woke me up.” Tarnara frowned at the younger dryad. “It wasn’t a very polite wake-up call, but I’m more upset with you than I am with her. What were you thinking, girl? What were _any_ of you thinking? Did you even _stop_ to think, for that matter?”

“We did,” Sasanna replied, straightening and calming slightly. She didn’t say anything else, but Ami and Makoto looked from one dryad to the next and were certain that the conversation was still going on, just in a non-vocal way. Almost automatically, Makoto felt part of her mind reaching out towards the pair, and ‘heard’ their voices; the sense of Tarnara’s tree was everywhere, and she could also feel a faint trace of Glossolyndaraberonasym, connected to this through Sasanna. The two trees seemed not to be aware of each other.

*...handled it badly,* Sasanna was saying in a very subdued voice, *but there’s nothing I can do about it now.*

*Very true,* Tarnara agreed. *Fortunately for her, the girl let Kardelbanbororootyn show her what she needed to know to protect her mind. As for the rest of it, Sasanna, tell the others that you’re going to have to find another way.*

*But...*

*I gave her my word that we’d stay out of her thoughts, Sasanna, and I’d be very disappointed if my sisters made me break a promise. You will tell them, won’t you?*

*Yes.*

*Good.* Tarnara glanced at Makoto and Ami. *Was there something you two wanted?*

Makoto blushed, knowing the old dryad had likely spotted her the second she’d made contact. *Wait a minute... two?*

*Yes, two.* Makoto looked over at Ami, who had one hand on the nearest wall and a defensive look on her face.

*How did... WHEN did...* Makoto shook her head. *Did you...*

*I’m touching the tree and hearing through him, about two and a half hours ago, and I had no idea beforehand.* Ami rattled the answers off quickly and precisely. *Happy?*

An errant thought flashed through Makoto’s mind, and she started giggling. *Poor Ryo-kun. He doesn’t know what he’s in for.*

*You just never mind about him,* Ami said, blushing. The girl’s mental control was strong enough that the feelings rippling out of her mind were yanked back almost before they registered, but Makoto caught some very definite and recognizable emotions and started giggling anew. Poor Ryo, indeed.

*Two and a half hours,* Tarnara repeated, her eyes shifting back to Sasanna. The measurement of time didn’t mean much to her, except that it had been not very long ago. *Why do I get the feeling you’re somehow responsible for _this_ too, little sister?*

*I am,* Sasanna admitted with a sigh. *At least partly. I think I triggered something, or perhaps brought a little more than I intended when I pulled her consciousness back to the surface of her mind. Their minds are different from ours,* she added heatedly. *How was I supposed to know?*

Tarnara rubbed her forehead as if this whole business was giving her a headache, and the five-way mindlink changed a moment later as she dropped out of it. “Whatever Makoto did to wake us up is almost gone, Sasanna, and I’m just too tired to deal with any more surprises.”

“’Whatever I did’?” Makoto said. “I don’t understand.”

The dryads exchanged a look. “I thought you told them,” Tarnara said.

“I did, but only in passing.” Sasanna drew herself up and looked at the girls. “Ami, Makoto, this is Tarnara Ferdel Auramyndoralla, the oldest of my sisters to ever live on this island.”

“You said that yesterday afternoon,” Ami said, slowly turning to stare at the old dryad. “But you... you’re supposed to be...”

“We weren’t dead,” Tarnara replied. “Just very, very deeply asleep. We’ve always believed it was _possible_ for a sister and brother in the last sleep to be reawakened, but until Makoto came along, I don’t recall ever hearing of it actually happening.”

“Then the empathic blackout is...”

“...somehow connected to our reawakening,” Tarnara finished, nodding. “Everything within the immediate reach of Kard’s mind was turned towards him and I, blocking out our sisters and brothers, but I think it will go back to normal when we return to sleep. And that”—she yawned—“shouldn’t be very much longer.”

“But...” Sasanna began.

“We can’t stay, girl. Our presence is disrupting the natural order of things, and we both know what that will lead to if it goes on for too long. And more than that...” Tarnara sighed. “It’s been over two thousand turns since we sprouted, Sasanna, and we spent more than sixteen hundred of those awake. Kard and I are both tired; we need to rest.”

*Although,* the old tree put in with a note of thanks Makoto felt was directed mostly to her, *to feel the wind, water, and sun again, to truly _know_ that we felt them... it has been good. Thank you for that, little one.*

“Yes,” Tarnara said, walking over to embrace Makoto, “thank you, child. Interesting things are what we live for in the first place, and it has been _very_ interesting meeting you.” Tarnara kissed her on the forehead again—she had to stand on her toes to do it—then looked Makoto squarely in the eyes. “Don’t forget what we told you.”

“I won’t,” Makoto promised. “And... thank you.”

Tarnara nodded and moved to Ami. “You,” she said in a clinical tone, “had best be careful about what you try to do with that.” She tapped Ami’s head meaningfully. “Our kind’s abilities in the field of the mind are fairly limited, and there are things we either won’t or can’t do, but we’ve met other beings in the past who could and did. If you’re anything like Makoto, I think you’ll be strong enough to do those things my sisters and I can’t—but don’t let yourself get pulled into doing what we _won’t._ You understand?”

Ami nodded solemnly, and Tarnara turned at last to Sasanna. “Well, little sister?”

“I don’t want you to go again, eldest sister. We have your memories to guide us, but... it just hasn’t been the same since you left us.”

The old dryad’s hard expression softened. “It’s never easy, little sister, and it’s never the same. But you should ask Makoto about what she saw when she went into Kard’s mind, and then you’ll know that even those of us that are gone are still with you.” Tarnara looked at the girls for a moment. “If they ask, tell them what you can about their gifts. But just that. The rest will have to be done some other way. You’ll keep my promise.” It wasn’t a question.

“I will,” Sasanna nodded. “I think...” She stopped speaking, and there was a moment of intense rapport between the two dryads, too quick and brief for either Makoto or Ami to do more than recognize it before it was over. Tarnara nodded slowly.

“That might just work,” she admitted. Sasanna was only a little shorter than Makoto, so Tarnara had to stand on her toes again to repeat the forehead- kiss. “It’s your decision, sister. Good luck, whatever you choose. And good- bye.”

“Good-bye, eldest sister and brother,” Sasanna said in a solemn, formal voice. She was crying a little, but smiled through the tears as she added, “Again.”

Tarnara shook her head and patted Sasanna’s shoulder before making her way past the girls to settle back on the chair. She closed her eyes, smiled, and let out a long, steady breath.

That whisper of sound went on and on, and the old dryad’s body settled into a stillness that was not quite death, but far more than sleep. As they watched, it sank into the wood of the chair, body and hair, dress and circlet, all of it silently and seamlessly vanishing into the substance of the tree.

*Good-bye, children.* All three of them heard the tree’s final words very clearly.

Then it was silent, and Tarnara was gone. Again.

Sasanna looked at the now-empty chair for a long time. Then she brushed the tears from her face and looked at the two humans. “Let’s go.”

# 

Even though neither of them could understand a single word the other said without Luna’s interpretation, by the time Kaiya had to leave to make her own preparations for dinner, she and Usagi were already fast friends.

Luna had to admit that she liked the pale, sweet-natured girl too. Kaiya had a younger, more delicate version of her mother’s beauty, but what lay behind the pretty face took after her father. Her entire conversation with Usagi had been a simple hour and a half of girl talk; not once had she tried to pry into Usagi’s story, or even given the indication that she was fighting an impulse to do so.

Still, when Meria came back to announce that supper would begin in another hour, Luna redoubled her resolve to keep both eyes and ears open. There was no way to tell how large the Neraan household was, and if any other members of the family turned out to be like the Lady, this could easily turn into a very long and difficult night.

Artemis had returned from his walk his Akhmed a while back—with his tail up for some reason and a badly-hidden sparkle in his eye that would have had Luna’s own tail twitching if she’d still possessed it—and quickly gave Luna a run-down on the night’s menu, which she in turn drilled Usagi on for the next hour, trying to figure out what might have restored Artemis’ good mood. Knowing him as she did, she didn’t like some of the possibilities her mind came up with.

Ordinarily, that time would have been spent with Meria helping the two ladies dress and prepare, but as she had already demonstrated, Luna could alter her human form’s hair and choice of garments with little more than a thought. In this case, she stuck with her sleeveless, narrow-skirts dress, upgrading the material to a finer, silk-like substance; she also added silver embroidery along the sides, but that was as far as she went. The silver crescent earrings and the polished tooth necklace were enough ornamentation, and Luna wasn’t about to put her meehara down for an instant until they were out of this time.

That left Usagi to deal with, or so both Luna and Meria had assumed, right up until Usagi had pulled a familiar pen out of nowhere and waved it practically under Luna’s nose while Meria was drawing another bath.

“Where did you get that?” Luna demanded.

“I took it back from ChibiUsa after she made her little trip to the hospital, remember? I’ve been keeping it on me since then to make sure she didn’t go off and get herself into trouble.”

Luna sighed. She was typically of the opinion that Usagi—either Usagi— and the Disguise Pen were about as safe a mixture as a barrel of gunpowder and a lit match, but in this case, she was almost glad to see the thing. She insisted on holding on to it until Usagi was out of the tub, though, then asked Meria whether or not the feast was going to be held indoors or out. When the girl said it would be at least partially outdoors, Luna told her to go fetch a light cloak in case Usagi needed it later in the evening. Once the maid was out of the way, Luna handed over the pen and told Usagi to get on with it.

She did that, raising the pen and calling out its activation phrase. Luna hid her face and Artemis fell over laughing when Usagi commanded the pen to make her look like “a glamorous high-society lady dressed for a formal evening dinner and dance, and never mind messing with the face, waistline, and hair or I’ll find an automatic pencil sharpener and shove you in!”

That was _not_ the sort of command the pen had been programmed to receive, but for an inanimate magical object, the thing seemed to have a strong sense of self-preservation, because when the light show ended, the disguise it had created was clothes and accessories only, as requested. The gown was a modest one, shapely and stylish without calling too much attention to Usagi’s figure or condition. It didn’t have sleeves but included soft gloves which reached past the elbows. The dress was a soft, pinkish-white, the color changing a bit depending on the lighting, and the gloves were white; her engagement ring shone brightly, while a mix of diamonds and amethysts flashed at her throat. The pen had also added silver discs not entirely unlike the ornaments from Sailor Moon’s uniform over Usagi’s odangos, discs held in place by a short silver band hidden in her golden hair. Luna inhaled sharply when she saw what _else_ that band was holding in place; two short strings of pearls met at the middle of Usagi’s forehead, ending at the inner curve of a gold crescent placed _exactly_ where the moon ‘birthmark’ would have appeared if Usagi had turned into Serenity.

Luna quickly flipped the golden moon up and sighed in relief to see nothing beneath. Usagi asked what she was so freaked about and then caught a look at herself in the mirror; the crescent made her eyes widen briefly, and she touched the discs in her hair with the air of someone who’s the butt of a cosmic joke, but otherwise she thought the whole outfit rather nice. She definitely approved that her ring was in plain sight. The shoes, on inspection, were more like slippers than anything else, which Usagi also approved of, as heels in addition to the extra weight she was carrying around would have been pure murder.

There were a few moments of surprise when Meria came back with the requested cloak and found Usagi wearing a dress and jewelry that hadn’t been there when she’d left, but the girl coped admirably and set about assisting with what little makeup Usagi chose to wear; the pen, likely choosing to err on the side of caution, had not provided any, but Meria knew what she was doing.

Looking at herself in the mirror, Usagi remembered the last time she’d gotten anywhere near this dressed up, as part of a night that had essentially been her good-bye to her Mamo-chan. She’d had to go over to Hikawa to get ready, of course; Rei had helped her plan and purchase everything, and the dress they had chosen—a deadly, slit-skirt number in a flame pattern of pure white, flashing gold, and fiery red, with matched stiletto-heeled shoes, black silk stockings, and a few other ‘surprises’ Usagi couldn’t even think about without blushing—would have made even Ikuko lock her up every night for the next ten years. Kenji would have had a heart attack on the spot, and Luna probably wouldn’t have been much better off.

The whole shopping list had depleted their combined allowances even with months of saving up beforehand, but Rei had helped out in several more important ways besides the money—which, with rather surprising and uncharacteristic generosity, she’d told Usagi to forget about paying her back. Several times during the afternoon, Usagi knew she would have given up on the whole idea if Rei hadn’t been there to calm her down. And if she’d panicked, she never would have gotten to see the look on Mamoru’s face when he arrived to pick her up; the two of them hadn’t _quite_ done her up to kill, but Usagi figured Mamoru had been seriously wounded, if not maimed.

Remembering some of Rei’s advice had been a big help later in the evening as well, at least until they got back to the apartment; Usagi had been on her own from that point, but she was... well, if not exactly proud, then at least pleased with the way things had turned out. She’d do it again in an instant and not change a thing. She _could_ do it again—eventually—since she still had the dress and everything else hidden _very_ carefully away under a floorboard at the shrine. She’d have to buy some new stockings, of course, and give the ensemble time to air out beforehand, but...

“Not tonight,” Usagi admonished herself in a whisper.

*Not tonight,* the voice of Serenity repeated firmly. Then the princess giggled. *But not _too_ far in the future, right?*

*Definitely not,* Usagi agreed.

“’Not tonight,’ what?” Luna asked suspiciously, her ears catching the faint words and her own eyes spotting something of the dreamy, sneaky look in Usagi’s.

“Oh, nothing.” Usagi smiled. “Quit frowning, Luna; you’ll give yourself wrinkles, and we’re going to be late.”

Luna made a suspicious, catlike growl as they left the room.

Two guards escorted them to the dining hall, which as Luna had expected from her talk with Meria, included several doors opening into the large gardens behind the manor. A large table stood at the far side of the room, with places and chairs set for twenty or more people; about three times that number were moving about the room, not including the dozen or so guards stationed along the walls. More than half of them were wearing clothes of the same general quality and style as Meria’s dress or the guard’s uniforms, while the rest were done up on the same general scale as Usagi. A small group of three men and two women sat or stood in the corner to the left of the door, playing a ‘modern’ piece, slow and graceful, on a selection of instruments whose designs ranged from similar to the kinds Usagi had seen to completely unfamiliar.

Akhmed, Lund, and the house wizard were standing near the door when the ladies arrived; all three bowed. Akhmed wore the same outfit he had at the meeting that afternoon, plus a small ivory handle at his left hip that looked like the hilt of a knife or sword, but didn’t appear to have a blade attached to it. Lund’s clothes fell somewhere between the finery of the nobles and the functionality of the servants; the wizard wore his robes.

“La-Lady Usagi,” Akhmed stammered, obviously more than a little overcome; Usagi didn’t need Luna’s translation to read his stunned features and decide that she _really_ liked this boy. “Welcome.”

Usagi nodded and smiled at him, then accepted the greetings from the other two. The wizard, whose name she hadn’t been told earlier, introduced himself as Erridar, and then spoke to Luna.

“My Lord has asked me to provide a translation spell for your mistress, should she wish one.”

Luna really didn’t want anyone talking to Usagi, but it would have been rude not to carry on even an inane conversation with some of the family members they hadn’t been introduced to yet, so she repeated Erridar’s statement for Usagi. The girl’s briefly thoughtful expression told Luna and Artemis she was listening to Serenity’s lifetime of advice before she nodded to accept the spell, which helped both cats to relax a little.

The diamonds in Usagi’s necklace flickered when Erridar made a motion to release the magic, and Luna bit her lip; the ginzuishou was in that disguise, somewhere, and the diamonds were the most likely part of the whole thing to be reflecting it. If it decided it didn’t like the spell...

There was a flicker in the diamonds, but nothing else. Luna let out a silent sigh of relief, then noticed Lund looking at Usagi with an odd expression. Why would he be startled?

“Thank you, Erridar,” Usagi said, and the wizard bowed again. “Now, Akhmed, if you’ll present Luna and I to your parents again, we can get on with the business of meeting the rest of your family.”

Akhmed chuckled, made a motion with his hands, and started towards the center of the room. Usagi took a moment to square her shoulders before she and Luna followed, marching into the combined gazes of the Neraan family as if into battle.

“Any idea what had Lund spooked?” Usagi asked softly.

“Not entirely,” Luna replied, not surprised that Usagi had noticed the strange, hasty look from the merchant’s aide; the girl could be very clever when she cared to give it the effort.

“He’s talking with the wizard,” Artemis reported up to them. Luna glanced out of the lower corner of her eye and could just make out that one of her counterpart’s ears was swiveled back towards the two men. “Something about magic reactions... energy... damn, lost it. Too much noise.”

“The ginzuishou flickered when the spell arrived,” Usagi told them. “I think it analyzed the magic to make sure it was safe. Do you think Lund might have seen that?”

“Anything’s possible,” Luna admitted. “We’ll have to have a talk with him later.”

# 

In chambers of the palatial Imperial compound near the center of Khairoah, Medea looked up in surprise as the Orb atop her staff suddenly pulsed into life, glowing not with its usual blood-red fire, but a faded pink hue.

“Lady?” Vaurinn said curiously. “What does this mean?”

“Strong magic,” she replied absently. “Not temporal-based by design, but powerful enough to adapt to that use. It set off a minor sympathetic reaction in the Orb.”

“Our quarry?”

“Almost certainly.” Medea looked into the Garnet Orb, then shook her head as its pale glow faded away. “It’s gone again. Too fast to get a precise reading, but it’s definitely somewhere in this city. To the north, I think.” She looked at the wizard. “Have your spells turned up anything?”

“They may have. With your permission...” Medea waved her hand, and Vaurinn made a complicated gesture with his hands. A space on the floor about three paces to his left shone with blue light before a tall, thick-bodied man in slightly tattered and dusty clothes materialized, surrounded by a visible field of soft white light. He looked around nervously, in a way which suggested that he could neither see nor hear where he was and who might be there with him.

“His name is Tukkad.”

# 

That bit about walking into battle turned out to be a pretty close approximation as, for the next half hour, Usagi and her escorts drifted through the dining hall and out onto the balcony overlooking the gardens, meeting and greeting the members of the extended family and several other guests. The sharp claws and berserk charges of the enemies Usagi was used to facing were replaced by sharper looks and subtle body language; words of power and lethal projectile attacks surrendered their place to courtly, overblown speech laden with subtle slanders and hidden innuendoes.

Not having been informed—for obvious reasons—of the real reason for Usagi’s presence—at least as far as the heads of the household knew it—the assembled nobles, semi-nobles, and low-born wealthy squared off against the strangers on every level to try and figure out who they were, or to simply size up their skill on the social battlefield:

“I hear you’ve recently arrived from a journey, my Lady; I’m something of a traveler myself. What made you decide to visit Earth, of all places?”

“A splendid dress, my Lady. I’ve heard how travel puts such a strain on the wardrobe, but I must say, you’ve coped admirably...”

“From Mau, you say? As it happens, my younger sister has long expressed a desire for a companion from that world. Tell me, my Lady, how exactly _does_ one go about obtaining the services of such a skilled guardian?”

“It’s such a _shame_ that you couldn’t bring your Lord to this evening’s festivities, my dear...”

The wrong answer to any one question could have been a disaster, but with Serenity effectively riding shotgun, Usagi came up with the necessary counters, and scored a few points of her own:

“Just passing through the neighborhood, my Lord, though if the travel arrangements had been left up to me, I would have liked to have seen Saturn again. As a fellow traveler, I’m curious to know if you’ve ever been on one of the moons in time to see the effect of the Sun on the rings as you slide into the planet’s shadow. You haven’t? Oh, my Lord, you don’t _know_ what you’ve missed...”

“This old thing? Well, you’re right about what a journey does to convenience, but they always say that travel broadens your horizons, and I think a _few_ sacrifices are worth that, don’t you?”

“Actually, my Lord, Luna and Artemis both really work for my mother, so I’m really the last person who could be any sort of authority on the matter. I _think_ that each society would have a different hiring policy, and... you didn’t know? Yes, there are actually nine of them, all with their own codes of honor. I’d hate to imagine what some of them might do to someone who approached them the wrong way...”

“I know, my Lady, and I’m sure he would have loved to meet you as well. But please, introduce me to your son. The young man here? Oh, you mean he’s _not_ your son; I’m sorry...”

And on like that.

Several of the men commented favorably on her hair, and Usagi noted with a repressed smile that, aside from a few streaks of grey and white, everyone else had hair that was at least brown, if not darker. None of the women mentioned it, even though most were eyeing her blonde head—odangos and all—with helpless envy; they were glancing at Luna’s impossibly long blue-black tresses with very much the same air. Usagi felt a little smug about both facts.

Another thing she picked up was that a lot of people were discussing the weather. This wasn’t entirely unusual, as the weather has likely been a safe topic for conversation since time immemorial. But rather than conducting pointless, harmless discussion, people seemed to be taking an active interest in the day’s meteorological manifestations. Usagi glanced outside at one point and spotted some very lovely clouds, thin and tinted pink by the light of the slowly setting sun. Those clouds she could see appeared to have formed in a ring about the city, which struck her as rather peculiar.

“Atlanteans controlled the weather,” Luna reminded her in an undertone. “Something must have gone wrong with whichever of the local mana nexi was set to atmospheric regulation.”

“Do you suppose _we_ might have had something to do with it?” Usagi said, heeding a silent warning from Serenity to speak above a whisper; people who strained to hear whispers ignored the sort of low voice she was using just then.

“I hope not.”

When the guests were finally called to their seats, Usagi found herself led to the far end of the table from Lord Neraan, a seat where everyone at the table could easily see her. She got the feeling that Lady Neraan might have had a hand in the seating arrangements, putting her and Luna—Artemis had eaten earlier and now sat curled up next to Usagi’s chair—on display for the amusement of the gathered diners.

Kaiya, sitting to Usagi’s right instead of by her mother at the other end of the table, was obviously having none of that. She had entered the hall late, wearing a rosy pink dress, pearl earrings, and a necklace of crisscrossing gold and silver mesh, politely and warmly greeted a few members of the crowd she knew, and then headed straight for Usagi. With Erridar’s spell in effect, the girls had been able to take up their earlier conversation without Luna’s efforts as a go-between—although they didn’t exclude her—and as they and everyone else took their seats, Kaiya just settled down next to her friend, continuing the animated discussion and displacing all the guests on that side of the table one seat down.

Lady Neraan and a few of the other guests—particularly a young Lord who had been looking forward to engaging the lovely, pale heiress in a discussion of their own—were less than thrilled with Kaiya’s decision to change seats. Lord Neraan, though, took one look at the vitality in his beloved daughter’s face and signaled silently to his wife and the head of the servants to leave things as they were.

Between Artemis’ earlier reconnaissance and the advice from three separate sources—Luna, Kaiya, and Serenity—Usagi was well-prepared to face the ordeal of a polite society dinner. She hoped. Her usual ‘human vacuum’ eating habits had to be put on hold, not merely for the sake of their cover but for personal pride; these people were staring at her quite enough as it was. Pleading a delicate stomach, she had the servants bring her only small portions at a time, and only one glass of wine; after an initial taste—slightly bitter—she let that sit except for a few toasts, and drank water the rest of the evening. Fortunately, while the food included a number of dishes that didn’t have equivalents in twentieth century culture and therefore wouldn’t translate out of Atlantean, Usagi thought most of it was delicious.

The meal itself was to last three hours, and even eating slowly and engaging in periodic conversation with the nearer guests, Usagi would find herself quite full by the end. Of course, there were interruptions which lengthened the actual time: three men and a woman dressed in robes similar to Erridar’s, but more flamboyant, conjured up a variety of illusory entertainment; a pair of jugglers flipped balls, lit torches, and daggers towards the ceiling; the musicians played a variety of pieces Usagi assumed must be popular. While most of the guests seemed to ignore the wizards and the jugglers, a few slipped away from the table every now and then to dance.

It was about an hour into the meal when Akhmed appeared at the end of the table, bowed to the ladies, and asked Usagi if she’d care to dance. After a moment of careful thought, Usagi got an idea.

“I think I’ll have to decline, Akhmed.” She touched her belly and smiled apologetically. “Extra weight and all that. But why don’t you take Luna out with you instead?”

Down on the floor, Artemis sat bolt upright, ears peaked and eyes wide with something that looked a little like fear.

“Usagi,” Luna was saying cautiously, “I really don’t think...”

“Oh, for once in your life, Luna, relax! Have a little fun!”

It seemed for a moment as if Luna was going to argue, but then for some reason, she smiled. “All right, Usagi. If you insist.” She looked up at Akhmed. “I’m afraid I don’t know very much about Atlantean dances, though. Would you mind if I taught you one from Mau, instead?”

Artemis made a choking noise. *I CAN’T have heard that right.*

“I’d be delighted,” Akhmed replied.

Luna pushed back her chair and walked towards the center of the floor with Akhmed; watching them, Usagi almost didn’t notice Artemis scramble up onto Luna’s chair. “Artemis, what are you doing?”

“I must have eaten some bad tuna or something this afternoon,” the white cat mumbled to himself. Luna was speaking with the musicians, tapping out a series of beats with her hands and getting a half-dozen slow nods of agreement. “This has got to be a hallucination.”

Most of the guests looked up from their meals and conversations curiously as the music and the dance began. The tune was not one of the slow waltz-like pieces the musicians had been playing so far that evening; it centered around a series of three fast beats followed by four slow ones, with the other instruments playing low around the steady percussion of the hand-drum one of the men had produced.

This particular dance began with the participants facing each other, arms out to the sides and slightly forwards so that their hands just touched. Three long, quick steps to the right, then four short and slow steps to the left, each in time with the drum. The hands were also supposed to move; from the woman’s point of view, the right hand moved in on the first step, the left moved in on the second, then both went out on the third step for a set of back-and-forth motions, her right hand pushing back _his_ left, then her left pushing back his right, ending with his arms pushing forwards as they returned to the start. The next set of steps were a reversal of the first—three to the left, four to the right, and the man was the one leading with the accompanying hand-movements—followed by a four fast beats of the drum in which the woman executed a quick spin, ending facing away from her partner, hands touching right to right and left to left instead of the opposite. They repeated the steps like that, and after the next spin, started over from the beginning.

Luna took it slow to begin with, giving Akhmed a few runs through to get the hang of the basic steps and letting the musicians familiarize themselves with the notes. She was pleased to find that the young man learned quickly—which was just as well for him—and the musicians knew what they were doing.

*So you want me to relax, do you, Usagi? Have a little fun, hmm?* Luna’s smile then would not have looked out of place on a tiger. Pardon; a tigress.

Somewhere in the third cycle of the dance, Usagi frowned as she realized that something about the dance had changed. It wasn’t going any faster or slower, and the actual steps were the same, but she was absolutely certain that a difference had appeared. Pinning it down took her a while, and when she had it figured out, Usagi couldn’t help but blush.

Luna was... Usagi had no idea what to call it, actually. There were hip-swaying motions and rolls of the shoulders which started out subtle and got less so with each repetition of the basic pattern, making some very interesting things happen. When they were facing each other, each time Luna pushed her hands forward, she leaned just a bit closer to Akhmed, and each time _his_ hands moved forward, she leaned just a little further back. When she had her back to him, Luna didn’t leave much room, and when she pushed his arms back, she leaned at the same time, in a manner that stretched her body out and suggested she intended to keep going.

It was one of those dances that it’s just about impossible to keep from watching, and equally difficult to watch without going red in the face; there was a look in Luna’s eyes that could have ignited cold rocks, and she turned it loose on everyone who made eye contact with her for even a fraction of a second. Most of the time, that was Akhmed, but to judge by the expression on his face, the poor boy wasn’t sure whether Luna was going to kiss him, kill him, or just dance him into a quivering pile of jelly.

Usagi couldn’t believe this black-haired dancer was actually the same person who scolded her for not paying attention to lessons on discipline and proper behavior, the same authoritarian, protocol-and-propriety-obsessed woman Serenity remembered from the Moon. Although, now that they thought about it, there had been a few times when Luna was in mid-rant that she’d suddenly demonstrated particularly in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand, almost as if she’d had first-hand experience with what she was denouncing...

The dance proceeded for about nine minutes, and only once in that time did Usagi manage to pull her eyes away for a quick look down at the table. Everyone was staring at Luna—everyone. The servants had frozen in the middle of their duties, and while the guards held to their straight-backed, forward-facing pose, their eyes were definitely busy. The guests whose chairs faced the wrong way had turned them around, and the ones on the other side were leaning to the left or the right so they could look around the others. Kaiya had a tremendous grin hanging crookedly off her face; she was enjoying the dance, no question, but she was enjoying what it was doing to her brother even more.

Looking at Kaiya, Usagi also looked past her, and caught a glimpse of Lund, at the other end of the table, looking back in their direction with a small smile.

*Well now,* Usagi thought. *I _know_ that smile’s not for me...*

Usagi jumped in her seat and whipped her head around at the sound of a loud stomp; Luna had spun to face Akhmed again and brought her right foot down hard on the floor, signaling for the musicians to stop playing. The spin had tossed a lot of Luna’s long, curiously lightweight hair up over her right arm so that it almost appeared to have grabbed hold of Akhmed. Her head turned to the left, allowing her to send a smoky-eyed look at the people seated near Usagi’s end of the table; then she turned back to the right, her hair pulling away from Akhmed as she looked at Lord Neraan and the other high-ranking members of the family. Sheryndra, Luna was pleased to see, was gaping like a goldfish in an aquarium.

Pushing back his chair and getting to his feet in silence, Lord Neraan regarded Luna for a moment with a blank, stern face. Then he broke into a very deliberate smile and began to clap, which triggered a round of applause from just about everyone in the room. Luna listened to it for a moment, then smiled mysteriously, nodded to Lord Neraan, and turned back to Akhmed.

“Try to relax your back next time,” she advised.

Akhmed made a sound which wasn’t really a word as Luna returned to her seat, the focus of all eyes, and purring in an extremely self-satisfied manner.

# 

When dinner ended, the party spilled out into the gardens, now lit by drifting globes of light conjured by Erridar and the other wizards. Tables covered with tiny snack items and bottles of wine were set up for the convenience of the guests as they drifted about the bushes and blooms. Some sought company, others sought privacy, and more were curious simply to see the gardens.

“It’s this way,” Kaiya said, the hem of her dress whispering along over the stone path. She was leading Usagi, Luna, and Artemis to one of her favorite parts of the garden. Lund had come with them as a sort of counterbalance to Luna and Artemis being there, and Kaiya had also tried to bring Akhmed along, but he kept giving Luna the same sort of looks a trapped mouse gives a cat, so they finally sent him away to calm down.

“You said how much you loved roses,” Kaiya continued, “and there’s a very nice arrangement of them by the north wall. Papa had the first planted for Mama when they were married, and he’s added a small bush every year for their anniversary. Of course, they’re not quite as nice at night as they are during the day, but you can come back out here tomorrow to see them.”

Usagi nodded and made a polite sound of agreement, but her attention was mostly on Lund. She might not have Minako’s ‘love radar,’ but there was—at least to her mind—no mistaking the way Lund’s eyes followed Kaiya when he thought no one was looking.

“Here we are,” Kaiya said, pointing to a patch of moonlight-drenched bushes set near the ivy-covered stone wall which ringed the gardens. There were, as she had said, quite a number of bushes—Usagi counted twenty-five, but it was hard to tell if that was accurate or not in the pale moonlight—the largest in the center of a pattern that had gradually expanded over the years. Circles within circles linked by criss-crossing lines, and with plenty of room left to add more bushes. Small white flowers bloomed near the base of each bush.

“They’re very lovely,” Usagi said honestly. Kaiya smiled.

“This one’s my favorite,” she noted, pointing to a bush that was located between the central section and outer ring of the pattern. “It’s the bush Papa had planted the year I was born; they waited until my actual birthday to put it in, so it’s been here as long as I have. Maybe it’s just my ego talking, but I think it’s the prettiest one here, don’t you?”

“Wellllll”—Usagi drew the word out reluctantly—“I don’t know. I personally think that _this_ one over here...” Kaiya made a hurt noise. “I’m only teasing, Kaiya. Your rosebush is beautiful.” Usagi smiled a little sadly. “I was given a rosebush for my birthday, once. I always thought they were the most wonderful flowers in our entire garden.”

Kaiya smiled, then shivered as a faint gust of wind blew over the wall. “Brrr... I should have brought a cloak.”

“Here,” Lund said immediately, unfastening his own short cape and draping it over her. Having been tailored for his height and shoulders, the cape covered Kaiya quite thoroughly.

“Thank you, Lund. That was very sweet of you.” Kaiya stood up and kissed him on the cheek, which startled Lund more than a little.

“We... should get back to the manor before you catch a cold,” he said, tripping over the words a little. Kaiya nodded and glanced at Usagi and her escorts.

“Coming?”

“You go on,” Usagi said. “We’ll find our way back.” She grinned mischievously. “Although if you decide to run off and elope with Lund, I won’t tell anyone.”

Lund looked up, the corner of his mouth twitching as he tried to protest. Kaiya giggled as she half-led, half-dragged him off.

“What was that about?” Artemis asked curiously.

“He’s in love with her,” Luna said, using a tone of voice which considered her counterpart to be an idiot for not noticing.

“And I’m pretty sure she knows it,” Usagi added. Then she sighed. “What’s wrong with her, Luna? It’s not cold out here at all, but Kaiya wasn’t just shivering for show. Everyone keeps looking at her oddly, and she looks... almost like Hotaru used to.”

“She’s dying, Usagi. And those”—Luna pointed towards some of the brighter lights in the city—“are why. Mana nexi drain energy from the planet, but people are a _part_ of the planet, and when the drain on the world reaches a certain point, it starts affecting people. All forms of life carry certain amounts of the various elemental forces in their bodies, and we _need_ those energies to live. Those with lower levels of the assorted forces are affected sooner, getting weaker and weaker until...” Luna shook her head. “Judging by the signs, I’d say Kaiya’s losing earth energy.”

“Because she’s so small?”

“Partly. Have you noticed how she seems to drift everywhere, almost as if she’s floating? Well, that’s a trait of elemental air, which is traditionally opposed to earth; when one weakens, the other automatically gets stronger.”

“How long do you suppose she has?”

“I’m not an expert, but from what I remember studying, people who suffered from this ailment didn’t usually make it to their sixteenth birthday. None ever lived past twenty.”

“Kaiya’s almost seventeen now,” Usagi said quietly. “That’s not fair, Luna.”

“I know. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Nobody in this time’s realized what the problem is, and you can’t use the ginzuishou in your condition, particularly not _here._ And even if you could, saving Kaiya would change the course of history.”

“I know, I know. I have to accept that we can’t do anything, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Usagi rubbed her shoulders through the light cloak Luna had insisted she put on when they came outside. “Let’s go back. It’s not as warm out here as I thought.”

Luna hesitated, then put her arm around Usagi’s shoulders and started to purr soothingly as they walked. Usagi smiled.

“We used to take walks like this on the Moon, when Serenity-mama was busy,” Usagi reminisced. “You know, Luna,” she said after a long, reflective silence, “I don’t think I ever thanked you.”

“For what?”

“Everything. The training, the lessons, all of it. I know I haven’t always been the best student or Senshi”—Luna bit her tongue to stop a reply—“but you never gave up on me; you’ve tried to keep me out of trouble, but you let me do things in my own time, my own way. You only had to be my teacher, but you chose to be my friend, too.” Usagi hugged her. “Thank you.”

Returning the hug, Luna simply said, “I promised your mother I’d look after you.”

Usagi giggled. “That must have been _some_ promise. How did you ever manage to put up with me? With _any_ of us? Particularly considering all the grief we gave you back on the Moon?”

Luna couldn’t help but wince. Her duties on the Moon had included the education of the Princess and her attendants—the Senshi, and a few of her favorite ladies-in-waiting—in the proper social graces. Simple enough in theory, but in practice, with that bunch for students...

Martians were renowned for their strictly proper society, and Vestia had been receiving lessons in etiquette from harsher teachers than Luna practically since the cradle, so she hadn’t been a problem except on those occasions when her temper flared up—usually because one or more of the other girls wasn’t paying attention. Periodically, Luna had even placed Vestia in charge of a few of the other students so that she herself could focus more attention on the rest.

At the other end of the scale was Ishtar, sun-haired, sun-bronzed, slender, smiling, and almost perpetually in a state of—what was by standards anywhere other than on Venus—half-dress. It wasn’t that she had been immoral; honesty, faithfulness, compassion, and generosity were sacred virtues in the Venusian religion, and Ishtar would have been deeply hurt by any suggestion that she hadn’t lived up to those standards. Nor did it have to do with an overblown ego; Ishtar knew she was beautiful, but she hadn’t flaunted it, and she had forever been complimenting the other girls on their better attributes. It wasn’t even a lack of civility, for the Venusian society had been as old and as complex as any other, with as many rules and customs. It just hadn’t had much use for clothes.

Vestia had considered Ishtar a walking disgrace on the best of days, and Ishtar had in turn thought that her fellow Senshi needed to loosen up; they squared off at least twice a month for nearly ten years, each on a holy crusade to reform the other. Vestia tried to chaperone Ishtar, scaring away any number of past or potential liaisons with that menacing glare Rei still possessed today; Ishtar countered by describing any number of those young men in precise detail, trying to get Vestia to notice them but more frequently just sending the girl into a flame-faced retreat. Vestia enlisted Mercury’s help to play havoc with the climate in Ishtar’s quarters, hoping to make the tropical native cold enough to put something on; Ishtar spent several nights sharing quarters with Serenity or Amalthea, and then retaliated by modifying every dress in Vestia’s wardrobe to Venusian standards. They quoted scriptures back and forth, they shouted at each other, they made threats. Luna thought they had both enjoyed themselves immensely.

Ishtar once tried to sneak a handsome young fellow into Vestia’s bedchamber; they both left less than half a step ahead of Vestia, who had wielded her honor blade with one hand, a fiery lash in the other, and screamed bloody murder while chasing her ‘friend’ clear across the palace. Vestia, though, had been running through the halls in her nightdress—a pale red thing of sandworm silk—past any number of startled guardsmen and young nobles, so Luna figured that round went to Ishtar.

Amalthea, Serenity herself, and the assorted lesser ladies hadn’t been quite so extreme in either direction. Amma listened, but since Jovians didn’t pay much attention to social rank, she seldom put anything she learned to use. Serenity was something like her modern incarnation in that, while she was a decent student in the classroom, she never studied outside of it. Then there was Mercury, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of Luna’s lessons but who, in typical Nereid fashion, got the facts absolutely perfect while missing the point entirely.

“Patience, persistence, and a lot of delegating responsibility,” Luna said in answer to Usagi’s question. “And it didn’t hurt that I had Ariel around to help keep the rest of you in line.”

Usagi nodded. Ariel, Haruka’s past life, had been fourteen when Serenity and her guardians started being born, the oldest of that generation of Senshi except for Pluto—of course—and perhaps Mercury; who could ever tell, with Nereids, just how old one of them was? With over a decade and a half of Senshi experience under her belt by the time the rest had started their training, Ariel had been a combination of teacher and surrogate mother for the younger girls. Only Pluto and Saturn had been stronger, and even Amalthea had looked up to her. Figuratively speaking, of course, since Amma had been taller at age fifteen than Ariel was at twenty-nine.

“Of course,” Luna added, “Ariel had her hands full looking after Larissa, or I would have handed two or three of the others over to her entirely so I could have focused on _you_ a bit better.”

Usagi started to protest, and then halted as something tickled her memory. Larissa was Michiru’s past life, and at five years younger than even Amalthea, she had been the baby of the Senshi. A very precocious baby, fluent in three languages by the time she was five, learning the use of her powers by age nine, and smarter than anybody other than Mercury, Pluto, and perhaps the Queen. And yet she’d somehow managed to flood the palace basements when she was twelve. Ariel had scolded her daughter very severely for th...

Usagi’s mind stalled. “Her _DAUGHTER_?!” she blurted out.

“You didn’t remember?” Luna asked in surprise.

“But they’re... I mean, Haruka and Michiru... they are... but they _were_...”

“Remember your lessons, Princess.” Luna’s recitory manner stirred up Serenity’s memories again. “’The universe recycles everything within itself. Dying stars expend energy and substance which give rise to new stars and new planets; the death and consumption of one life form allows others to live and grow. The matter which is swallowed into the oblivion of a black hole is transfigured into purest elemental energy, which seeps back into the ley lines; even souls are reused, passed from one life to another.’”

“’The soul is both a single thing and a composite of lesser ones. Male and female, parent and child, plant and animal, consciousness and instinct, good and evil; the soul is all of these together and yet none of them at all. Ever curious, ever changing, the soul passes from life to life on a journey to understand itself, becoming many things in order to explore all aspects of its existence. The soul may divide itself or merge with others; it may walk alone or travel alongside other souls it has met before and will meet again, other souls to which ties of love or shackles of hate have bound it.’” Luna finished quoting and opened her eyes. “A little preachy, but it gets the message across. It doesn’t matter _now_ who or what Haruka and Michiru _were,_ Usagi; they love each other, and their souls are just finding different ways to explore and express what that means.”

“Well... yeah, but...” Usagi gave it up; this sort of metaphysical spiritual babble was out of her league. “If I end up coming back as Mamoru’s mother or something in a future life,” she said with a warning glance up at the stars, “then SOMEBODY is going to pay DEARLY for it.”

“Consider the universe forewarned,” Luna murmured. Usagi shot her an indignant look, couldn’t hold it, and they both started laughing. Artemis rolled his eyes.

Their shared good mood dissolved as the general stillness of the night air was broken by the sounding of a gong somewhere in the manor. Usagi and her guardians looked up at the unexpected noise, frowning in different degrees.

“What is it, Luna?”

“I’m not sure, but we’d better get back inside.”

# 

Medea was not by nature a patient woman. When she wanted something, she wanted it _now;_ when she gave an order, she expected it to be carried out immediately. But she’d had to wait today, for hours on end, while her subordinates canvassed the city.

Her interviews of the three duty-wizards and the supervisor from the mana reactor had taken forever, but they had repeated their written statements almost verbatim, and Vaurinn’s magic had confirmed the truth of their words. As if anyone would dare lie to _her._

The story told by Vaurinn’s petty thug, of a golden-haired girl and a demon cat, was the sort of thing most people would have dismissed as being born from the bottom of his last mug of ale. After Tukkad had given the location of the small oasis, however, Medea was inclined to believe him, for it lay almost at the heart of the region where the Gate had opened. Again, Vaurinn’s magic proved the man was not lying, and the girl’s pregnancy would immediately explain why Medea had been unable to get an exact count of the travelers.

Then it had been a long, interminable wait as Vaurinn questioned the commanders of the city watch, finally learning that the young man, Akhmed of House Neraan, had returned to the city just that morning, in the company of several merchants and their guards. There was no word of a pale foreign girl with golden hair; the only woman in the group had been pale, but with extremely dark hair and a proud demeanor. But she had been riding with a smaller figure in a cloak and hood. And the Neraan estate was to the north, the same direction suggested by the reaction of the Garnet Orb.

Now, standing in the front hall of that manor, Medea was again being forced to wait as Vaurinn spoke with his counterpart, the house wizard. Curiously enough, now that she was sure she had located her quarry, waiting was no trouble at all.

# 

Luna’s heart sank when the red-haired woman entered the hall, a familiar staff in her hand and an equally familiar symbol clearly visible upon her robe. The presence of the two wizards at her left hand only made things worse. Even a Senshi of Pluto would miss the ginzuishou as long as it stayed dormant, but Lund had seen its presence, had spoken to Erridar about it at least once, and now that the house wizard had been questioned by his colleague...

“I’d heard a rumor that a Senshi was in the city,” one of the nearby guests said quietly to his neighbor. “What do you suppose could be important enough to bring Lady Pluto herself all the way from the Great City?”

“And with a mage-inquisitor, no less,” the neighbor agreed.

Luna ignored them and silently counted heads. Ten soldiers in all, plus the past-Pluto and the new wizard. Not good odds, and worse if the house guards were ordered in as well. Who was the girl, though? She couldn’t be an apprentice, or she would have been wearing the robes of a junior wizard or Senshi-in-training. Instead, she was dressed not much differently than the servants, and from the way she stood, eyes downcast and near at hand to the Senshi, that was what she appeared to be—a very frightened servant, perhaps even a slave, judging from the fearful way she looked at everything except her mistress.

Lord Neraan and his brother were greeting the new arrival with a number of hasty bows; she ignored them and made a slow survey of the room, her eyes stopping when they reach Usagi and Luna. The crowd parted as the head of her staff lowered to point at the pair, the Orb atop it flickering once.

“Who is that?” Pluto asked in a clear, quiet voice which somehow carried to every ear in the room.

“Steady, Luna,” Usagi murmured, getting a firm grip on her friend’s arm.

“The young lady’s name is Usagi, Lady Medea,” Lord Neraan replied a bit uncertainly. “She is...”

“She is under arrest,” Medea said flatly, “as is her companion. Guards, take them. And the cat, as well. Vaurinn, search them for items of magic; anything you find is to be handed over to me immediately.”

Luna’s eyes widened, but not nearly as much as the wizard’s. “Lady, that is highly... irregular. By law, seized magic is to be held by an appointed member of my Order until...”

“I am aware of the authority the law gives you, mage-inquisitor. MY authority supersedes it where matters of temporal security are concerned, and is backed by the personal command of Emperor himself. Now follow my orders—and HIS—and secure that device of theirs before they have a chance to use it.”

“I don’t think so,” Usagi said flatly, getting the undivided attention of everyone in the room.

“By what right do you dare to challenge the authority of the Emperor?” Medea said.

“By the same authority that empowers your office, Senshi of Pluto. What I carry is not of this time and must remain unknown to it, else the flow of history will be invariably disrupted.” Usagi was rapidly slipping into full Serenity-mode, face calm and commanding. Her words were translating into Atlantean through Erridar’s still-functional spell, but looking closely, Luna could just make out that her lips were no longer moving in the Japanese that was Usagi’s native language, and were instead shaping the musical syllables of High Lunari, the speech of kings and queens that Serenity had been raised to use.

“We have attempted to remain uninvolved with the events of this era since our arrival,” Usagi continued. “If you deem it necessary to protect the timeline by placing us in isolation, I will not resist, but you will _not,_ for any reason, convince me to relinquish my property.”

Medea was taken aback by the sudden iron authority, to say nothing of how someone so young could possibly understand so much about _her_ duties, but she recovered immediately. “You refuse to obey?”

“If you insist on trying to seize what is not yours to take, then yes, I do.”

“Then I have no choice.” Medea smiled coldly. “Guards, kill them.”

Lord Neraan’s protests were ignored as the ten soldiers drew their swords and advanced, guests melting aside in all directions. Luna drew her own weapon and set herself between Usagi and the guards, but the meehara was a tiny fang against even one of the approaching swords. She could get two, three, perhaps four if she was lucky...

The deathly silence of the chamber was broken by a tiger-like roar from a human throat, and suddenly a young man with long white hair was in the middle of the guards, the claw-like blades in his hands tearing into them with whirlwind speed and surgical precision. Caught by surprise, three guards went down in that initial attack: the sword-arm of the first hung limp and useless by his side, shoulder and elbow ripped and torn; the second had been struck in the throat by an elbow and now lay on the floor, gasping for breath; the third had dropped his weapon with a roar of pain to clutch at the bloody ruin of his face.

A sword flashed out at the attacker, who spun and snared the blade inside the curve of his triple-bladed claw, using its momentum and his own to hurl the hostile weapon clear of his body even as he knocked the guard’s feet out from under him with a sweeping kick. Luna got a good look at the face under all that white hair, and blinked in wonder.

“Artemis?” In spite of the situation, Luna had to smile. *I didn’t remember him being quite this handsome.* “Behind you!” she called out suddenly, seeing the man with the mangled arm coming up with a knife in his left hand.

Artemis either heard the warning or knew the man was there, because he turned to meet the attack. His s’srah weren’t designed to block attacks so much as redirect them; the downward curve of the claws, as already shown, was good for catching large blades, and the short, forward-facing spikes on the undersides prevented other weapons from sliding up into the hand holding the s’srah.

There were spikes on the back of the s’srah as well, sloping out to points along the line of the knuckles, and Artemis used those now, angling his left arm to catch the stabbing knife on the top of his claws, where it rode along the back of the s’srah and was deflected wide by the outwards-oriented points. He kept moving that arm forward as well, cutting into the guard’s wrist with the defensive spikes, and when the guard shifted his arm away from the stinging slice, Artemis turned his forearm and pulled back, ripping open the guard’s arm from elbow to wrist with his claw. The man dropped the knife and pulled back all of one step before Artemis struck him across the sides of his helmed head with both weapon-bearing fists, producing a sound not unlike a rung bell and sending the guard to the floor in a heap.

“Protect Usagi!” Artemis shouted at her, turning, leaping, and driving both feet into the face of another opponent.

“Don’t try to tell me my job!” Luna shouted back, side-stepping a lunge from the nearest guard and then bringing her meehara across the backs of his knees, sending him to the floor with a scream and a crash. Luna insured that he wouldn’t be getting up again for a while by striking her free hand hard into his neck, just under the rim of his helmet; the man stiffened briefly and then sprawled out, and Luna turned her attention to other matters.

Two more guards were advancing on Usagi, one uninjured, the other the one with the mauled face, glaring out through his right eye. Luna launched herself at the nearest with a hiss, ducking the sweep of his sword and bringing her weapon up point-first, below the edge of his mail vest, to probe around somewhere in his belly. Every instinct and ounce of training told Luna to finish the attack, to stab deeper and find a kidney, or the bottom of a lung, or something to make the kill; instead she dove to the left, dragging the point and razor edge of the meehara along the man’s belly and shifting the curved weapon out at the end as she moved clear of the man and the horrible mess that came sliding out of his opened belly.

It wasn’t a fatal move—not immediately, anyway; a man could live for hours with his innards exposed like that—but it was painful, and as he dropped his sword to try and hold back some of those other things, it certainly put him out of the fight.

Scarface, meanwhile, had slipped around the short, ugly encounter in an attempt to get to Usagi. In desperation, Luna lashed him across the shoulders; his mail defeated the edge of her blade, but the impact got his attention, and when he turned around, Luna blocked his return blow—she had to hold the meehara with both hands to halt the heavier blade—and then unleashed a special trick of her warrior society on him, the crescent on her forehead flashing brightly. Mindshock, this was called, a quick, short-range psychic attack which took advantage of the inherent mental powers of some Nekoron females—of whom Luna was one—to momentarily stun an enemy. It didn’t work on most monsters, whose minds were shielded by the thick evil power which had created them, but ordinary humans were another story.

The guard’s open eye went unfocused, and the weight of the sword eased slightly as every nerve in his body received a burst of confused data from his brain. Luna pushed the sword away, reversed her grip on her meehara, and drove the pearled end of the grip into the man’s exposed throat, sending him to the floor with a choking gurgle. While he was down, she cut the straps holding his helmet in place, lifted it off his head, and then brought the back of it solidly down on his skull. He’d be asleep for hours, but again, he’d survive. Luna looked up quickly, made sure Usagi was okay, then searched for Artemis.

He was halfway across the chamber, fighting five guards at once. *Show-off,* she thought, somewhere between affectionate and irritated. Feri’al trained for stealth and speed, not direct combat; the slender, curved-blade meehara wasn’t suited for the kind of heavy sword-parrying she’d had to use it for with that last guard. Garheer, on the other hand, trained to excel in melee, as Artemis was clearly demonstrating. There were two other guards down in addition to Luna’s three, and none of the ones standing were uninjured. Artemis wasn’t fighting them one at a time for any longer than three or four seconds, jumping around like a psychotic rabbit and lashing out at whatever got in range, inexorably crippling the five remaining guards.

*Make that four,* Luna corrected herself, watching one of the men fall. She knew she really ought to help Artemis—or do something about that Senshi!—but for a moment she couldn’t help but lose herself in the sheer martial beauty of the moment, watching him at work. It was another dance, very different from the one she’d turned loose on Akhmed tonight, but it was no less stirring.

Luna wasted another moment in a speculative smile that had nothing to do with the fight as she recalled that the Garheer trained for stamina, too, then sized up the rest of the room.

None of the guests were getting anywhere near them, and while the house guards had taken up defensive positions around the room, they too were holding in place, looking to their Lord for instructions. The Atlantean Senshi, Medea, was watching with mounting anger that Luna found understandable, considering that her side was getting soundly beaten. But neither she nor the wizards had made a move yet.

“Enough!” Medea shouted as the seventh of her soldiers went down. She raised her staff in one hand, spun it around to the side of her body for a moment, and then leveled it at Artemis with both hands, shouting, “STASIS BOLT!”

The Garnet Orb flared brightly, discharging a bolt of blood-red energy at Artemis. He dodged it easily, leaping high and kicking out to either side to get his legs clear—incidentally nailing one of the three remaining guards in the face even as they pulled back—but as the beam shot down to the floor in an apparent miss, Medea didn’t seem disappointed. The floor tiles beneath Artemis, Luna and Usagi realized, were glowing brightly with the same dark-hued light of the orb. Artemis saw it, too, but he was in mid-air and had no way to stop himself from landing.

The instant before Artemis’ feet hit, Medea pulled her staff back in the same manner as a fisherman does his line and called out the concluding word of her attack: “SNARE!”

Artemis’ reactions were honed to split-second precision, and he was tensing to rebound off the dangerous floor while still in mid-air, but he still had to touch the floor for a moment to jump, and against Pluto, whose timing was by nature almost always perfect, even split-second reflexes were too slow. A dozen rings of red energy burst forth from the floor and rippled up around him, some expanding and others contracting to fit the general outline of his body; Artemis stopped moving in a half-crouch, caught by the magical paralysis with his knees half-bent in preparation for a leap to safety that would now never be.

Medea smiled a chilling smile, raising her staff again. Usagi and Luna couldn’t make out what she said next, but they didn’t have to; they recognized the glowing mist which began to emanate from the Garnet Orb.

The Dead Scream howled through the air and blew Artemis clear across the room, hurling him into the far wall with a sickening crunch. It was obvious as he slid to the floor that the paralysis of the other attack had worn off—either because it had been stripped away by the Dead Scream or because Medea had stopped concentrating on it—but the loss was hardly an issue now.

It took Artemis a moment to figure out what had happened as, from his point of view, time had almost totally stopped when the red rings appeared. One instant he was over there, and the next, he was hitting the wall. He told himself to ignore the pain, but his body clearly had its own ideas, and refused to even consider trying to get up.

Something rolled him over, and Artemis found himself looking up into the worried eyes of a dark-haired angel... Luna. He tried to grin at her, but it came out a little crooked.

“How’d I do?”

“You were wonderful, Artemis.” Luna smiled back. “For a Garheer, anyway.”

“Ingrate,” he retorted, laughing and then groaning as his ribs complained about the treatment they’d just received. His gaze shifted, looking past Luna, and he hissed, “Usagi!”

Luna turned quickly and then jumped, pushing Usagi down as another Dead Scream tore across the hall, missing them both and blasting out a large piece of the wall in a spray of stone shrapnel instead. A piece of that explosion struck Luna across the back of the head, and Usagi felt her go limp. She rolled out from beneath, got to her knees, then turned Luna over. Eyes closed and face relaxed, she might have been asleep, but when Usagi pulled her hand away from the back of her friend’s neck, there was blood on her fingers.

“Luna? Luna!”

“Don’t waste time with tears,” Medea advised in a voice of ice. “You’ll be joining her soon enough.”

Even she drew back uncertainly, though, when Usagi’s head snapped around, the depths of her eyes blazing with pure white light. She gently set Luna down before standing and holding her hands in front of her heart. In the flash which followed, her disguise melted away into the familiar comfort of Serenity’s simple white gown; the golden crescent hanging from her hair dissolved into the air to reveal the even more golden mark on her forehead, and the diamonds flared brilliantly before exploding into a spherical aura of white force. Between her hands, at the very heart of the sudden magical manifestation, the ginzuishou floated and flickered with the silvery-white light of its full awakening.

Near one corner, Lund shielded his eyes, his magical sight blinded by the awesome intensity of the tiny crystal’s energy. On the other end of the hall, the Garnet Orb surged with energy of its own, and the chamber was suddenly a contrast between white and red light, flickering and dancing along the walls in chaotic patterns.

Serenity and Usagi were once again equally sharing control of their body, seeing through the same eyes, speaking with the same voice, and for once, thinking the same thoughts. They might have been the same soul, but there was a world—several worlds, and entire centuries—of difference between the mind of an interplanetary Princess and a schoolgirl-turned-superheroine. Serenity was the one who knew everything about magic, but Usagi was the one who knew how to fight, even if she didn’t always want to, and one or the other of them would take charge as the situation demanded.

Right now, Serenity wanted to fight as much as Usagi did. They were both furious over what this past-Pluto had done to Luna and Artemis, and that blurred the line between their usually semi-separate awarenesses.

But they didn’t attack. They couldn’t. The ginzuishou would at least try to do whatever they asked it to, but using it was difficult, draining, and ultimately deadly if carried on for too long. They could have both lived with that, but there was another presence besides the Princess and the schoolgirl and the strange awareness of the crystal, a tiny, quiet voice they knew had been there all along but had never heard until now.

Still growing in her mother’s womb, ChibiUsa woke up for the first time and was frightened.

Instinct took over, and the portion of this gestalt that was Usagi turned its attention inward, reaching through the power of the crystal to the mind of her unborn daughter, whispering quietly for her not to be afraid. Most of her awareness fixed on that task, but a little turned back to Serenity.

*We can’t do this. Not this way.*

*uSe tHE cRYSTAl!*

Serenity and Usagi blinked in unison, and the living heart of the crystal pulsed; they knew that warped disjunction of a voice.

*Do NoT aTTack tHe foGgY lOnDoN MOrnINg womAn!* Chaos continued. *coLLEct CaLl oUT to yOUr fRIenDS! Bring them TO yoU! tHEy WiLL fiGht for FiVe Six, PIck Up STIckS yOu! lOOk! inSIde the cRysTAl! sEE AnD rEMEMber!*

Neither of them trusted Chaos even slightly, but one or both of them couldn’t help but reach out to the crystal and look around at what it remembered doing in the past. There was a brief image of a young-seeming blonde woman in silver armor with a crown built into her helmet, standing on a battlefield surrounded by many strange and hideous things. By the hair, the crown, and the flashing crystal in her hands, the woman was one of the Queens of the Moon; the night sky overhead was filled by a colossal yellow-orange planet with immense rings, against which at least four moons were visible.

*Serenity III,* the Princess said immediately. *The Saturn War.*

Pages of history books she herself had never seen flipped across Usagi’s mind’s eye. The many moons of Saturn, bathed by the strange radiation of their parent planet’s weird dimension-warping nature, had long been inhabited by many vile beings of darkness. Those creatures had been held in check by the mighty armies and sorcerers of Atlantis, but when the cruel empire fell apart, the equally cruel monsters rose from their hiding places to attack humanity. They had been the bitterest enemies of the scattered Jovian tribes, raiding the lunar colonies at regular intervals and periodically attacking the inner planets as well. A three-year concerted effort by an alliance of nearly two dozen nations had finally cleansed the threat, and Serenity herself had taken part in several battles, the energy of the ginzuishou buffering her troops against the dark powers of their foes.

In the projected memory, they saw the warrior-queen raise the crystal and call out. There was a bright flash which drove the massed monsters back, and Serenity was suddenly no longer alone, but flanked by four women in similar armor, in shades of blue, gold, red, and green, launching familiar attacks into the dark shapes all around. And the Queen continued to wield the crystal, protecting her Senshi against the counterattacks of the wounded horde without the slightest trace of fatigue.

As the image faded, Serenity and Usagi were both left stunned. Not from learning that the ginzuishou could summon the Senshi, but that Chaos had told them about it.

*WE knOw ManY THinGs,* Chaos said in a humble-proud chorus. *wE knOw ThAt thE suMMonInG pOwer OF the CRYSTaL wIll nOt bE daNGeROuS for you To usE. we know why TOAst aLwaYS lanDs buTTeR-siDe dOwn, and WhY CATS alWayS lANd oN theIr Feet. WE kNOW wHAT the WOrDs OF LoUIe-louIE REallY aRE, thAt the ULtiMatE aNSwer is FOrtY-tWO, aNd THat lAst yeAR’S total RAInFall iN tOkyO wAs exACTly EQuaL to tHe TImE-RemaINing bOnUS sCOre youR bRoThER GOT on LEVEl thRee of hIs SaiLOr v gAMe laST wEek.*

*Why are you helping us?*

Serenity and Usagi shivered as, for a brief instant, the fractured awareness of Chaos solidified into one focused mind, one will, almost defying its own nature to speak clearly with a single voice.

*I owed you a debt. Now it is paid in full.*

Then it shattered into madness again and was gone.

*Do we trust it?* Serenity asked.

*Do we have a choice?* Usagi replied, relaxing the mental shields she had willed into existence around the still-unformed mind of her daughter when she first sensed Chaos. *Watch closely, little one. You’ll have to know how to do this for yourself one day.*

There was a brief pause when the three minds reached out for the crystal, as it responded to the presence of the last and least with a weirdly beautiful series of tinkling flashes and sighing chimes, evoking a sense of delight the from infant intellect. It obviously liked her and wanted to get to know her better.

*It was YOU?* Usagi demanded of the crystalline consciousness, recognizing the strange ‘music’ that had been haunting her dreams on and off for the last five months.

There was a guilty-sounding warble in the shimmering song, and the reflected and refracted red light spilling out of the Garnet Orb made the ginzuishou appear as if it were blushing.

*We’ll talk about this later,* Usagi promised, triggering another warble.

During this internal conference, the force-bubble being projected by the ginzuishou had absorbed a dozen combined assaults from Medea and Vaurinn with no more effect than a slight rippling where the various bolts, beams, cones, and spheres of assorted magical elements impacted against it. Erridar stood quietly to one side, watching but not uttering so much as the first syllable to the simplest spells he knew. He was a capable enough wizard, but the level of raw power being loosed here was simply beyond him.

Usagi raised her hands above her head and looked up into the incandescent heart of the crystal, calling out in a clear, commanding voice. Erridar felt a brief surge of silly pride as his translation spell, somehow still functional even with all the mystical chaos flying around it, cast words that were undoubtedly being said in a language that wouldn’t exist for several thousand years into understandable Atlantean:

“Guardians! Awaken! Across space and time, hear my call! To me!”

Medea looked up in horror as the Garnet Orb flared nearly as brightly as the tiny crystal, seconds before pure white light filled the room with blinding intensity, swallowing her terrified scream.

# 

In the city beyond the manor, four tall, complex towers topped by large bodies of shifting light suddenly rattled as if in the grip of an earthquake. Green fireballs and bolts of lightning-like energy exploded out of the straining structures as every magical light in the city surged into brilliance. In the sky, the odd ring of clouds began to spin and swirl around the common center of the four towers as the winds inexplicably grew stronger, almost as if the jagged arms of power clawing their way up into the night were feeding the power of nature.

# 

They walked back to Glossolyndaraberonasym in near-silence. Weighed down by the emotions left over from the strange meeting with her sister, Sasanna didn’t feel like talking, and was in any case too busy mentally explaining to several hundred dryads and their trees what had just happened. Makoto, meanwhile, was trying to get a grip on the new and yet familiar sensation of feeling not only the unthinking presence of the plants, but the living minds around her as well. Ami spent most of the walk trying to batter down the blocks in her mind that were preventing her from remembering her past life.

It was extremely important that she remember. She had been relieved to discover that her unlooked-for mental ability was a passive sort of thing: she had only been able to hear the dryads’ silent conversation by touching the tree and focusing on the task; walking along through the forest, the only thing she picked up from Makoto or Sasanna was the certainty that she could close her eyes, spin around in circles for a while, and still be able to point directly at them. No thoughts came through, and the only emotions she felt were her own, as they applied to her relationship with each individual.

That was at least a little reassuring. Ami did not _want_ to be able to read minds, but Tarnara had implied that she would eventually be able to do a lot more than that, and if she couldn’t push through the barriers in her head and _remember,_ she was going to have to relearn everything from scratch, with no way to know what was dangerous, whether to herself or to another person. The only people she could think of in her own time who might be able to help were Luna and Rei, but their gifts were somewhat limited; ‘send-only’ in Luna’s case, and ‘receive-only’ in Rei’s, and she didn’t even receive thoughts, just images and information. There would only be so much either of them could do to help her.

*Not to mention the fact that Rei-chan might get it into her head to try and make _me_ into a miko when she finds out I can sort of read minds.* The thought started out with a touch of humor and ended on a shiver that was a little afraid and very uncertain. What exactly _were_ the others going to do when they learned about what this trip through time had done to her? Or Makoto, for that matter?

“I’ve been worrying about that myself.”

Ami looked behind her. “Don’t do that, Mako-chan.”

“Sorry,” Makoto apologized immediately. “It’s just really hard to tell the difference between something being _said_ and something being _thought_ with a lot of emotion behind it.” She frowned. “I thought I might be able to handle this better if I concentrated on what it was like before—when I was little, I mean—but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.”

“You’ll get the hang of it. If Rei-chan, Ryo-kun, and Setsuna-san are any indications of what having ESP is like, then it’s safe to say it takes willpower and courage to deal with it, and I know you’ve got plenty of both.”

Makoto didn’t reply for a moment. “Ami-chan?”

“Yes?”

“If you... when we get home, if you decide you want to move out, I won’t hold it against you.”

“What in the world are you... no, wait. Let me guess. You’re worried that I’m still angry with you for hitting me, right? And now that your brain’s basically been rewired, you’re equally concerned about accidentally picking up things I’d like to keep private. Is that it?”

“Pretty much.” Makoto looked at her. “Are you reading my mind?”

“It only seems to work like that if I can touch somebody. At least for right now. Mako-chan, I’ll admit that I wasn’t happy with you, but it wasn’t like you were trying to hit me on purpose. And with everything else you’ve had to go through today, I can forgive you for getting a little careless.”

“Thanks, Ami-chan.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Ami said. “Makoto, if you can hit _me_ when you’re angry, after everything we’ve been through together, what’s to stop you from hitting someone you don’t know well enough to care about? What could you do to someone you really _didn’t_ like? I know you never really hurt anybody when you used to get into fights, but you’re a lot stronger now; what happens if you lose your temper again like you did this morning?”

“I can handle it.”

“No, actually, I don’t think you can.” Ami waited for a moment before quietly saying, “I know you think you’re handling losing your parents, Mako-chan, but you’re not. You’re hiding from the pain, and instead of going away, it’s festering inside of you. I know because I did the same thing when my parents divorced; I tried to ignore it, I blamed myself, I blamed them, I hated my mother because she’d made my father leave, I hated Father for leaving at all. I even tried to run away.” Makoto looked at her, and Ami smiled faintly. “Yes, even I’ve committed a few acts of rebellion in my time. I took too long planning it, though, and Mother caught me in the middle of packing. Can you believe she wasn’t even angry? She actually said she was impressed that I’d taken so much care in thinking things through. We had a long talk that night, and the next, and for most of the nights that month. Mother even called Father over a few times.” A strange smile formed on her lips. “It’d been such a long time since I’d heard them sit down and talk in each other’s presence without sniping at each other or arguing. I thought at first maybe I could get them back together, the right way this time.”

“Ami...”

“It didn’t take long for me to realize what a mistake that was,” Ami continued. “They were both so much more at ease like that than I’d ever seen them when they were still married. Maybe they weren’t exactly happy, but they were both content. It... hurt when I realized that, but once I did, I stopped being so angry with them. Or myself.” Ami coughed and brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. At least, Makoto _thought_ it was hair. “What I’m trying to say is that talking about what had happened made it easier to put away all the pain that went with it.”

“I had this discussion with Tarnara, Ami. I had it with my uncle when he sent me to see that counselor, and I had it with Tsuta-san every time I saw her. I spent six months going to see that woman, every other day at five for one hour, and do you know what? One minute of fighting that pretty-boy Zoicite made me feel better than ninety-odd hours of therapy.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest you go to a psychiatrist, Mako-chan, just that you talk to somebody about it. I don’t think you’re going to be able to hide from the pain anymore, not if you’re walking around with other people’s emotions crowding your own, and if you don’t get a grip on it, it’s going to get away from you again.” Ami shifted her jaw, still a little stiff from the ‘accident.’ “Next time, I may not be around to stop you.”

Makoto rubbed at her right arm. “I’ll think about it.” There was a long silence, and then she added, “So you’re not going to move out?”

“I already said I wasn’t.” She smiled. “We budding mind-readers have to stick together, right? And besides, the only places I could go are Rei-chan’s or Mina-chan’s. I’d rather not risk seeing what hangs around inside Mina-chan’s head, and I’m pretty sure Rei-chan’s going to try and draft both of us into service at the temple as it is when she finds out what we’ve learned. Red’s not really my color, so I’d rather not give her any more of an edge than I have to; she’s a hard person to say no to.”

“If you say so. Personally, I thought you looked sort of cute in that spare robe of hers the last time we helped out at Hikawa.” Makoto pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Speaking of cute... you’re sure you can only pick up thoughts when you touch somebody?”

“For now, at least. From what Tarnara said, I think we can expect that to change, eventually—but what does that have to do with cute?”

“Well, if Ryo-kun sees you in that dress, he’s not going to be able to keep his hands off...”

Ami slugged Makoto in the shoulder before she had a chance to finish the sentence, and they started arguing heatedly. Up ahead, Sasanna heard the noise and felt the conflicting waves of irritation, faked anger, and very real affection flowing out from the pair, and smiled briefly, reassured by the speed with which the sisters were healing the breach that had begun to form between them. Then she went back to the conference being held in the collective minds of the dryads and their trees.

The three travelers reached Sasanna’s tree with several hours left before sunset, and they spent all that time and much of the following night talking. The girls wanted to know what they could about what was happening to their minds, and Sasanna had questions of her own for Makoto about what had happened with Tarnara, but it took a while for the discussion to really get underway. Sasanna was nervous about giving further offense, and Makoto, picking up on that, became edgy herself; they both talked to Ami more than to each other, and tended to start in surprise if they forgot themselves enough to make eye contact or address each other directly.

The addition of Glossolyndaraberonasym to the talk was very helpful, since as long as Ami kept one hand or bare foot touching a piece of the tree, she could hear him as well as the others, and the steady, businesslike manner and voice of her brother-self helped to calm Sasanna immensely. And as the conversation progressed and Makoto learned more, she started to relax as well.

The extrasensory ability to perceive thought is a very difficult, very powerful, and very rare gift, and most beings who have it have it only imperfectly—like the dryads, for instance, who require direct physical contact to employ their telepathic abilities on a non-dryad. All this was probably just as well since, as Makoto had already demonstrated, most thinking beings aren’t comfortable with the idea that another awareness can poke around inside their thoughts at will, and tend to take steps to prevent or gain revenge for such actions.

Empathy, the ability to perceive emotion, is another story. Most living creatures have what can be considered crude empathic abilities of one form or another. A human, for example, can learn to pick out the feelings of another human based on facial expression, vocal intonations, body language, and their own intuition. Other creatures have similar skills, and plants—as the dryads had already explained a number of times—do it too.

Properly speaking, though, real empathy is not just perceiving emotion, but perceiving it _correctly._ A person can conceal surprise or act angry when they’re really feeling quite calm, and members of different species misread each other’s emotional states and intentions all the time. Cats, intelligent or otherwise, are masters of this particular art of emotional misdirection. A true empath, though, can tell what someone else’s real emotional state is as soon as they stop to think about it, and even a brief thought isn’t required with very strong emotions, which jump right out of the mind in question and demand to be paid proper attention by any empath in range.

This emotion-reception, the girls realized immediately, was likely to be one of Makoto’s biggest problems, and not just for what it would do to her everyday life. Sensing the emotions of other people and then dealing with them was going to be a challenge, no question, but sensing the emotions of some of the monstrous, supernatural creatures the Senshi routinely confronted could be physically dangerous.

Sasanna understood that, and much of what she tried to explain to the girls that night and over the course of the next week centered around a sort of psychic kung fu, a series of thought-blocks and emotion barriers to withstand and repel attacks against the mind.

They all knew that sooner or later, the other Senshi would arrive to retrieve their friends, and the sooner that happened, the less time Makoto would have to learn. And time to learn was something she needed; Tarnara’s promise bound Sasanna to stay out of Makoto’s mind, thereby forcing her to try and teach by trial and error and experience rather than simply implanting the needed memories. She couldn’t give the information directly to Ami, either, because _she_ might in turn pass it on to Makoto, and that would have broken Tarnara’s word.

Besides, as Sasanna rather bluntly informed Ami the first night, however developed her mind might be in other ways, in _this_ way it was essentially the mind of a child. Makoto had several years of experience from her childhood to call on and could access some of what Amalthea had known, so she at least made some progress, albeit in fits and starts. Ami’s mind had only started to awaken—that was how Sasanna put it, drawing on the dryad term for the beginning of their conscious, separate existence as sister-self and brother-self—so she wasn’t strong enough to learn a great number of things, and had no idea where to begin for most of the rest. Then too, her mind-powers, whatever their nature, weren’t like those Makoto and the dryads shared; what they practiced would at best be half-effective for her, which was in many ways worse than nothing because she’d have to unlearn it later.

Ami had to agree with the dryad’s view, although it stung her pride that she was, for the first time in her life, being told there was a lesson she couldn’t learn. She talked with the tree instead or went to bed at a reasonable hour while the other two stayed up half the night, doing nothing much more visible than squint at each other for several hours before climbing up the stairs for bed.

That first night, Ami learned yet another wonderful, potentially mortifying thing about dryads. They didn’t snore—or at least, Sasanna didn’t, although Makoto certainly made up for it—but neither did they wear anything to bed. Given the summer climate, Makoto had reverted to her usual sleeping attire, which was to say, next to nothing. Granted, the bed was large enough to hold them and two or three others and still not get crowded, but Ami hoped that their friends didn’t suddenly materialize in the next room some night in the near future; the chances for an embarrassing misunderstanding of their sleeping arrangements were just too much.

Of course, they didn’t spend the entire week talking or conducting staring matches. Quite a number of dryads came by each day, all of them curious to meet and talk with the two humans. Most of the dryads were somewhere around Ami’s height, some shorter and some taller, but few were as tall as Sasanna, and none were as tall as Makoto. As Sasanna had said, dryad skin tones were mostly leaf-green or bark-brown, with one or two cases of wood-white; their hair was generally in shades of green or brown as well, though the girls did meet a few redheads and two dryads with hair that was the sort of golden hue one might find in a wheat field. Eye color went all over the spectrum.

Even with all the obvious differences, there were four things the dryads all had in common. The slightly pointed ears were a universal trait, as were the faint flowery scents they all seemed to exude in lieu of perspiration. Ami asked about that and learned that each dryad could produce a number of different and rather delightful fragrances at will, including some which started her computer bleeping about allergens, psychoactive compounds, and a few other things which made her ask them very quickly to stop. The third trait was the most obvious one; every last dryad, short or tall, slim or strong, was undeniably female and quite beautiful.

There were several times during those seven days that Ami found herself thankful that Ryo wasn’t around, especially since a number of the dryads expressed some curiosity about human males. Nothing even she would consider improper; more like the sort of detached amusement a professional scientist would display when discussing a theory about an alien life-form. Even so, Ami couldn’t help but wonder what their reactions might be if an example of ‘the theory’ had been on hand for what her mind could only shiver and then go ahead and label as ‘experimentation.’

The fourth thing all the dryads had in common was a little less apparent; Ami didn’t notice it until the third day, when the stream of visitors had ebbed to the point where she had a moment to glance outside and see Sasanna at the edge of her little clearing, talking quietly with a fiery red-head named Yurea, who was speaking loudly—not quite loudly enough to hear from that distance—and waving her arms around. Yurea seemed angry, though her agitation might have had something to do with the patch of healing moss covering most of the right side of her face.

Red-haired, well-built in every sense of words, nearly as tall as Makoto, and wearing a short vest and skirt combination rather than the long dress or tunics her sisters favored, Yurea gave the impression of an amazon, and she had proved it by taking the humans hunting. She’d actually gotten into a knock-down, roll-around fight with Makoto after the girl had let a deer-like animal get away, and that fight was the reason for the bruise which the healing moss was working to remove. Ami didn’t think that was why Yurea was all-but yelling at Sasanna; she didn’t seem to be displaying focused anger so much as she did a general sense of just being upset. Sasanna, on the other hand, was unusually subdued.

Frowning, Ami went back through the visits of the past few days and noted that Sasanna had disappeared a number of times; she kept her eyes open in the following days and spotted their hostess talking to other dryads with that same quiet demeanor. Most of the other dryads were nearly as upset as Yurea, and Ami wondered if Sasanna was getting in trouble because of everything that had happened with Makoto and Tarnara. It didn’t quite seem like that, though.

At last, eight days after their arrival, Makoto and Ami were sitting with Sasanna and picking through the last wreckage of breakfast when a curious sensation skittered along the edges of all their minds. Sasanna paled.

“I believe your friends have found you at last,” she announced in an unsteady voice, a moment before their communicators beeped. Ami tried to open a line to the others, but got nothing, so she pulled out her computer and started scanning.

Makoto, meanwhile, was looking at Sasanna. “Are you okay?”

“Just... unsettled. We can feel your friends as we felt you when you first arrived, and some of them—their powers—are a little disturbing. We can feel something with them, as well, not a mind or even a form of life, but still very much there.”

“That would probably be the Book,” Ami guessed. “Don’t worry. It’s not dangerous.” She sighed and then stood up. “I guess we’d better go and get changed, Mako-chan. They’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

“Wait,” Sasanna said quietly.

“What is it?”

The dryad hesitated. “My sisters and I can’t travel like you and yours do, so we really only know one kind of goodbye. And in this case, it is very much that sort of goodbye, because we know none of us or our sisters yet to be will exist in your world. So I hope you will understand when I say I do not want to stay and watch you leave.”

“I do,” Makoto said. “I’m not very fond of good-byes myself.”

Sasanna smiled, then got to her feet and kissed Ami’s forehead before hugging her. “Goodbye, Ami. I know you will find yourself again, but I hope it will not take you too long.”

*Thank you,* Ami said, returning the hug. Sasanna’s mind gave a little impulse before she moved on to Makoto and repeated the farewell gesture.

“You’ll look after them for us?” the dryad asked.

“I’ll try my best,” Makoto replied. “I’m only one person, and I have other duties, but I promise, I’ll do what I can.”

“That is all anyone can do,” Sasanna said. She startled both girls then by leaning forward and kissing Makoto lightly on the lips before hugging her a second time. “Thank you, sister. Be well.”

Then she left the room, moving quickly down the stairs without looking back.

“Ami, she was... she was about to cry.” Makoto looked at the stairs worriedly. “Maybe we ought to go after her.”

*It is alright,* Glossolyndaraberonasym said calmly. *You both have things you need to attend to—and I can help her with this better than you can.*

“You’re sure?” Makoto asked aloud.

*I am.* The tree paused. *I may be a bit busy for the next little while, so if I do not have a chance later to say it, I will now. Goodbye, both of you. You have been very good company.*

“You too,” Makoto replied.

“Likewise.” Ami’s mouth twisted. “And again, I’m sorry about that indoor blizzard.”

The tree chuckled. *Not a problem. Life is a learning experience, and _that_ was very educational.* The weird, creaky mind-laugh sounded a second time, and then he fell silent.

# 

Outside, Sasanna sat quietly next to her brother-self’s trunk as he extended his own farewell to the girls. She didn’t have to ask when he was finished, but she did anyway.

*Yes,* Glossolyndaraberonasym replied. *They are both concerned about you, sister-self. Particularly Makoto. I had to talk fast to stop them from following you.*

*I know, and I’m sorry, but this isn’t easy, brother-self.*

*You’re sure you still want to go through with it?*

Sasanna nodded with an almost fierce expression. *Yes. I just need a little time, that’s all.*

*We have a little time, sister-self. A little. Take as much of it as you feel you need.*

Leaning against the comfortable moss-covered bark, the dryad did that. She noticed a small flower near her feet, a fragile, pale pink blossom atop a stem that seemed just a little too frail to bear its weight. Sasanna reached down and cupped her hands about the tiny flower, and suddenly it wasn’t quite so frail, the delicate stem straightening as the drooping petals shimmered with a strange, internal light. It continued to glow for several moments after the dryad withdrew her hands, and she smiled.

# 

“THAT is a BIG tree.”

Venus’ semi-awed statement, coming on the heels of a complete circuit of the thing, was really unnecessary, but everyone was too busy looking at the colossal achievement of soil, sun, water, and greenery to talk to her about it. She and Mars both remembered the last tree of this size they’d encountered, and looked around carefully for signs of unfriendly animation from this one.

“Are those stairs?” ChibiUsa asked with a puzzled frown.

“You know,” Uranus admitted, “they _do_ sort of look it. And those holes up higher could almost be windows. You don’t suppose somebody actually lives inside it, do you?”

“One way to find out,” Venus said, raising her face. “Ami-chan? Mako-chan? Are you in there?”

“Just a minute,” Ami’s voice called down to them. She didn’t _quite_ fly into Ryo’s arms when she got to the ground, but there was a lot of relieved hugging on either side before they quickly pulled apart and looked around, blushing. Uranus opened her mouth to say something, and Neptune promptly clapped a hand over her partner’s face to keep her quiet.

“What’s in those?” Saturn asked, indicating the tied-off bundles both Ami and Makoto were carrying.

“Some gifts from our hostess,” Ami replied. Glossolyndaraberonasym had made two additional dresses for Ami while they all slept that first night, then taken measurements for Makoto the next day and put together a few for her. After a long conversation, he had also added a more comfortable nightgown for Ami; all of those were now carefully folded up and tied together.

“The girl with the pointed ears?” Ryo asked.

Ami nodded and quickly explained Sasanna’s background and absence, then asked how the others had managed to reach this point in the past. When Pluto got around to explaining how tiring the whole trick was, Ami pulled out her computer again and carefully scanned both Pluto and Saturn for signs of injury.

“Nothing that I can find except fatigue,” she reported. “I suppose that means you’re okay, but I wish I could get a more detailed scan.”

“What about that little doohickey you used on Ryo-kun?” Venus asked. “You know.” She poked a finger at her own forehead and made little beeping noises. ChibiUsa and Saturn collapsed against each other at the sight, laughing helplessly.

“It links in with my visor,” Ami said shortly, fighting giggles of her own. “I’d need to transform to use it.”

“Well, then, transform.”

“I can’t.”

_That_ dried up the humor very quickly and set off another round of explanations. Saturn immediately wanted to heal her, but Ami refused to let her try until they’d at least had the opportunity to consult with Luna and Artemis about what might be wrong. It had been a sudden rush of energy which caused her particular ailment, after all, and there was no telling what Saturn’s energy might set off if proper precautions weren’t taken beforehand. Saturn was a little upset by that decision, but she certainly didn’t want to be responsible for reducing Ami to a vegetative state for the rest of her life, so she let the idea drop.

“Time to go, then,” she announced, reaching out for Pluto’s hand and tensing herself for what was likely going to be a moderately painful task.

*Wait.*

Only Makoto heard the voice, but they all heard the cracking, creaking noise which followed it as the trunk of the great tree divided near its base, roots and bark pulling apart to reveal a small and very dark space beyond. Out of that opening came a thin vine, weighed down at its tip by a small object. Mars raised one hand to blast the thing, but Makoto caught her wrist and pushed it aside, then stepped forward as the vine came to a halt in front of her, giving her a clear look at what it was carrying.

It looked a lot like an acorn—a silver one, to be sure, but an acorn nonetheless—and from a certain angle, it also appeared a little bit like a heart. Makoto looked at it, then at the tree.

*I thought Sasanna said you couldn’t produce seeds.*

Ignoring her question, the vine pushed forward insistently. *Take it, sister. Take it and care for it, and as it grows, remember us.*

Makoto frowned. She was sure there was something going on here, but she reached out and carefully snapped the base of the acorn from the vine, which withdrew as soon as she had the curious farewell gift in her hand. It wasn’t very large, but it was much heavier than it ought to be, and it didn’t feel exactly like wood. She looked up again as the hole in the trunk creaked shut.

*Thank you,* the tree said. Then it fell silent again. Makoto looked at the acorn in her hand and wondered what it meant.

“Mako-chan?”

“What? Oh, Mars. Sorry.” Makoto tucked the strange gift into a pocket in her blouse and then turned to the others. “So what’s the holdup? Are we going or what?”

Some of the others looked at her curiously, but Pluto and Saturn joined hands again and gestured for the rest to gather around as they began to combine their powers once more.

“You might want to brace yourselves,” Venus warned Ami and Makoto. “This isn’t quite the same as teleporting, and...” She broke off and looked up—they all did—as a sun-bright burst of red light exploded out of the Garnet Orb.

“Pu?” ChibiUsa asked nervously. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t...”

The Orb flared before Pluto had a chance to finish her confused sentence, and the coiling red energy was sucked back into the stone, dragging along with it the violet-hued web of black Saturn had been generating. The very heart of the Orb was no longer shining with red light, but a sheer white that should have been blinding—and yet they could all look at it without the slightest discomfort.

Out of that light came a familiar voice:

“Guardians! Awaken! Across space and time, hear my call! To me!”

Eight beams of pure white shot out of the center of the Garnet Orb, each striking one of the Senshi. And they _were_ the Senshi; the instant the beams touched Ami and Makoto, Mercury and Jupiter appeared in their places, both looking extremely surprised. The stone set in each Senshi’s tiara began to glow brightly, and they were all surrounded by their familiar auras; realizing what was coming next, Mercury grabbed hold of Ryo, and Saturn caught ChibiUsa’s arm right before they all disintegrated into energy and were swallowed by the white light, flying across several thousand miles and even more years to answer the call of their endangered Princess.

# 

It was late. The moon hung low in the sky, its soft light obscured but not entirely impeded by the trees.

A change had come over the mighty tree standing at the center of its private glade. For one thing, it seemed smaller now than it had. The mosses and ivy were thinning out, and many of the leaves had fallen from its branches, either to lay in a thick carpet upon the roots and soil, or to drift away on the wind. Inside, the floors were littered by bits and pieces of withered lichen, and the once-luminous fungi fixed to the ceilings had ceased to glow. Every so often, the otherwise empty rooms were filled with the faint sounds of wood creaking in the wind.

Outside, near the base of the tree, a single flower bloomed alone atop a low mound of grassy earth, its tiny pink petals open to the night sky. Captured moonlight gleamed in the tiny droplets of water that had collected on the petals in the cool night air and were periodically falling to the ground.

As the tiny flower cried, across the forest, so did the dryads.

 

# 

_(The screen is filled with static. When it clears, Balance is sitting behind a desk, dressed up like a TV anchorman.)_

**Balance** : Due to circumstances beyond our control, the prerecorded ‘Sailor Says’ segment for this episode has been accidentally destroyed.

_(Insert a shot of Saturn watching the video, shaking her head, and then taking the Silence Glaive to the tape in a major editing spree.)_

**Balance** : And, as all the usual participants in the filming of said segment are currently: A) unconscious; B) standing in the middle of a massive temporal anomaly; or C) zipping across the space-time continuum; it has been decided to forego this episode’s moral instruction entirely. (leans in towards the camera) Besides, the author couldn’t think of a suitable moral, and he really wanted to get this episode out to the public before it got any larger.  _(sits back)_  Thank you, and good-day.

26/08/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

I knew it! I KNEW I wouldn’t be able to get them home! Hahahaha... ahem.

Some of you may be confused/concerned/whatever with what I’m doing with Ami and Makoto. For starters, I’ve read once or twice that, in the manga, Makoto is gifted with rudimentary empathic abilities; she smokes, too, from what I understand, but I’ve got no plans in that direction. (Do you honestly believe Luna would let any of them get away with it? Didn’t think so.) I’ve never heard it even suggested that Ami might be a mind-reader—even a short-range one—but there is a reason for it. I’m not about to tell you what it is HERE, of course; you’ll just have to stay tuned for future developments. ;)

The point is, one of the requirements for a good story is character growth, and in my opinion, just adding a dozen or so new attacks and/or transformations doesn’t really meet that goal. This is not to say that I’m NOT going to add new attacks and/or transformations—you’ve seen a few already!—just that things ARE going to happen to really change the girls’ lives, everyday as well as Senshi.

Next time:  
-More fun in the Atlantean Age;  
-This time for sure, they’re going home!


	14. One Hell of an After Dinner Show, or How Many Senshi Can Dance On the Head of Medea

# 

The room was mostly dark and mostly empty. The only illumination came in from the window, the reflected lights of the city below, and from a few burned- down candles scattered about. There was also a fair amount of giggling and moving around going on under the bedsheets, suggesting that the only two people in the room probably weren’t likely to complain about the lack of proper illumination.

There was a sudden gasp, and the sheets moved aside as a tall, slender woman with long, pale brown hair sat up straight on the bed, completely ignoring her companion as gold light flashed within her large brown eyes.

“What’s wrong, Allys?” the young man asked, touching her bare shoulder with a look of concern.

“I have to go.” She threw the sheets aside and started moving around the room, gathering up clothes and dressing with remarkable speed and enthralling grace.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, sitting up and reaching for the handle of a long, jeweled sword which stood rather improbably on its point next to the headrest. The gems in the hilt winked slightly.

“Yes, but not like that. I’m not really sure _what_ it is,” the woman admitted, frowning as she tugged at her slightly lopsided dress, “but I know I have to check it out.” She hopped back onto the bed—and the young man—fully dressed, bestowing a long and loving kiss before she got up. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

The young man sighed. “Why is it that every time you make a promise, I start getting chills down my spine?”

# 

The Atlanteans squinted against the glare as the dome of light collapsed in upon itself, the energy flooding back into the heart of the tiny crystal in the strange blonde girl’s hands. Eyes around the hall widened at the sight of eight young women in closely matching uniforms who had not been there when the light first filled the room. Two of them had hold of other strangers, and the first sound to go off in the room following the disappearance of the overwhelming flood of power was a violent sneeze, coming from the brown-haired young man who was the only male member of the newly-arrived group.

The second sound was the ear-piercing howl of another Dead Scream tearing across the hall. Medea had no idea who the newcomers were, nor did she particularly care; the blonde girl had somehow brought them here, and that made them the enemy.

She wasn’t at all prepared for the superhuman speed and agility the young women demonstrated. Most of them jumped out of the way with impossible ease, the one in the blue uniform carrying the young man along with her without any real trouble. The one in red jumped in front of the blonde girl, apparently intending to shield her, while the smallest of the group actually jumped _towards_ the dark projectile, swinging with both hands something that cut through the air and screamed almost as loudly as the deadly mass of energy.

Medea was ready to write the girl off as a corpse when a weirdly-shaped silver blade sliced the Dead Scream in half, its gleaming substance absorbing, dispersing, or just plain nullifying the power that should have broken every bone in the body of its wielder. Medea took a good look at that weapon and felt a cold shiver work its way up her spine as she recognized it.

“STASIS BOLT!” she shouted, swinging her staff in a short arc at the dark- eyed girl. Saturn shifted her weapon to intercept the blast, and the red energy disappeared harmlessly into the Glaive’s silver head, but Medea raised her staff before herself in both hands and closed her eyes, using the scant seconds Saturn needed to defeat the Stasis Bolt to trigger another of her powers.

“MARCH OF TIME!” Medea called out, igniting the Garnet Orb’s inner light once again. Energy spilled out from the Orb, coursing out along the lines and curves of the staff as if the jewel itself were bleeding. The spreading energy reached Medea’s hands and continued up her arms, moving further until both she and her weapon were outlined with a crimson aura. When her eyes opened, they glowed with the same light as she spoke a final command: “QUICKEN!”

The aura flared, and then Medea started to move, vanishing between one step and the next into a red blur, almost too fast to follow with the eye as she raced around behind Saturn, who turned and raised the Silence Glaive just in time to catch the downward-swinging arc of red light that was head of the heavy staff. For a moment, the red aura surrounding Medea dimmed, weakened even by that brief contact with the power of Saturn, but she pulled away and blurred again, coming out of it with the teeth at the end of her staff hooked around Saturn’s left ankle. Medea pulled back hard, yanking the smaller girl’s footing out from under her; Saturn caught herself with help from the Glaive, but then cried out as something cracked loudly across her back and drove her to the tiled floor.

Rolling away from where she thought her opponent was, Saturn took hold of the end of the Silence Glaive and swung it in a circle above herself as she lay on the floor, hoping to clear a space long enough to get back to her feet. The red blur leapt backwards as the Glaive buzzed in at shin level, then raced forward behind the thing. Saturn saw Medea reappear above her just before pain blossomed in her ribs and the breath whooshed out of her lungs. The Glaive came up to block the next downward jab, but Medea just swung her staff around over the other weapon and struck Saturn across the face with the jeweled end instead.

The physical damage from the two strikes was incidental; Medea was targeting Saturn in just the right places to prevent her from calling on her powers. The third strike crunched into the smaller Senshi’s left shoulder, numbing her arm and loosening her grip on her weapon, which Medea kicked away before raising her staff overhead for a final blow.

Though her jaw felt shattered, Saturn saw the blur coming at her head and managed to hiss “SILENT WALL” out between her teeth.

A low dome of dark energy sprang up around her, and Medea’s staff crashed against it with a bright flash of red, blur and aura both fading away, totally drained by the Wall. Medea frowned, then passed the head of her staff over the dome, calling another hemisphere of energy into existence over the first, this one made of weaving and shifting patterns of red light, with just enough space between its inner surface and the outer edge of the Wall to prevent its power from being siphoned off. She added a final twist to the thing, slowing the passage of Time within its confines to a minuscule fraction of normal, then looked over to the Silence Glaive and dropped a shield around it as well.

*There,* Medea thought in satisfaction. *That ought to hold the little...*

“WORLD SHAKING!”

Medea had just enough time to curse herself for being inattentive before something that felt like a meter-wide fist struck her square in the back and blew her off her feet.

Sword out and eyes hard, Uranus watched the woman tumble across the tiled floor. She glanced once at Pluto, said, “Get Saturn out of that thing,” and then charged at the two soldiers who had, at a sharp command from one of the robed men, moved between her and the past-Pluto.

Uranus didn’t yet have the same extent of close combat training Artemis and Luna had received, but she did have all the usual Senshi advantages of more-than-human physical strength, speed, and endurance. She was also seriously angry; _nobody_ got away with doing something like that to Hotaru while she had anything to say about it, and a couple of hired thugs weren’t going to stop her.

One guard dove at her, his sword leading point-first; Uranus jumped to the left and spun around, her right leg extended and coming down out of the completed turn with the heel in the small of the soldier’s back. He staggered forward as Uranus dropped to all fours, ducking a sidelong slash from the other guard before springing at him, turning her right shoulder to drive into the man’s chest. Given that the soldier was wearing a mail vest, the impact of the bodycheck probably hurt him less than it did Uranus. It certainly stunned him, though, leaving him open to the follow-up chop from her empty left hand to the base of his neck.

A memory-instinct went off in Uranus’ mind. Even as the guard in front of her dropped, she was spinning around to face the other, the Space Sword rising to parry a two-handed overhead blow with impossible ease. An ordinary human would have needed an arm like a tree trunk to stop that kind of force; Uranus not only stopped it but managed to push the other sword a little higher, clearing the way for a punch at the guard’s exposed face. She could clearly hear a low whoosh as her arm moved forward, encased in a bubble of storm-force wind that she’d called up without even realizing it.

Her hand struck him in the chest instead of the face, palm forward and fingers slightly curled. The blow itself probably didn’t even register through the mail, but the added force of the winds picked the man up and hurled him away, arms and legs trailing as if something had latched on to his back and yanked. Uranus couldn’t help but watch—and grin—as the human projectile crashed through one of the thin crystal double doors that led outside.

*Now where did _that_ come from?* she wondered, examining her hand to the sound of shattering crystal. The other Senshi were looking at her with expressions that clearly said they’d like to know the answer to that question as well; Uranus met their group gaze with a grin and a shrug before turning around to go after her original target.

Medea was already back on her feet and in the middle of an attack, but Uranus could run _very_ fast when she wanted to, and the Atlantean Senshi had to break off to defend herself, the half-readied energies of her interrupted attack falling away and scattering.

Of all the Senshi, Uranus was easily the most dangerous in hand-to-hand combat, even without her sword. She was stronger than any of the others except Jupiter, more of an athlete than anyone besides Venus, and that combination gave her the opportunity to dish out a substantial dose of pain to whatever deserving monster happened to cross her path.

It quickly became apparent that she was losing.

Trying to use a sword to fight someone armed with a staff is generally not a good idea. There is a reason why people put away swords in favor of axes and saws when they have to cut down a tree, and unless you have a very sharp blade—or one of those heavy broadswords designed to chop through steel armor and quickly divest people of such minor items as arms and heads—you’ll find it surprisingly difficult to chop a sturdy wooden staff apart, particularly when both ends of the thing are whistling around and threatening to break your head.

Granted, the Space Sword was no ordinary blade, but in this situation, it was up against a weapon every bit as enchanted as itself and several times larger to boot, a weapon which blocked the worst the curved sword could dish out and then returned it with interest. Uranus hadn’t yet ‘gotten around’ to reading the birthday present Setsuna had given her—a fact she was slowly beginning to regret—and so she relied, as always, on enthusiasm, natural talent, and bits of what she could recall about swordplay from her past life. The strategy had worked fine against mere mortals and the various forms of monsters she’d fought over the years, but against someone who possessed the same degree of physical ability as she did, and who had the intellect and training to back it up, Uranus found herself outmatched.

With its bizarre shape and heavy ornamentation, Medea’s staff hardly appeared practical for use as a fighting weapon, but she was proving that appearances can be deceiving, swinging the lighter end of the huge key with the ’teeth’ turned towards sensitive spots like the ribs, then bringing the head and all its glittering metal and jewels down on her enemy like a hammer. The Garnet Orb appeared to be joining in as well, surrounding the head of the staff with a brief glow whenever Medea swung it. Despite its size, the weapon was whistling around as if it were made of flexible bamboo, and each time Uranus fell back from a hit, she was moving curiously slower than before.

The taller of the two wizards made a move as if to begin a spell, and stopped short as a golden burst of light blew apart a tile near his feet. Tracing the path of the beam back to its source, Vaurinn saw Venus smiling, shaking her head, and waving her finger in a classic pose of admonishment. Anything the girls tried would have just as good a chance of hitting Uranus as her opponent—better, probably; this _was_ a Senshi of Pluto they were dealing with—but they could at least keep anybody else from interfering. Vaurinn took the hint and didn’t move again, although his mind continued to race.

While most of the other Senshi had their attention fixed on the fight, Pluto had her hands and mind occupied trying to get rid of the energy bubble surrounding Saturn. It looked exactly like the slowed-air dome she’d used to ward off the feet of the dinosaur stampede, although the Garnet Orb was telling her that Time was moving at the same speed for _everything_ within the dome, not just the air molecules that formed its outer layer. Saturn had dropped her Wall and been caught in the effect, and she was now moving at about the same speed as the air. It’d take an hour or more for her to get free at this rate, but Pluto thought they might not have any choice except to wait, as the dome was resisting all her commands for it to cease. The reason was obvious; the other Pluto was maintaining it.

*But how can she muster enough will to prevent me from dispelling the dome while she’s fighting Uranus?* Pluto looked up and asked the question again as Uranus got in a hit, reaching over the staff to punch her opponent in the face. In the same instant as Medea was shaking her head to clear away stars, Pluto directed her will against the slow-flickering barrier once more, and was met by the same resistance.

On a hunch, Pluto quickly called three tiny spheres of slowed air into being. The first, she held in existence with her own force of will; the second, she commanded the Garnet Orb to maintain; and after some uncertain magical fumbling, she managed to make the third globe self-sustaining, feeding off of latent temporal energy independently of her or the Orb. Then she brought the Orb near each sphere in turn to test its reaction, and compared those with the reaction of the jewel to the dome.

She was a little surprised when the Orb flickered, not in the manner indicating a self-sustained or Orb-sustained barrier, but one being held in place by a living mind. The same went for the dome around the Glaive. Could that woman actually be strong enough to... no, if she had enough self-control to use her powers _and_ fight at the same time, she certainly would have blasted Uranus with something by now.

Then what—who—was maintaining the shields? Pluto didn’t know, but she thought she might have a way to find out. Resting her staff in the crook of her left arm, she reached over and tugged the glove off her right hand before slowly extending that hand towards the surface of the dome holding Saturn. It tingled under her fingertips, and she hesitated, strongly tempted to forget the idea. Then she heard the low crunch of Uranus’ sword being deflected by the heavy staff of her enemy.

Pluto took a deep breath and relaxed the barriers around her mind.

Red light welled up in front of her eyes. It wasn’t the wall of light and the single trail of color she remembered seeing before, but then again, this wasn’t a person whose existence she was delving into. Pluto could still see the room, only now there were bands and lines of the dark red light everywhere. Motes of it clung to each of the Senshi, clustering especially thickly around Usagi, her glowing crystal, and the Garnet Orb. The white-haired man propped painfully against the blasted wall had quite a few of the spots circling him as well, and a long red arc moved through the air between him and a ten by ten grid of the floor tiles, each of which had motes hovering above them, like bubbles rising from a glass of pop. Many more of the minuscule points of red energy were drifting about the room, some in clusters, others alone.

Tiny lines connected every last one of the spots to Pluto and the Garnet Orb, and to their past counterparts at the end of the hall. Even the energy which made up the domes was linked to her, though Pluto could see that their connection to her was thinner and duller than their link with her predecessor.

Her eyes narrowed. There were _other_ lines leading off the spots, other people in the room connected to the power of Time. Ryo and Mars both had links, neither of them to even a tenth as many of the drifting points of temporal energy as either Senshi of Time, but the lines were there nonetheless. Ryo had more connections, but they were vague, fading in and fading out from moment to moment, whereas Mars’ connections were very solid and stable. Pluto guessed that it took a certain number of connections to trigger a vision, and that Mars had more stable links because she’d trained and practiced to earn control of her gift. Ryo’s ability was probably stronger, but he hadn’t learned how to fully control it yet, and so the links shifted randomly, bringing on the visions whenever they reached the ‘critical mass.’

The two men in robes, the wizards, were both connected to some degree, though even less than Ryo and Mars. Hardly anyone else had chosen to remain in the room after Usagi had raised her crystal and all magical hell had broken loose, but there were other lines, nearly as bright as those joining Pluto and the red-haired Senshi to the power of Time, and...

“GET AWAY FROM THAT!”

Pluto blinked and jumped as hard as she could to avoid the Dead Scream she’d almost failed to notice. Medea had beaten Uranus aside with a quick series of blows and then lashed out, hard, but since Pluto had gotten herself clear, the Scream collided with the slowed-air dome instead. Though the floor tiles around it were smashed into powder, the field of red energy withstood the attack with no apparent damage.

Now that Uranus was safely out of the line of fire, the other Senshi unleashed their powers. Neptune and Mercury combined Deep Submerge and Aqua Rhapsody to create a meter-wide jet of water filled with icy knives, while Venus fired off a Crescent Beam through one of Mars’ Burning Mandalas, the golden blast somehow spearing through all eight blazing rings to create a corkscrew- shaped beam of red-gold energy. ChibiMoon had transformed at some point during the mayhem and now let fly with her tiara at the same time as Jupiter unloaded an Oak Revolution. Jupiter’s attack was swallowed up by the whirling energy disc with no apparent effect, which made her stop, blink, and wonder if perhaps she needed to recharge.

Medea saw all that coming at her and raised her staff, spinning it rapidly through a full circle before her and leaving a trail of red energy in its wake, a disc of slowed air between her and the onslaught. It stopped the ice water barrage handily enough, but Medea’s face grew fixed with concentration as the spiraling energy blast shot in behind the first strike. The thing drove into the heart of the shield and exploded, tongues of fire reaching out for and around the rim of the barrier. Both hands clenched tightly around her raised staff, Medea gritted her teeth and fought to hold her defense. The uncoiling blaze died quickly enough—and it left her shield looking decidedly ragged at the edges.

Given what had preceded it, the lowly little tiara hardly appeared to be up to the task of knocking down even a weakened barrier. ChibiMoon was pleased to note that the Moon Tiara Stardust attack she’d gone for worked exactly like it was supposed to, scattering a thousand or so glittering bits of energy in the air before the barrier, but she privately didn’t expect it to pull off any miracles.

She was as surprised as everyone else when the tiny starspecks hitting the shield began to explode like miniature supernovas, each super-electrified blast ripping a tiny but very real hole in the wall of energy. Medea strove to maintain the shield and repair the damage, but the impacts were coming too fast and in too great a number for even her to keep up, and as the shield burst asunder, the leftover sparks detonated all at once, blowing Medea backwards.

Jupiter glanced at ChibiMoon as the younger Senshi retrieved her tiara, then gave an approving nod and a thumbs-up.

“Vaurinn!” Medea shouted. She managed to make it sound like a command instead of a call for help, even though she was privately shocked by how much power these future Senshi had demonstrated.

Ordered or entreated, the wizard raised his hands, a vial of some sort in the left and a colorless prism in the other. With a practiced speed, he threw the vial at the floor and flipped the prism into the air, calling out words that didn’t sound like the sort of noises the human voice was capable of making, and which even Usagi, still wrapped in Erridar’s translation spell, couldn’t understand.

Venus launched another Crescent Beam even before the two flying objects had left the wizard’s hands, but though her aim was perfect, the shot hit the man’s right shoulder in a flash of green light and was deflected wide, streaking up into the ceiling with a crunch and a rain of tiny debris. Protected by a personal shield, Vaurinn ignored the hit and remained focused on his casting, raising his right hand as if to pull something down from the sky or to haul it up from the earth.

Coming to an abrupt and physically impossible halt in midair, one point aimed straight down, the prism flashed with inner light and projected a beam of white energy at the floor, right into the heart of the spilled liquid, which was eating away at the substance of the tiles like acid. The single beam split into three, each one emanating from a different corner of the prism’s upturned face, and they swept outwards, linked by a thin circle of light which expanded to match their movements until it was over three meters across. Within that slender ring, the floor had apparently ceased to exist, for there was nothing there but black emptiness, a pit which had no sides or bottom. The prism fired a fourth beam of light directly into that unsettling void.

Every conscious head in the room turned in shock as an agonized scream split the air. Ryo had dropped to his knees, hands to either side of his head, palms pressed against the temples and fingers curled around past his ears. His eyes were shut and his jaw clenched, but both flew open for a split second before he doubled over from a flare of pain in his chest, like an icy knife driving straight into his heart.

“Ryo!” Mercury cried out, kneeling down next to him.

Not knowing exactly what was going on but guessing—correctly—that it must be bad, Venus and Mars were both already taking aim at the small prism. But before they could fire, the thing flew down the line of the fourth beam like a rocket, vanishing into the hole without a trace. Light erupted from the glowing ring, rising towards the ceiling in a circular wall.

And something came out of the hole.

The Senshi had all seen enough monsters destroyed to recognize the gathering patch of darkness as a sort of reversal of how such terrible creatures usually flew to pieces. Glowing red eyes appeared in the amorphous shadow and regarded Vaurinn as he snarled a command in another incomprehensible language, this one far more disturbing than the first, and pointed at the Senshi. The eyes shifted around to examine the Senshi, and suddenly the cloud was much larger. More eyes appeared, closer to twenty than to ten, and then the cloud solidified, expanding its border and contracting its darkness to create discernible shapes and colors.

There were now a dozen creatures huddled on the nothingness within the circle, hideous little beasts about half as tall as ChibiMoon. Roughly human in shape, their sallow skin hung loosely from thin skeletons whose design included large bone spikes at the shoulders, along the back, and on the back edge of each arm and leg. Heads crowned by numerous horns and spikes bore gaunt faces with empty eyesockets and drooling, fang-filled mouths. Unclothed and utterly hairless, the creatures possessed no recognizable indications of gender, and their moaning, wailing voices could have been either male or female, or something else altogether. Though they lacked eyes, the creatures seemed able to perceive the humans clearly enough, as they reached their hooked hands in that direction, scratching and scraping eagerly against the wall of light.

Looming over the smaller creatures was a much larger and very different entity. The light of the hall gleamed off a polished black carapace nearly as dark as the pit below, a smoothly segmented nightmare with eight slender, many-jointed legs supporting its large, curved body. Four arms and a tail sprouted from the shell, which ended in a large jaw that had no eyes to guide it, but which sported plenty of needle-like teeth. Each leg came to a sharp point, and at the end of each arm were three claws, arranged at equal distances around small, remora-like disks of teeth in the ‘palm’ of the ‘hand.’ A crest of spikes began just behind the gnashing teeth and continued down the back, terminating in a pair of metallic stingers on the tail. The armored bug-monster was taller than Jupiter, nearly as wide, and looked as if it would be three times as long as that once it had room to fully uncurl itself. A plume of yellow-tinted mist spurted from its large maw as it gave vent to a breathy, drawn-out hiss; once again, the absence of any recognizable eyes did not seem to be causing the creature any difficulty.

Three other creatures hung in the air. Two were birdlike reptiles somewhat taller than humans, orange-skinned, with slender builds and long limbs, pointy, elongated heads held up by far-reaching necks, and hanging tails that ended in spear-like points. Wings sprouted from their shoulders, rickety things with tattered sails that didn’t seem as if they should be capable of keeping the beasts in the air, but did so anyway. Bulbous red eyes on either side of the flying lizards’ heads glared fiercely down at the Senshi, and long tongues flickered out between their toothy beaks. They looked disturbingly like small dragons, and the faint scent of sulphur which got a little stronger each time their wings beat didn’t help to improve that impression.

By comparison to the rest, the last of the airborne creatures was nearly normal. It looked like a human woman with wings, extremely beautiful and almost angelic in appearance—almost. Angels did not have jet-black bat wings, or small horns rising from their foreheads with the gleam of polished onyx. Angels did not dress in black leather miniskirts and short, tight vests, nor did they wear stiletto-heeled black boots. Angels might have bone-white skin and waist-length black hair, but they most certainly did not have that sultry, pouty-lipped, smoldering black eyes sort of beauty. The Senshi could say all that for certain because Usagi had turned into something at least semi-angelic in the past, and she hadn’t looked a thing like what was floating at ease above them now.

“Eeep,” ChibiMoon said.

Jupiter swallowed heavily, trying to concentrate on what Sasanna had taught her to block out the waves of emotional darkness coming from inside that mass of nightmares. Fighting off the sickening impulses proved more difficult than she’d anticipated, and as her control began to slip, Jupiter unconsciously stepped backwards. Then she noticed a slight pressure from inside her fuku, something small and warm being pressed against her skin, just over her heart. She felt the shape of the object and realized it was the strange little acorn, for some reason still with her despite her transformation. Suddenly, concentrating on blocking out the monsters’ psychic auras was much easier.

“Attack!” Vaurinn shouted, spreading both hands wide. The wall of light surrounding the creatures dissolved, taking the hole in the floor with it, and there was a chorus of hisses and growls as the beasts took a collective step forward.

And then a dome of red light snapped into existence over the ones on the ground, completely isolating them from the rest of the world. Finding their ground support suddenly cut off, the two draconian fliers let out startled honking sounds that—under other circumstances—might have been funny, and then circled up into the higher parts of the ceiling. The other creature smiled oddly and landed briefly atop the dome, kneeling for a moment to launch herself straight into the air, a stylish show of indifference to fact that her allies had just been reduced to an eighth of their initial strength.

Medea glared at Pluto before swinging her staff at the dome. There was a bright flash from the Garnet Orb—both of them—at the moment of impact, and Pluto shook visibly, but the barrier she had created around the beasts held. Medea struck again, and again the wall remained intact, but so too did Pluto shudder.

“Get ready,” Pluto advised her friends in a whisper. “I’ll take care of her, but the rest of you will have to deal with the monsters and that wizard.”

She let the barrier fall just before Medea’s next strike would have hit it, and the Atlantean Senshi was pulled off balance by her momentum and the lack of anything to hit. Then things happened VERY fast.

The creatures rushed forward, the claws of the smaller ones clicking against the floor tiles while the spearheaded legs of the black bug shattered a tile with each step. There was a hiss from the bug, and the sickly-looking spiky horrors spread out to the sides, forming a wall between the Senshi and the larger monster. Overhead, the mini-dragons swooped down to either side, claws extended and jaws wide to reveal a sickly yellow light building in their throats. The devil-woman stayed above and behind her two compatriots, raising her right hand above her head. Her taloned fingers closed around a bone-white baton that appeared from thin air, the black gems ringing either end glowing darkly and surrounding the device with small spheres of green-streaked black energy.

Pluto took two long steps towards the advancing beasts, planted the butt of her staff firmly on the floor, and vaulted into the air with no more trouble than Venus or Uranus might have had. She sailed cleanly over the heads and grasping claws of three of the lesser beasts, slipped under the talons and tails of the flying lizards, and rolled as she landed to absorb the impact and avoid a swing from the tail of the largest monster, its twin stingers gouging furrows in the floor as they missed Pluto.

Just getting herself turned around after the imbalancing swing, Medea saw her successor rising out of the roll, eyes hard, staff already prepared for a strike. Vaurinn saw her, too, and raised one hand to hurl a spell—and quickly pulled back hand and spell as the Space Sword came within an inch of cutting both off short, clipping the edge of the wizard’s defensive shield in a flare of green-webbed energy. Uranus pressed the attack immediately, slashing and stabbing with the blade in her right hand, landing concussive blows with the wind-force surrounding her left.

Most of the remaining Senshi closed ranks around Usagi before launching their attacks. Jupiter and Neptune sent a combined Supreme Thunder and Deep Submerge at the creatures in the air, and at the same time, Mars hurled a Burning Mandala against the advancing surface line, spreading the attack out to strike as many of the little monsters at once. As the flaming rings cut into the crowd and the serpentine blast of high-voltage water sizzled through the fliers, Venus called down a Crescent Shower, the attack blasting the reptilian monster that was too slow to get clear. The Shower also caught up the high-voltage mass of liquid and slammed it down at the floor with incredible speed, crushing everything beneath it. It would have made sense for the bullet-force downpour to extinguish Mars’ rings, but instead, the moment the fire touched the sizzling water, there was an explosion, and the hall was filled by a cloud of dust-heavy steam.

“What... just happened?” Venus asked, waving her hand in front of her face to clear away the smoky mist. There were several layers of the stuff, differentiated by the settling of the dust. Anything from about knee level to the floor was too thick to see through, providing plenty of ambush opportunities for the smaller monsters. If they could see without eyes, then fog wasn’t likely to cause them any problems.

“Chemistry, maybe,” Neptune answered dubiously, her eyes looking carefully around in the murk for signs of the enemy. “Run a sufficient amount of electric current through water, and each molecule breaks down into two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Oxygen burns, and hydrogen explodes. I guess Jupiter’s lightning destabilized some of the water in my attack, and the Mandala rings set it off.”

“Oh.” Silence reigned briefly as Venus considered the reply. Then she grinned. “Cool. I guess we’ll have to keep that one in mind for future use, won’t we?”

“Whatever makes you happy, Venus,” Neptune said in an even tone. “Can anyone see anything?”

“Not past the hem of my clothes,” Venus replied cheerfully.

“That’s ‘the end of your nose,’” Artemis’ voice corrected from some distance away, coughing slightly.

“Artemis! Where are you?”

“In a world of hurt. Usagi, is Luna okay?”

“I don’t know,” Usagi replied, her voice becoming unsteady for a moment. “She was hit in the back of the head, and there was a lot of bleeding, and I can’t see her at all in this... this... fog!” She packed a great deal of frustration into that word.

“Come back here, you sissy!” Uranus’ voice rang out, echoing weirdly through the artificial fogbank. “Ah, hell,” she added a moment later. “All right, which of you genius water Senshi is responsible for the sudden weather front?”

“Never mind,” Neptune told her. “Just get rid of it.”

They could almost _hear_ Uranus’ smile in the moment of silence which followed that non-admission.

“Haruka!”

“Okay, okay. Just give me a minute to—whoa!”

They heard a loud moan and several impacts from Uranus’ general direction; she backed into view a moment later, fending off the combined claws of three of the bony monsters with some extremely fast sword work. A Crescent Beam took the one on the right through the chest and blew it backwards into the mist; ChibiMoon’s tiara cut the one on the left in half, and Uranus made short work of the third. All three warped bodies fell into the knee-high layer of thick fog with the same dusty slither, crumbling to bits which were likely vanishing as soon as they hit the floor.

Uranus turned to thank the others, but her face shifted from its customary knowing grin to shock as she called out, “Behind you!”

The Senshi were still turning when the bulk of the black-armored creature emerged from the fog with a raspy roar. Jupiter and Mars caught Usagi by the arms and hauled her along with them in a long leap while the others got themselves clear of the monster’s charge, and when the creature clattered to a stop and looked back, only Uranus and Venus were still visible. They looked at each other, then shrugged as one.

“Cover me,” Uranus said. Grinning, Venus held up her left hand, her first two fingers extended and her thumb back to mimic the shape of a gun, and winked. Uranus shook her head and charged at the bug-monster, ignoring the Crescent Beams which began to zip past her and smash into the brute’s armored shell.

# 

Mars was getting angry.

Fog or no fog, they had to get Usagi out of this room—hell, they had to get her out of this TIME—before something caught up to her, and never mind that she had to have used the ginzuishou to bring them all here. However healthy she looked, there was no telling what she might have done to herself in reality, or what might happen if she tried it again. Mars wasn’t about to take the risk; they were getting OUT.

But just try telling that to Usagi.

They’d had arguments like this so many times that Mars knew in advance exactly how it would go. She’d make excellent points in favor of leaving, and Usagi would refute them; she’d insist, and Usagi would refuse. They’d glare and then shout, they’d wave their hands around, make threats, and call each other names. And in the end, even after all that effort, Mars knew that her odds of winning would be no better than fifty-fifty. Talk about frustrating.

*I wonder if Mamoru has this problem with her,* Mars thought, shaking her head.

A shift in the shadows above caught her attention; the fog was thinner here, and one of the flying lizards was swooping towards them, its jaws wide, a yellowish light rapidly filling its throat. Its skin was pitted and burned, evidence that it had caught at least part of the explosive multi-attack, but the creature clearly wasn’t out of the fight just yet.

Mars tucked the Book under one arm and awkwardly launched a Fire Soul attack at the airborne enemy, aiming for its open mouth. In the same moment, a ball of yellowish-orange flame erupted from the beast’s jaws, and the two fiery projectiles collided, canceling each other out in a brief explosion.

The creature landed, snapped back its wings, and spun around, lashing its long tail at the three humans. Jupiter carried Usagi out of the way, but Mars couldn’t avoid dropping the Book as she dodged the strike.

Mars didn’t like the Book. After two months’ worth of long nights of study, she still hadn’t figured out how to open it, and while nothing curious had happened to it during her entire time in the future village, she hadn’t forgotten that still-unexplained incident back at Hikawa when the Book had apparently crossed a room under its own power. She was fully aware of the fact that it was important, but she would have been much happier if it had been taken off her hands—except that Usagi had entrusted it to her, asked her to protect it.

And so now, as the Book disappeared into the lower layer of the fog, Mars felt her temper go from a slow burn to a hot flare. She jumped straight at the monster, ducking a swipe from its claws, and pulled her right hand back in preparation for a strike at a scaly knob between the creature’s side-mounted eyes. She would have used one of her wards to paralyze it, except that she’d run out weeks ago, and hadn’t had the resources in that difficult future to make more.

Instead, she improvised, calling up everything she could, the gifts honed by years of her grandfather’s training as well as the power of Mars. An image from her disturbing dream-vision came back to her, the two fires hanging before her in the darkness, one representing the fire at the shrine and everything it stood for, and the other representing the power of Mars. She reached out and gathered both flames with her mind, shaping them into a single fireball, a single power in which the two forces that protected her burned not red, but white-hot.

As the impossibly hot fire expanded to fill her awareness, Mars remembered something Luna had said once, when Makoto had asked about all the words they kept shouting when they used their attacks. She’d wanted to know if there were a certain set number of powers they could use, or if just making up a catchy phrase would do the trick. The words, Luna had explained, served as a focus for their powers, working to sharpen the concept of a given power in their minds so that they didn’t turn loose their full energy with every attack. Yes, the attacks she and Artemis were teaching them were a standard part of Senshi education, a limited number of techniques which had been learned, developed, and refined by every Senshi back to the beginning of the Moon Kingdom, and probably beyond. But if they had the need, if they could muster the necessary power and give it the proper shape and limitations, then yes, they could also create new attacks.

Words began to form from the fire in Mars’ mind.

“MARS...” she whispered, and her drawn-back hand was suddenly surrounded by fire, an aura of red and orange which didn’t even singe her glove. Mars shivered as she felt the fire collapse in on itself, growing brighter and hotter as it became smaller and more intense, its color changing to match the white-hot force in her mind. *I can do this,* she repeated over and over. *I just need a few seconds. I can do it.*

“...CLEANSING...” The energy passed through her glove and settled into her hand, which suddenly glowed as bright as the sun, so intense that the outline of it was clearly visible through the glove. Ignoring the effect, Mars locked her wrist and drove it forward, and as she struck the tough knob on the monster’s forehead, called out “FLAME!” in a loud voice, unaware that the same white-hot energy encased in her fist was blazing from her eyes and mouth.

At the moment of contact, the white fire rushed out of her mind and body, surging through her hand and into the evil-soaked form of the monster. The reaction was immediate as, infused with something that might be called holy fire, a concentrated form of positive spiritual energy, the fiendish reptile’s body burst into flames from the inside out. It staggered backwards, shrieking at incredible volume, the white fire blazing out from its body.

Although the monster was obviously in agony, Mars knew the pain it felt wasn’t the pain of burning flesh. By combining her two separate powers, she had fused their traits, and while the fires of Mars could certainly do physical harm, the fire of her faith was devoted to guidance, protection, and healing. Her new attack was seeking to counter the negative energy of the monster, to balance it out with positive energy in a manner not entirely unlike how Usagi used the ginzuishou to restore humans who had been contaminated by negative power and transformed into monsters.

This creature had never been human, and the negative energy that corrupted and killed humans was what it thrived on, what _it_ needed to live. Neutralizing the dark force within its body would weaken the creature, not heal it, and it had already been worn down considerably by the four-fold barrage.

So instead of transforming from devil-lizard into something else, its still-burning body slid apart and collapsed to the floor as a pile of silvery ash, with a few tongues of white flame flickering among the falling embers, burning away everything and growing steadily dimmer until, as the last specks were consumed, the fires also went out.

The heat of the fire had evaporated or just driven away the mist, revealing the floor and the Book, but Mars just looked at the heat-polished tiles where the creature had been standing. She had to wonder: what would have happened if it hadn’t been injured? What if she’d been able to level out the flow of power, to somehow balance it to match the dark energy in the creature’s body? What...

“Mars? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Usagi. I was just... I’m fine.” Shaking away her speculations, Mars knelt to retrieve the Book, noting as she did so that the heavy mist was moving in to fill the space her fires had cleared. But she could see a wall, now, and if they followed it in _that_ direction just a short distance, they’d find the door... and Usagi would flat-out refuse to stand in the hall with them while the others remained lost in a monster-infested fog.

Mars sighed and led the way back into the mist. She couldn’t see, but she was sure Usagi was smiling at her back.

# 

Venus stepped lightly through the fog, her eyes and ears open, her mouth shut, and one hand out in front of her to stop her from running head-on into a wall. She’d had to divert her attention from Uranus and Senior Bug when one of the flying lizards had tried to dive-bomb her. In the process of dodging the attack and giving the pesky thing a farewell Crescent Beam kick in the tail before it vanished into the mist, Venus had lost sight of her ally and their enemy.

She could have called out to the others, but fog, as she had learned from her time in London and numerous later experiences—most courtesy of Mercury—played strange tricks with light and sound, and this particular fog had things roaming around in it. If she called out to her friends, she’d probably be answered by a creature. Using the communicators wouldn’t have been a much better idea even if they were still working, since anybody she tried to call might be in the middle of a fight—not a good time to chat.

Thinking over her options, Venus had decided the best thing she could do was to look for Artemis. She could tell by the note in his voice that he’d really hurt himself this time, and there were plenty of things loose in this mist that even a whole and healthy housecat wouldn’t be able to fight.

There were others who could use her help, she knew, but Usagi had Jupiter and Mars with her, Ryo was with Mercury, and Luna... Luna was just going to have to hold on. Venus hated to play favorites among her friends, but when it came right down to it, a friend was all Luna was. Artemis was her partner, and after four years, she wasn’t going to leave him alone when he was hurt.

*And besides,* she told herself, *they’re both small enough that I won’t see them under this fog. Artemis will be able to hear or smell when I get near, but if Luna’s unconscious, I’ll never find her without him to tell me where to go.*

She found a wall a moment later, and almost stumbled over the white-haired man sitting propped up against it.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “Didn’t see you there.”

“I understand,” the man replied in a strained-sounding voice. “Could you please get off my hand?”

“Sorry!” Venus quickly took a step back. *I _thought_ that part of the floor was uneven.* “I am _really_ sorry about that. I’m just not very good...”

“...not very good in a fog,” he said, completing the sentence with her and smiling faintly. Venus was a little surprised that he’d known what she was going to say, but she had to smile back. He was _really_ handsome, even without the smile, and the white hair didn’t detract from his appearance at all.

*Keep your mind on business!* she told herself sternly. “Did you see a white cat around here anywhere before the fog strolled in?”

“Rolled in.”

“Whatever.” Venus frowned. She was getting the strangest feeling of deja vu here, but she shook her head and ignored it. “Have you, or haven’t you? Seen the cat, I mean.” She looked at him a little more closely and realized he was breathing slowly, in a manner that suggested he was trying to ease pressure on one or more ribs. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’ve been better, but it’s nothing that Sa... behind you!”

Venus turned automatically, summoning her Love-Me Chain in the same motion and lashing out as soon as she spotted movement. One of the small creatures had emerged from the fog, its skin black and blistered and its claws raised, ready to strike. The Chain drove into its head right between the eyesockets, producing a meaty thunk and a loud crack as the front of the skull and the bones of the neck broke at the same time. The creature’s body disintegrated immediately and barely slowed the Chain’s passage, so Venus sent the heart-shaped links looping through the fog around her to make sure there weren’t any creatures sneaking up on their bellies. There had been a snake-monster in London that had gotten within biting distance like that, and the only reason it had missed its opportunity to strike was because she’d unknowingly stepped on its head.

“You remember the snake, I see.”

“Yeah, I...” She had her back to him, but the way in which the glowing length of the Chain suddenly jerked to a halt and then clattered to the floor betrayed Venus’ shock. She turned around slowly, looked at the white-haired man, and asked, “Artemis?” in a very small voice.

There was a flicker of sympathetic apology before he managed a wry smile, lifting his working right arm and its footprint-branded fingers to the side.

“Surprise?”

# 

Mercury had already switched her visor on to try and find out what was wrong with Ryo by the time the explosion went off and filled the hall with dusty fog. He’d blacked out, either from shock at whatever it was that he’d seen or from the stress put on his system by the vision, and Mercury had put herself between him and the blast; now she was kneeling next to him, watching events all around her unfold on the rim of her visor.

The sensors in her computer and visor cut through the fog easily, and with their communicator signals to help, Mercury had located the other Senshi in no time at all—including the one Pluto was still fighting. Her visor displayed another of those time-warping hemispheres of air around the two, and from the play-by-play of swings, strikes, blocks, and counters that went scrolling past, Mercury concluded with great relief and nearly as much surprise that _their_ Pluto, Setsuna, was holding her own against her predecessor.

Besides the Senshi and Ryo, there were twenty-six other humans in the room. Eleven of them—ten men and one woman—were spread out over the floor in various levels of unconsciousness and injury, and while most of the rest were grouped near the main door, five were scattered around the hall. One was an injured man near Venus, and two more of the men showed up like neon lights in her visor’s display, surrounded by strong magical fields. The fourth, another man, had a reading quite similar to Ryo’s, showing physical traces of some sort of extrasensory ability, while the last of the five, a young girl, had a reading that indicated minor magic and something else that Mercury couldn’t pin down.

Then there were the monsters. They were definitely varieties of daimon, but fully half of the smallest ones had been destroyed in that explosion. Even as Mercury checked the readings again, the signals for the last two blipped out, not far from ChibiMoon’s location, and one of the flying reptiles had been taken down as well, by Mars, with an attack Mercury’s computer hadn’t recognized. Uranus was running circles around the biggest monster, but its armor was defeating her sword-strikes, and its multitude of limbs weren’t giving her the time to launch any other attacks. Neptune was doing better with the other draconian creature, alternating between hosing it with gouts of water and using her Mirror to bat its own fireballs back at it, tennis-style.

That left the bat-winged woman, and...

Mercury ducked to the right as something cracked past her head. She looked up and spotted the creature, hovering about halfway to the ceiling, raising the bone-white rod in her right hand. When she swung, the black gems in the thing flashed, and the whip-like line of black energy trailing from one end snapped down, forcing Mercury to jump away. The whip cracked and crackled at the same time, and the tip blew a tile from the floor as the creature drew back.

“You’re quicker than I thought” The daimon’s voice was very much suited to its appearance, low and breathy, and its chuckle made Mercury’s skin crawl. “Good. I like a little challenge.” And the whip hissed down again, exploding a row of tiles as Mercury leapt clear and unleashed a Shabon Spray, thickening the upper layers of the fog. She was momentarily grateful that the Spray had worked, but she was also fairly certain that she wasn’t up to this fight. Whatever Usagi and the ginzuishou had done might have triggered her Senshi form, but her power still had that disturbingly empty feel to it, as if it might collapse if she extended it too far.

“One for you,” the daimon admitted from somewhere up above. There was a whoosh of sound followed by silence, and Mercury felt her heart sink when the image which represented this particular creature faded from her visor. Something it had done was actually blocking the sensors! Mercury nearly jumped out of her skin a moment later when she heard that soft voice whisper, “One for me,” practically in her ear.

She turned around and saw nothing but a gusting eddy in the fog. Then the whip reappeared, from a completely different direction than the swirl in the mists, lashing lightly across Mercury’s back. It barely even stung, and might have been nothing more than a near miss which got lucky, but Mercury had the uneasy impression that the daimon had meant the strike to be a minor one. It obviously didn’t think much of her abilities—which Mercury could understand; she wasn’t entirely impressed with her powers herself, at the moment—and meant to toy with her for a while.

*Can’t track her, can’t blast her.* Mercury thought for a moment and then slipped her computer away, moving her arms out to the sides and setting her feet.

The end of the whip stung her left arm twice, and then her right, but as she’d expected, they were all light blows, and when the whip came back a fourth time, Mercury had figured out its speed, and her timing was much better. She reached her arms around the striking head and seized the crackling whip with both hands, shoving aside the numbness that went up her arms as she turned and pulled, as hard as she could.

Mercury might not be as large or as physically powerful as some of her friends, but she still had the enhanced strength all the Senshi possessed, and the daimon tumbled out of the thinning mists overhead, her wings flapping madly to restore the balance that sudden downwards yank had destroyed. The energized line had flickered out of existence almost as soon as Mercury had pulled, and she heard the weapon’s handle clatter as it hit the floor.

The daimon couldn’t stop her fall, but she managed to catch herself and land in a crouch instead of a crash. On her hands and one knee, the daimon’s head snapped up to glare fiercely at Mercury, her lips curled back in a snarl that revealed a row of perfect teeth—and prominent canines.

“Another one for me?” Mercury suggested with a sweet smile and a voice as close to the daimon’s own as she could manage; she’d seen Makoto get into enough fights to know that throwing someone’s—or something’s—taunts back at them was a good way to get the other side angry and off-balance.

The daimon charged, her wings folded back and her black-lacquered talons leading. Mercury leaned her head back to avoid the first swipe, shifted her right shoulder back as the second slashing blow came in, and swung her left fist at the side of the daimon’s head. The creature saw it coming and ducked to avoid the blow—only to go flying backwards when Mercury’s boot caught her in the face.

After a short skid on her wings, the daimon got to her feet and ran one finger through the reddish-black blood trickling from her lower lip. She examined that finger for a moment, then looked up at Mercury and smiled, running her tongue along her lips in an extremely disturbing way. She made a reaching motion with her right hand, and the jeweled rod flew back into her grasp from out of the mist, the black gems winking as the green-streaked beam of dark energy reappeared, this time in the shape of a narrow blade.

“Let’s see what color _you_ bleed,” the daimon whispered.

If anything, the energy blade was faster than the whip had been, and Mercury didn’t want to try her luck—or risk her fingers—by making another grab for the thing. She concentrated on dodging instead, hoping for a time that one of the others might show up to help her out, but she quickly realized that she had to think of something else.

*I won’t leave you, Ryo,* she thought, looking past the daimon to where Ryo was just a dark shape surrounded by the fog. The quick look was a mistake; in the next instant, the sizzling tip of the blade was at her throat.

“Game over,” the daimon said in a sad voice, mockingly shaking her head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. And here you were, doing so well. Now, what shall I do with you? Kill you here? Hardly any fun at all. Give you to Mmb’zau for a meal? Do you know Mmb’zau?” she asked in an almost conversational tone. “No, of course you don’t. He’s the large black one who came through with me. He eats with his hands, you know, little sucker-shaped bites, one at a time. I’ve seen him go on for days like that... and what _are_ you looking at?”

Mercury kept her lips pressed together even when the pressure of the black blade against her skin increased to the point where she had to tilt her head back.

“Not going to tell me, little one? No? Well, then, let’s have a look together.”

Keeping the edge of her blade at Mercury’s throat, the daimon slipped around behind her, reaching her left arm across her prisoner’s waist to lock her taloned hand around Mercury’s right wrist, pinning her other arm in the process.

“Mmmm,” the daimon purred, her chin nestled on Mercury’s left shoulder. “This is nice, isn’t it? Maybe I should keep you myself—but first, let’s see what got your attention.” From the way her body shifted, Mercury guessed the creature was craning her neck to get a better look. “Well, I can’t tell what it is from here. We’re just going to have to move closer. Ah-ah-ah,” she admonished, tightening her hold as Mercury tensed. “None of that. You’re pretty enough right now to be interesting, but if I have to cut you, it’ll scar, and then I’ll just have to give you to Mmb’zau anyway.”

The daimon kept the pressure up as she marched Mercury forward, and when they stopped, she turned Ryo over with her boot.

“Well, well, well...” The daimon chuckled. “Shame on you for not telling me.”

“Touch him and die.”

“What’s this?” the daimon asked, affecting astonishment. “Threats? And when I’m thinking about being so nice to you? Now why would... oh, I see. You like him, don’t you? Well, I can bring him along, too, and you two can be together forever—if I decide to let you. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

“Go to hell.”

The daimon laughed delightedly, and Mercury flinched away as those cold lips brushed against her ear. “You silly girl; what you call Hell is what I call home. You won’t see much of it, of course. Some parts are enough to drive any human who looks at them totally mad, and if I let you outside, most of the neighbors would never let such a delicious little morsel as yourself get away...” The daimon’s words trailed off for a moment as she sniffed the air curiously. Then she laughed again. “And you’re a virgin, too, aren’t you? Yes, I can see I’m going to have to keep you on a _very_ short leash...”

The laughter was chilling, but it ended on a disappointed sigh. “I suppose that means I’m just going to have to kill your would-be lover, little one. He’s obviously not much of a man if...” The daimon broke off again to sniff at the air. “Where _is_ that scent coming from?” she muttered aloud. “Mmb’zau? Is that you? Brakareshkla?”

Silence was her reply. “So, it’s not from those two. And your friends already destroyed Rakjakreenok and the little spawn Mmb’zau brought with him. But no, it’s not one of us. It smells human, too, and aside from you, there’s no one close enough except...” From the shift in the daimon’s head, she was looking down. At Ryo. “Well, now... it seems as though your little friend here is more than he appears. Isn’t _this_ interesting?”

“Leave. Him. Alone.”

“Oh no, sweet one. I think he might actually be useful after all. And what other secrets are you two keeping from me, hmmm? Well, I’ll have plenty of time to find out, and once I’ve gotten you both properly trained, you’ll _beg_ to tell me every last detail...”

That did it. Mysterious illness or no, Mercury reached out with her mind and seized every ounce of her power that she could, and willed it to do something—ANYTHING. She’d had more than enough of listening to this sick alien bitch, and now she was eyeing Ryo... black energy swords be damned, enough was ENOUGH.

The daimon’s eyes widened in astonishment as her prisoner’s body softened, shifted, and fell away from her hold as a cloud of sparkling, blue-white mist. She cut through it with her weapon, but the blade had no more effect on the cloud than on any other mist. It roiled up before her in a tall pillar, little points of white and yellow light winking inside, and she slashed at it again, and again, and again.

And after the blade whipped through it for the seventh time, the cloud solidified back into Mercury, who caught the daimon’s returning weapon-hand with her own left, then punched the creature in the belly as hard as she could with her other fist. Inhabiting a roughly human form, the daimon had to obey certain rules of nature—and a hard enough hit to the abs will make _anybody_ double over and start gasping for air.

The daimon staggered backwards, but she didn’t drop her weapon, and neither did she take long to recover. She was smiling again as she straightened, a smile which didn’t reach her eyes.

“Now I’m going to have to punish you, my pet.”

Mercury snatched something out of thin air with her right hand, a handful of mist which solidified into a definite shape, an unmistakable weight. The daimon drew back and raised her weapon uncertainly, and Mercury risked a quick glance at what she was holding.

It was a baton about as long as her arm from the elbow to the wrist, and the same shade of blue as her fuku. It was narrow and light enough that she could carry it easily in one hand, but also reassuringly thick and heavy, and two golden serpents coiled around it four times each, the first wide loop of their criss-crossing coils forming a sort of guard for her hand. Two white wings stretched out to either side from above the snakes’ heads, together roughly as wide as the baton was tall. The snakes’ eyes were bright red rubies, and a perfectly round sapphire stood atop the baton.

Mercury recognized the shape immediately: a caduceus, a staff or wand carried by the god for whom her planet was named, the patron of messengers and merchants, travelers and thieves—and science. Nowadays, it was a symbol associated with medicine and doctors. For all those reasons, carrying it felt right.

But it was more than that. The device felt... familiar. *I know this,* Mercury realized slowly. *Not just a caduceus. The Caduceus Rod. I remember...*

She spun the Rod around in a full circle and held it up before herself with both hands, her right on the grip, the other on the base, and called out, “MERCURY FROST LANCET!”

The rubies and sapphire glowed brightly, and a beam of blue-white light shot up from the tip of the rod, widening slightly at the base and narrowing higher up as if being focused by a magnifying glass. When the light had formed a cone the same length as the Rod, there was an audible cracking sound, the sound of ice breaking in winter, and the blue-white energy became a blue-white blade, both sides gleaming sharply. The wings snapped downwards, the ridges of the perfectly carved feathers adhering to the ridges of the looping snakes, and Mercury swung the weapon down to her right.

“Your move,” she advised the daimon.

# 

“Does anyone have any idea where Medea is?” Allys asked impatiently.

The six Senshi faced each other in the Celestial Hall, their headquarters within the city of Atlantis. Each had reported in from whatever part of the Empire she had been at when the weird disturbance hit her. Jani and Mercury had been in Atlantis itself—no surprise there; the two Water Senshi were almost always to be found together—but the rest had teleported back from all over the system.

“She left the city earlier today,” Jani replied, “after speaking with the Emperor, but as to where she went, I can’t say.”

“Did you try to get in touch with her?” Karla said brusquely. Her sky-blue eyes flashed with barely-restrained energy, a clear warning to her sisters that, wherever she had been, she must have been woken up early. Her short black hair was sticking up unevenly, which might have been due to the lack of a proper brushing after getting out of bed, but the others didn’t dismiss the possibility that it might be due to electrostatic buildup.

“Twice, with no answer,” Mercury said in a neutral voice, brushing her hair out of her eyes. That hair was the same shoulder-length blue-green as Jani’s, as were her—their—eyes, and Mercury even looked like the other girl to the point that they could use each other as mirrors. There _was_ a visible difference between them—it had to do with how Jani’s hair was more blue than green, her eyes more green than blue, and how Mercury’s hair and eyes were the other way around—but looking at the two of them side-by-side always gave Allys a headache, the more so because she knew this _wasn’t_ what Mercury really looked like.

“She’s up to something, then,” Sara sighed, “and she either doesn’t want us to know about it, or she’s too busy to get in touch.” Sara wasn’t much better when she woke up early than Karla, but it must have been a more reasonable hour at her villa on Mars, because her reddish-brown hair was neatly braided back, and her pale eyes were clear, calm, and focused.

“How much would you like to bet that whatever she went off to investigate _doesn’t_ have something to do with that distortion we all felt?” Amarelle asked wryly. The others were wearing their formal robes of office, but she’d been conducting a military inspection of the Outer Colonies and wore an officer’s uniform instead. Her short, prematurely white hair was still a little pressed down from the helmet, while her dark blue eyes were ringed by the barely-visible impression of a lowered blast visor.

“I won’t take that bet,” Allys said.

“Particularly not in light of the fact that there was a temporal disturbance two nights ago,” Mercury added. The others looked at her in surprise.

“Why weren’t we... no,” Sara said, answering her own question, “we _were_ told. Medea was, at any rate, and she can argue that she left the rest of us in the dark because of some obscure clause in the Codices about temporal security.” She glanced at Mercury. “But that having been said, sister, how did _you_ find out?”

Mercury sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically, then raised her hands, touched her fingers to the sides of her head, and looked directly at Sara. “You’re thinking of a number between one and ten...”

“All right,” Sara surrendered. “But how did you get close enough to pick it up without her noticing that you were...” Mercury was giving her another pained looked, and Sara threw up her hands. “I give up.”

“What else, Mercury?” Allys asked firmly. “What else was she thinking about?”

“A discussion about the anomaly with the senior archmages, a city called Khairoah in northern Ahfaahri, a squad of ten guards and a mage-inquisitor she’d sent that quiet slave-girl of hers to dragoon into the mission, and a beating of sorts that she’d just administered to the poor child.” Mercury’s eyes hardened. “It’s disgusting, the way she treats that girl.”

“She takes good care of her, from what I hear,” Karla said. “Better than a lot of nobles treat their slaves, or even their ordinary servants.”

“Medea _hates_ her, Karla, and it’s as intense as anything I’ve ever seen in a human mind. I’ve scanned darklings who didn’t hate humans as much as Medea hates that girl.”

“So Medea’s a stone cold bitch; what else is new?” Amarelle shook her head. “Anything more, Mercury?”

“Contempt for every living thing other than herself, a few half-formed plans for self-advancement, and a lust for power.” Mercury shrugged. “The usual.”

“But nothing that would let us challenge that ‘temporal security’ imperative of hers,” Allys said grimly. “I guess that means we’re stuck here until something else develops, or Medea calls for us.”

They looked at each other. Fat chance of that.

“Remind me,” Amarelle asked. “How did we end up with someone like _that_ being placed in charge of us _and_ the Mobius Gate?”

“Because unless a Senshi of Saturn is activated,” Allys said, her weary tone betraying how many times she’d turned this line of thought over in her mind, “Medea’s the strongest of us in a fight, with the added bonuses of an encyclopedic knowledge of Imperial law, an older and more distinguished lineage than any of us possess, and the unique distinction of being the seventh successive member of that prestigious family to be a Senshi of Pluto. And you know how much the Imperial Court favors the use of nobility, heredity, and military capability when the question of leadership comes up.”

“_You_ could beat her,” Jani asked. “Couldn’t you, Allys? You or Sara? The rest of us may not have the necessary rank or strength, but either of you challenge her for command and win, right?”

“On a good day, with our respective worlds in the phase of their orbits which brings them closest to Earth, probably. And yes, the Court would honor the outcome of a trial by combat.” Allys shook her head. “But all Medea would have to do would be to wait a month or so, call for a second trial, and then pound either of us into the dirt.”

“And knowing her,” Amarelle put in, “there’d probably be a convenient accident of some sort waiting off in the wings if anyone so much as thought of trying it again.”

“That too.” Allys sat back in her chair. “Are you up for a little political discussion, Amarelle?”

“Since we’re not going anywhere, I suppose I am. I’ve been out of touch, though. What’s up?”

“What isn’t? The Emperor’s old and getting older, and with the line of succession in the state that it is, the Lords are scrambling to be in place for Selection when the old man finally dies.”

“Old news even on Pluto,” Amarelle replied. “And given that the Chrysmat are the last beings in the system to hear anything, and that the Shi’i don’t really care, that’s saying something.”

“Medea’s taking part.” Sara said. Amarelle blinked. Twice.

“A Senshi can’t be Empress,” she said finally. “Maybe she can _marry_ the Emperor, but she can’t be invested with the authority herself.”

“There’s no law against it,” Allys said quietly. “We checked. The only reason it hasn’t happened before was a combination of custom, lack of opportunity, and plain common sense. Medea’s the head of one of the Great Houses, the Senshi of Pluto, _and_ she’s been invested with a lot of authority by the Emperor these past few years. I’d say that qualifies as opportunity, wouldn’t you?”

Amarelle considered the news. “I trust you’ve been doing something about it?”

“It takes one hundred votes of the hundred and ninety-six in the Council to confirm a Selection,” Allys said, “and Medea’s got forty-two of the Earth Lords supporting her one way or the other, so we’ve been gathering support on the other Inner Planets and Jupiter. The Jovians haven’t cared much for Medea since that mess on Ganymede, and the Nereids seem to like her even less, for some mysterious reason.” She glanced smilingly at Mercury, who assumed a pose of pious innocence. “And of course,” Allys continued, “between my brothers, sisters, and near cousins, we’ve got a solid lock on the voting members for Venus.”

“Of course,” Amarelle agreed wryly. Venusians usually had pretty sizable families, for obvious enough reasons when you took even a passing glance at their culture. “And Mars?”

“Split down the middle,” Sara answered with a sigh. “I managed to get us about nine votes, all told, plus the planetary governor. The rest are throwing in with one of their own candidates, but we can at least count on them not to support Medea, and that’s really all we need. We’ve got thirty-nine votes for sure, and maybe twelve more. That puts us a little ahead of Medea.”

“Who’s our candidate?” Amarelle asked.

“We’ve got it set up so that we _seem_ to have a candidate from Venus, another from Mars, and a third from Jupiter,” Allys said. “Sort of symbolic, you see, and it keeps Medea thinking she’s further ahead of us, so she doesn’t get creative. Our real candidate is rallying support on his own, and he’s got nearly thirty solid backers, plus a lot of popular opinion. Once the Selection gets going, _our_ side will join _his._ We’ll have anywhere from sixty-nine to eighty-one votes at that point—over a third of the Council. That ought to shake a few supporters loose from Medea.”

“And if our luck is _really_ in,” Sara added, “Allys or I might just take up Jani’s suggestion and challenge Medea. Taking leadership of the Senshi from her might cost her a few more votes.”

“I think I can help you do a little better, there,” Amarelle said after a moment of thought. “Nobody really takes the Warden Lords very seriously, but there’s fifteen of them spread out among the Outer System moons. I’m due to check in with most of them in the next couple of months, and I think they’d warm to the idea of playing a deciding role in choosing the next Emperor. If a _third_ of the Council shakes loose some votes, a near _half_ of it ought to stampede them.”

“That would really help,” Sara said.

“Who’s the candidate, though? I’ll need to know when I talk to them.”

“Lord Arik,” Allys replied, “of House Stone.”

Amarelle looked at her blandly.

“He’s a war hero,” Allys said defensively, “so the army would support him, and the people like him. As a young Lord of an old House, he appeals equally to the older families and the newer ones, and he’s handsome enough that nobody ever stops to realize that he’s intelligent, too.”

“And the fact that you’re sleeping with him doesn’t hurt matters, right?”

“He’s still a good choice,” Allys insisted, blushing but managing to keep her voice firm. “And a lot better than Medea.”

“Empress Medea,” Jani said with a shiver. “I don’t think I could take that.”

“Don’t worry about it too much,” Mercury told her look-alike. “Even Medea can’t live forever, and we’re pretty close to the point in her life where her successor’s likely to appear, if she hasn’t arrived already. With a little luck, the next Pluto will turn out to be someone a little less problematic than the last few have been, and we can have _her_ trounce Medea to take leadership.”

“The way _my_ luck runs,” Karla muttered, “the next Pluto’s likely to be Medea’s oldest daughter, just like the last six generations of the family. Have you ever met that girl? She’s as bad as her mother.”

“Granted,” Mercury agreed, “but I really doubt she’s the one. She’s nearly twenty, and the powers would have manifested by...”

The other Atlantean Senshi looked at their comrade in surprise as she let out a startled gasp, grabbing the armrests of her chair. The temperature in the room dropped several highly noticeable degrees, and a thin layer of frost appeared beneath Mercury’s hands, causing the solid old wood of the chair to creak and groan. She seemed to turn slightly blue before she got herself and her powers under control again.

“Are you okay?” Jani asked quickly.

“That was... very unusual,” Mercury replied absently, breathing carefully.

“What happened?”

“Just a moment, please.” She made a grasping motion with her right hand, and didn’t seem surprised when nothing happened. “As I thought. The Caduceus Rod is gone. Someone called it away. Someone stronger than I am,” she added, “since I can’t seem to call it back.”

“Any idea where it is?” Allys asked.

“Not yet,” Mercury said, raising her left hand with the palm up, squinting her eyes as she did so. Her computer and visor appeared, and she began a search, linking in with other systems to expand her range. “There. The northern desert of Ahfaahri...” She looked up at the others. “In the city of Khairoah. And there are reports of a major disturbance of unknown origin in progress.”

“What is she up to _now?_” Amarelle demanded.

“I don’t know,” Allys said flatly, “but I think we ought to find out.”

The Senshi looked at each other, and nodded as one.

# 

Uranus had had her fill of enemies that just ignored hits from her sword. First that red-haired former Pluto and her staff—her ribs were still smarting from a few of the worse hits—and now this black-armored nuisance.

*When we get home,* she swore to herself, *I am going to sit down and read that bloody book of Setsuna’s cover to cover!*

“Oh, shut up!” she hollered, the monster’s five mouths having opened to serenade her with another high-quality hissing scream in full Surroundsound. Uranus took her sword in both hands and swung at the nearest hand-mouth as hard as she could, and felt much better as the edge of her weapon cut deep into the monster’s tooth-ringed ‘palm,’ setting off another multiple scream as the beast clattered backwards.

Her satisfaction was predictably short-lived; the monster redoubled its efforts to bite, claw, or sting her with one and all of its many limbs, even the injured one.

“DEEP SUBMERGE!”

Uranus heard the words a moment before something large, orange, and propelled along by a blue blast of energy crashed into her foe. The black bug staggered sideways under the weight of its reptilian ally, which was thrashing and squawking as it tried to right itself and get back in the air.

“Nice of you to join me,” Uranus remarked sourly.

“I was busy with the other one. And unlike Mercury, _I_ can’t see through fog all that well. Speaking of which,” she added, “don’t you think it’s about time you got rid of all this so we can find the others?”

“Love to. Just as soon as you convince Joe Black over there to quit trying to tear my face off.” Neptune glanced at the beast, which was still struggling to get rid of its ally’s added weight.

“I see what you mean. Big, isn’t it?”

“Armored, too. My sword’s not having much effect.”

“Attacks?”

“Venus put a few dents in its shell earlier, but something else went after her, and I’ve been a little too busy staying clear of its mouths to try my own tricks.”

“Until now,” Neptune reminded her.

Mmb’zau lifted his smaller companion up with all four arms, biting in several places before he threw the winged lizard-man aside and turned to go after the human again. The daimon was greeted by hurricane-force winds and a massive blast of water energy, and he struggled against the pressure for a moment before ducking his head low, allowing most of the force to exhaust itself against his armored back. Rivulets of water ran down to Mmb’zau’s massive main jaw as he lifted his head once more and hissed a promise of slow, painful death at the two humans he could sense in front of him.

“I don’t suppose you could manage that trick you used at the mall,” Uranus said over her shoulder as they both backed away.

“No good,” Neptune replied. “Even with the fog, there’s not enough water in here, and I’m really not sure I could get it to work anyway. I’ve tried a couple of times, and I can’t seem to get it right. I wasn’t really thinking clearly when I did it.”

“I never would have guessed.” Uranus twirled her sword. “I suppose that means it’s my turn again.”

Mmb’zau advanced a step, and Uranus’ Blaster attack took that leg off at the uppermost joint. The massive daimon snarled and fell back, turning so that the next shot impacted against his shell rather than another of his legs.

Uranus paused as the daimon raised the ichor-dripping stump of its lost limb, and both she and Neptune gaped as the exoskeleton above the wound flexed outwards, allowing a huge spike of slime-coated black to shoot out from within the creature’s body. They didn’t need to see it flex and stab into the floor to realize it was another leg, just as they didn’t need to hear the hiss to know the daimon was angry.

“Well,” Uranus sighed, “that was a good idea for all of five seconds.”

“Maybe it was. Do you think you can take off a leg again?” Uranus looked at her partner curiously, and Neptune explained her plan.

“Worth a try, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

Uranus didn’t reply, but instead turned her attention to the daimon. It took two more shots and a fair amount of dodging before she managed to hit another leg, but as soon as they both knew it was going to be a hit, Neptune unleashed a Deep Submerge—and when Mmb’zau opened his heavy jaw to scream, the attack went straight down his throat, catching the scream and taking it along for a ride back down into the innards which had created it. His entire massive body shuddered violently, all five mouths opening to cough out gobs of something black.

Uranus ignored the daimon and gathered her strength again, reaching out to the wind. She’d had a little practice at this in the future village—enough to know it was a pain in the ass and very tiring when done on a large scale, but she thought she could handle just clearing this one room of a little mist.

There was a lot of atmospheric activity in progress outside, probably thanks to what Usagi’s little game with the ginzuishou had done to the three—or four? Five, maybe?—mana nexi Uranus could sense affecting the local currents of air. Well, she wasn’t trying to shut them down this time.

*I just need to borrow a little of what they’re producing. Just take something of that and focus it, redirect it into... boy, this is tougher than I thought it would... get back here you little...!*

“Oh, crap.” Neptune looked sharply at her partner right before the bubble of rippling air Uranus had been gathering around herself slipped out of control and blew itself out. And up, and down, and in every other direction. Anything and everything in the room not currently under a shield of time-slowed air was slapped by a wall of rushing wind. Chairs fell over as silverware clattered and china smashed against the walls. The doors slammed open, and every window exploded into shards which were hurled along by the wind as it gusted outside and dispersed.

Shaking her head, Uranus got back to her feet and looked around, satisfied to see that only a few tatters of mist clung to the corners. The rest had vanished out through the windows and the doors. Jupiter, Mars, and Usagi were barely ten steps away, Venus was over near one wall—arguing with some guy with white hair and apparently not realizing the fog was gone—and Mercury was... Uranus blinked.

“Where did she get _that_ thing?” she blurted out, causing the other Senshi to look first at her and then at Mercury, who was wielding the aforementioned ‘thing’—some sort of sword—against the black weapon of the leather-clad female monster.

“We’ll ask her later,” Neptune replied. She put two fingers to her lips and whistled sharply, getting the attention of everyone other than Mercury and her opponent. “Jupiter, take out that last lizard and then help Mercury! Venus, ChibiMoon, with us!” Mars already knew what she was going to do, and Neptune wasn’t about to waste time trying to tell her to do otherwise.

The response of the other girls wasn’t exactly automatic; they all glanced at Usagi first for a nod of confirmation, but that was okay. *She’s still our leader, after all.*

That thought brought Neptune up short. She’d long ago gained respect for Usagi as a Senshi, and even before that just for being her good-hearted self, but this was the first time she’d so automatically thought of the girl as being the leader of _anything,_ let alone the Senshi. More than that, by using that specific phrasing—‘our leader’ instead of ‘their leader’—Neptune was considering all the Senshi to be a single team, instead of dividing them into Inners and Outers as she’d always done before. What was really disturbing was how good that association felt.

A battle was not exactly an ideal setting for philosophical soul-searching, though, so she pushed the revelation of unity aside and concentrated on the task at hand. The others were too busy readying themselves for a fight to wonder why Neptune was smiling as they charged in at the enemy.

# 

Each time Mercury’s cold blade touched the daimon’s sizzling black weapon, there was a shower of sparks as the conflicting energies within the two devices tried to destroy each other. The daimon had scored a hit on Mercury’s left shoulder and cut the ribbon on the back of her fuku lopsidedly short, but she herself had taken a wide cut along the right wing, and several blue-white lines marred the originally flawless white skin of her arms.

“You’ve made me very angry, pretty one,” the creature hissed, her voice no longer low and dulcet, but strained and harsh. “But if you give up right now, I might still be willing to go easy on you. Unless, of course, you like it rough...”

Mercury answered with a two-handed swing that would have taken the daimon’s lovely head off if she hadn’t stepped back.

“Excuse me,” a polite voice said from behind her. The daimon turned, and ducked just far enough to take the incoming punch on one of her horns instead of on her much more delicate jaw. Her countering slash forced Jupiter to hop backwards, and she still got stung as the tip of the energy blade brushed across her stomach. The daimon moved to press the advantage, but then hissed as a line of cold pain cut down her back, between her wings.

“We’re not finished yet,” Mercury said, stabbing forward and aiming in the general vicinity of the heart. Even with her back turned, the daimon seemed to know the attack was coming, and she threw herself to the side, turning to spare her injured back and wings. Mercury tried to alter her thrust, and the double-edged Lancet left a short, shallow cut along the daimon’s belly, a suitable sort of payback for Jupiter’s injury, but which didn’t do anywhere near the major damage Mercury had intended. And with her next step, the daimon crouched low and leapt into the air.

Jupiter gathered and threw a Sparkling Wide Pressure up at the daimon, and though she managed to dodge the main force, the explosion when it hit the wall peppered the creature with sharp debris. She looked around; only Mmb’zau was left, and four of the other girls were tearing into him with a mix of streaking energy beams and deep-cutting weapons that even his thick armor couldn’t stand up to for much longer. The rest were dead, Mmb’zau would be following shortly— and she herself had no intention of joining them.

The daimon glared down at the girl, fixing that face and those blue eyes firmly in her memory as she pointed her weapon. “You’re right, little girl; we’re not finished. Take care of yourself and your interesting young man, because I’ll be back for both of you.”

She raised her hand, the black gems on both ends of the rod flashing darkly, and an oval of striated darkness appeared around her. Her eyes remained clear through the barrier, as did her voice.

“My name is Illecebra, pretty one, and the next time we meet, I’ll make you scream it. Until then, I’ll see you in my dreams—and your nightmares.”

The oval collapsed in on itself and vanished, leaving a few trailing lines of black energy and the daimon’s chilling laughter behind.

Jupiter shook her head with a shiver. “What’s _her_ damage?”

“Nothing compared to what it’s going to be if I ever catch her,” Mercury said flatly. Jupiter raised an eyebrow, then glanced at Ryo.

“Did she hurt Ryo?”

“No,” Mercury replied, with more than a little relief. “No, she didn’t. He just passed out from his reaction to the gateway, or whatever it was that brought all those daimons here. He’ll be okay once he wakes up and gets through the headache he’s probably going to have.” Mercury glanced at the Rod, which shifted back to its original shape, before she sat down next to Ryo and pulled out her computer again.

“Probably.” Jupiter looked around the room. The last daimon was going up in a familiar plume of dust and scattering energy. Venus had grabbed ChibiMoon, and the two were helping the injured guy with white hair to get to his feet. Usagi had settled on the floor next to a dark-haired woman, and she was holding a wadded-up strip of material from her dress to the back of the young lady’s head.

“That’s odd,” Jupiter said, half to herself. “I’d swear I’ve seen that woman somewhere before.”

“What woman?” Mercury asked, looking up from double-checking Ryo’s vital signs. Jupiter started to point, but Mercury stopped paying attention when her computer’s alarm went off.

A split-second later, the side of the room opposite to them was filled by a sphere of white light, which quickly broke down into six separate auras of different colors, and the six women who were generating them. Five of them wore robes of the same design as Medea’s, but with different symbols; the sixth was wearing a distinctly military uniform and had a curved, golden sword in one hand.

After a moment in which the members of both sides had examined their counterparts head-to-toe, Uranus sighed and spun her sword around in her hand.

“Right,” she said wearily. “Who’s first?”

# 

The staves clacked and crunched as they struck against each other time and again. The two Garnet Orbs, burning constantly with their identical blood-red fire, flared more brightly each time the two weapons impacted. Streaks and motes of red energy filled the air as the two Plutos fought.

After seeing Uranus so soundly outclassed, Setsuna hadn’t thought much of her own chances. She’d only recovered her staff a few short hours ago, and that was nowhere near enough time to properly study either it or the Garnet Orb for whatever secrets they might hold. She had only the vaguest idea of how to handle the staff as a purely mundane weapon, certainly nothing like the skill her opponent had demonstrated against Uranus, and her understanding of her other powers was barely any more complete. She was in no way ready for this fight, but thanks to some neurochemical imbalance, some random firing of synapses way down in the bottom of her poor battered brain, she was leaping into it headlong.

She wasn’t sure which of them had put the barrier up to wall off the rest of the world. It was entirely possible that they both had, or that one or both of the Orbs had decided to take matters into their own hands—figuratively speaking, of course, since the jewel didn’t have limbs of any kind. Maybe this was what happened whenever two Senshi of Pluto fought, the force of Time Itself walling the conflict away in a tiny corner of infinity, to contain whatever damage might otherwise spill out into the cosmos.

Maybe she ought to quit wondering about it and pay attention to the fight.

That, she had discovered, was the key. Don’t think, react. When she tried to think, she came up against the empty spots in her mind where some two thousand years of memory had been neatly excised. She couldn’t help but think that with what had been in those holes, she could have ended this fight before it even began. Each errant thought distracted her for just a few fractions of a second, but those were enough for Medea to press her attack and gain the upper hand.

But when Setsuna focused on the fight again, she not only regained her ground but slowly pushed Medea back. She was taller than Medea, with a longer reach and a marginal bonus of strength as a result. She also had a body that, while functionally only twenty-four years old, still possessed over twenty centuries of training and conditioning. Even if she could not remember the lessons she had been given or the battles she had fought, the end results—impossibly fast reflexes and superhuman endurance—were still there. Without memory, there was little grace or technique in how Setsuna fought, but that didn’t matter as long as Medea’s staff couldn’t move fast enough to get past and strike at her body.

Then there was the matter of the bolts and surges of raw temporal energy that were being unleashed all over this tiny space. Here again, Medea was the one who had all the knowledge, the understanding of what their shared power was capable of, while Setsuna had only rudimentary skills, recently relearned and less than half-understood. But she also had the Garnet Orb, and each time Medea unleashed one of her powers, Setsuna pivoted her staff so that the time-energy struck the Orb, which absorbed it harmlessly.

The Orb also analyzed the energy, telling Setsuna exactly what it was, what it could do, and how it had been formed. She blocked a Stasis Bolt and was shown the incredibly fine intermeshed weave of Time-force within it, which waited to envelop a target and almost totally cut it off from the flow of Time. She caught a red-blurred stroke on the head of her staff and realized how to gather time-energy to accelerate her own movements in the same way—and did so, empowering herself with the March of Time to match Medea’s speed. She accidentally brushed the Orb against the inner surface of the dome surrounding them both and discovered that Medea had created it, and that while it might be slowing the air, it was speeding up Time within its area. Their fight seemed to have lasted five minutes at that point, but less than one minute had gone by outside.

Far from hurting her, Medea’s attacks were aiding Setsuna, putting the badly-needed knowledge of what Pluto could do and how to do it into her mind. Moreover, Medea was expending strength with each attack, and she wasn’t recovering it as quickly as Setsuna did—and she seemed to know it.

Then why did the woman have that poorly-disguised smile of triumph on her lips?

It occurred to Setsuna as she blocked three quick strikes that the Garnet Orb on her staff was glowing more brightly than usual. Quite a bit more, in fact, and it was getting steadily more intense with each second that went by, even though Medea had stopped throwing energy at her. Not only was the Orb’s light increasing, but Setsuna was having trouble swinging the staff. Its ornate head—the end with the Orb—seemed to be getting heavier. Worried that the massive amounts of energy it had absorbed might be the cause, and doubly worried about what might happen as a result, Setsuna let fly with a Stasis Bolt of her own, hoping to get rid of some of the excess power.

The blast as the energy was unleashed nearly ripped the staff from her fingers. And well it ought to; the column of red force was nearly five times larger than it should have been. Medea blocked it with her own staff and was pushed backwards into the surface of the dome, but as her Orb absorbed the attack, she remained able to move.

Setsuna looked up at her own Orb and saw that empowering the Stasis Bolt had done what she’d hoped, putting it back to its normal light and weight. Then she looked over at Medea, and saw that the other Garnet Orb was glowing with the same disturbing intensity.

“Thank you,” Medea said with a wicked smile. “And good-bye. TIME BOMB!”

At her words, the light of the Orb contracted down to a single tiny spot of incredible intensity. Then it blasted back to its original size and kept on going, expanding outwards as a sphere of solid red, its size increasing exponentially. Setsuna had just enough time to raise her arms and staff to protect her head before the blast hit her, and Senshi of Pluto or not, she fully expected to be blasted into a billion-odd fragments all over space and time. The advancing wall loomed like a crimson supernova, it touched her, it swallowed her...

It took Setsuna a few shivering moments to realize that she’d come out the other side totally intact. She looked around, noting that the dome which had surrounded her and Medea was gone, though the domes that held Saturn and her Glaive still appeared to be intact. Except for the monsters, who were entirely absent, everyone who had been in the room the last time she’d seen it was still there. Like herself, they were coming out of various instinctive defensive postures as they understood they were still in one piece.

Something was wrong, though. The air was filled with strange ripples of color, like heat mirages rising off concrete in summer, indistinct waves whose shape, size, and shade changed steadily and seemingly at random as they drifted about. Some were tiny, and others spanned the entire hall; some passed through each other without incident while others were caught, pulling one another into weirdly twisting patterns. Medea stood calmly at the center of it all, watching and waiting from within a column of warped air. What was going on?

Setsuna heard a scream and looked behind her.

Six women she didn’t recognize had appeared across the hall from the Senshi. Judging by the symbols on their robes, they must be the rest of this era’s Senshi. One of them, a young girl with blue-green hair and eyes—or was it green-blue?—and wearing the symbol for Neptune on her robes was the one who had screamed. Setsuna could understand why.

The girl stood in the middle of one of those weird ripples, and she was getting older, fast. Setsuna remembered watching, back in the future village, as Saturn had restored youth to the ancient woman Naruno; this was the reverse, a young and healthy person becoming old and worn. Blue-green hair grew long and grey, and clear eyes clouded as previously smooth and healthy skin slowly wrinkled and sagged.

“JANI!” The other girl, the Senshi of Mercury, could have been the twin of the first. Without hesitation, she rushed forward into the disturbance to try and help, and blue energy flared. Her entire body was suddenly being traced by interweaving lines of blue light, but she ignored it as she picked up her friend and carried her clear of the distortion. The blue light faded away immediately, and Mercury didn’t appear any older than she had; her friend, though, seemed to have reached eighty or ninety.

Setsuna heard another scream and had to spin around again. One of the soldiers clustered near the door was... shrinking? No, he was getting younger, being pushed back through maturity to youth, and then childhood. The two men nearest to him yanked the now-boy away from another of the ripples, but as they did so, another of their number paused in the middle of stepping back from an approaching patch of light. He didn’t actually stop; he’d wandered unknowingly into another blotch of distorted air, and was now moving in slow motion. And there was a quite horrible sound as one of the guards laying unconscious on the floor was absorbed by a ripple and suddenly dissolved into a gruesome puddle of slime. ChibiMoon passed out on the spot when she saw that.

Setsuna understood now. They’d all made it through the explosion unharmed, but Time hadn’t been so fortunate. The blast had been directed against Time, not physical matter, and so instead of a smoking crater ringed with bits of building and people, there were instead these bits of distorted Time. Step into one, and...

Everybody had figured that part out by now, and there was a mad scramble to dodge the drifting regions of temporal distortion. Mars was trying to get Usagi to stand, but Usagi had her arms around a dark-haired young woman Setsuna didn’t recognize, and she refused to move.

“Mars, look out!”

So intent had Mars been on Usagi that she hadn’t noticed one of the shifting segments of Time drift towards her. Mercury’s warning made her look up and take a step back, but by then the distortion had rippled forward, almost like a snake moving to strike. The end nearest Mars reached out before she could pull back or try to dodge, but instead of her, it hit the Book. Quite suddenly, the distortion vanished, and there was a clearly audible ‘click’ as the silver band sealing the Book’s heavy covers shut broke cleanly into two perfectly equal halves.

“What the...” Mars began. She cut off with a curse as she shifted her balance and hopped awkwardly forward, extending her arms to bat another of the weaving ripples out of existence with the Book just as it got close to Usagi. She also executed a sprawling faceplant.

“Thank you,” Usagi said gravely, trying not to smile as Mars looked up at her from the floor.

“Medea!” the brown-haired Senshi of Venus shouted, ducking a sweeping length of shattered Time. “What are you doing?”

“It’s called winning, Allys. Actually, I’m rather glad you came. Now I can solve a number of problems at once. I’ve been considering what to do about your little playmate Arik for a while now, and it had crossed my mind to have him killed, but now that you’re here, I might as well attack the source of the problem.” Her face hardened. “Did you really believe I hadn’t realized what you and Sara were up to these last six months, flitting around half the planets in the system behind my back? You should have stuck to bedroom politics, Allys; you’re not very good at the real thing.”

“If you thought we were going to just stand by and let you claw your way to Imperial Throne, Medea, then you’re the one who’s lost touch with reality. Our power exists to protect humanity, not control it.”

“You really believe that drivel, don’t you? Well, here’s a little wake-up call for you, Allys...” Medea unleashed a crackling bolt of energy from her staff, striking the other Senshi down and withering her body through fifty years in a fiftieth of a second. “_Your_ power isn’t _my_ power. All your meaningless little elemental tricks together don’t even come close to the power of Time. Time controls everything in the cosmos, Allys, and since _I_ control Time, I guess that means I already control humanity to a certain degree, doesn’t it?”

On her knees and still remarkably lovely even at seventy-plus years, Allys raised her hands and fired a Crescent Beam. It began warping wildly as it traveled, twisting in, around, and through the distortions of Time. Allys fought to control it, but the strain was too much; the energy shattered and dispersed, and she collapsed, breathing heavily.

“You see? You can’t stop me no matter how hard you try. But you can stop worrying about the Imperial Throne, Allys. I’ve found something far more practical, and probably even more powerful.” She sighed. “Of course, I’m afraid that in the course of securing it, I’m going to have to take some rather extreme measures. I can’t afford to have any witnesses, you understand.”

“You can’t... kill all of us...” Allys gasped.

“But _I’m_ not going to be the one who killed you. You and the rest were unfortunate victims of the same temporal disturbance I came here to investigate in the first place, killed in battle by intruders from another era.” She smiled. “Convenient, isn’t it?”

This time it was the other Venus who tried to strike. Medea sneered at the Crescent Beam at first, but she still flinched back when it smashed into the ring of warped air surrounding her. The Beam was overcome, but the distortions had been twisted even further and nearly punched through by the force of that single blast. Furious and a little frightened by her second indication of the strength of these future Senshi, Medea struck the butt of her staff against the floor.

The distortions began to close in from all sides. One touched Setsuna without effect, and the Atlantean Mercury lit up blue once more as she came into contact with another segment of shattered Time. When it had passed, she was still the same visible age she’d been before, but none of the others seemed to share whatever defense she had against the effect of the disrupted temporal fragments. Sara was caught immediately, dwindling down to a baby with a very serious expression on her chubby little features, and Jupiter crashed to the ground with a scream as a patch of rippling air enveloped her legs and withered them to little more than skin and bone.

Several Senshi from either group tried to attack Medea, but Amarelle joined Allys and Jani in sudden old age before she’d taken two steps, and Neptune stumbled as a distortion passed across her face; when it was gone, she had one hand raised to her blank and sightless eyes. Uranus unleashed a World Shaking attack only to have it rewind itself and knock her flat, while Artemis turned into something that was half white-haired boy, half white-furred kitten, and looked absolutely adorable as it wrestled with the giggling, blue-eyed toddler that wore a shrunken version of Venus’ fuku. Karla, reduced to a scrawny pre-teen with a major chip on her shoulder, actually managed to get close enough to try and kick Medea in the shin, but the woman just clubbed her aside with her staff and, in the same motion, took down the Atlantean Mercury with a Dead Scream.

Mars attacked her next, and it was hard to tell which surprised Medea more -the fact that she got hit at all or the fact that she got hit by a heavy, leather-bound and silver-banded Book. Mars had been right behind Venus and Artemis, and the same distortion that had snared them would have caught her if the Book hadn’t somehow reacted to it and just absorbed the entire thing, as it had done to the other anomaly and was doing now to Medea’s shielding column of warped Time. The surprise of the absurdly unconventional attack and the weight of the Book enabled Mars to get in three more good, solid whacks before Medea’s staff swung around and cracked her in the side of the head, sending her down. Shifting her jaw, Medea raised her weapon and hit Mars in the ribs for good measure.

The ginzuishou’s barrier had roared back into existence around Usagi, Luna, and ChibiMoon the second the flood of Time fragments had begun, but while it blocked the warping energies, it didn’t have enough power to correct them without risking doing harm to Usagi and her baby. The best she could do was provide a spot for her bodyguards to retreat to in safety. Those that could reach her, anyway. Mercury carried Ryo in and then went back out to help Jupiter drag herself to safety, a tricky proposition at best with all the ducking and weaving she had to do for both of them. Setsuna, meanwhile, had moved to shield Neptune and Uranus with the small area she was able to keep clear of the badly damaged influence of Time. None of them could get to Mars, and as for the other two...

“Aaaaahh!” Venus yelled, racing in through the glow of the barrier with Artemis right behind her, running on all fours and having a rather difficult time of it because his clothes didn’t bend in quite the right ways. Venus cut to the right as Artemis pounced at her, and he went sliding along into Jupiter with the indignant squeaky growl most kittens make when confounded. He raised his head and growled just as squeakily, catlike ears laid back when he spotted his prey hiding behind Usagi.

“No fair,” he complained. “You moved when I wasn’t ready.” Jupiter and Mercury looked at the little cat-boy in shock as they realized who he had to be.

“Nyah!” Venus intoned, making faces at Artemis with the sort of enthusiasm only a little girl can muster. “Give it up, silly! You’ll never catch me! Eeek!” She scrambled back behind Usagi as Artemis started bounding over to show her what he thought of ‘silly.’ “Usagi, help! Save me!”

With the gangliness of the immature would-be hunter multiplied by the bizarre imbalances of his hybrid body, Artemis tripped over his own feet and skidded into Luna with all four paws in the air. He righted himself quickly and cast a hasty glance at Luna to make sure she hadn’t seen his clumsiness, but when he realized Luna hadn’t moved even after being run into, Artemis frowned. Catlike, the feline boy butted his head against the dark-haired woman’s shoulder, trying to get her attention, and when it didn’t work, he sat down on the floor and looked up at Usagi with a confused, hopeful expression and a twitching tail. It was the look of the child who knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever is wrong, the adult will make everything all right again.

Usagi thought she might start crying.

“If you had come along quietly in the first place,” Medea told her, “none of this would have been necessary. But you made your choice; now it’s time to live with the consequences.”

Artemis turned around, bared a mouthful of baby teeth—of which at least half were fangs—and growled at her. Venus hugged Usagi’s back a little tighter as she glanced around it at Medea.

“I don’t like her,” the little girl intoned solemnly. “She’s not a nice lady.”

“Shut this off and turn everyone back to normal,” Usagi demanded in a steady voice.

“I don’t think so. And don’t count on your red-eyed friend being able to save any of you; even _she_ can’t undo this power. Can you?” Medea asked mockingly, turning to Setsuna. “I know you’ve been trying. Frustrating, isn’t it, how the pieces of it all just slip away from you? All tangled up like yarn after a cat’s been playing with it.”

“I was trying to think of what this reminded me of,” Setsuna said suddenly. She nodded at Medea and smiled. “Thank you.”

She raised her arms, staff in her right hand, and concentrated as the Orb shone again, revealing scattered fragments of red energy all over the hall. To Setsuna’s mind, they did indeed look like bits of yarn or string, tangled up with each other, frayed at the ends, and generally in need of being sorted out.

And she was a seamstress, wasn’t she?

Each of the myriad broken bits of Time sent a curving stream of energy towards Setsuna, thousands upon thousands of crimson threads which looped wildly about on all sides before disappearing into the heart of the Garnet Orb. Together, they looked like the life’s work of some huge, insane arachnid.

“What are you doing?” Medea demanded, suddenly sounding a little less certain of herself.

Setsuna ignored her and continued to connect to the segments of Time—not just the broken ones, either. She was linked to the domes imprisoning Saturn and her weapon, to Medea and her staff and Orb, and to still more lines of red that were flooding into the room from all directions, from _outside._ Setsuna imagined a pattern of red light filling the sky and penetrating through the entire planet, expanding out into space, going on and on into infinity, and it somehow felt correct. She had the broken threads, she had _all_ the threads. Now she had to bring them back together. But how? What was she supposed to...

*Wait.* There was something about the lines, the way they were arranged, that tugged at her mind. It was... she almost had it... there was... it was almost like there were instructions written into the pattern of Time. How to change it, how to break it, how to mend it again. She looked at only a small section of the pattern, and it was all just meaningless lines across infinite space. But when she looked at the entire picture, all of Time at once, a definite meaning—a message?—emerged.

*Yes,* Setsuna thought, wondering if she was speaking just to herself, or to who—and whatever had left that message there for her to find. *I understand.*

A look of absolute peace and determination settled onto Setsuna’s face as she closed her eyes and began to chant. Her voice grew with each word until it was no longer her own, but a chorus of millions that was deafening even though the words were spoken barely above a whisper:  
  
ALL SHAPES OF SPACE, IN THE PATTERN OF TIME,  
ARE ORDER BORN OUT OF CHAOS, TO ETERNITY BIND.  
SO THAT ALL THINGS MADE MAY CRUMBLE AWAY,  
THAT EVIL BECOME GOOD, AND NIGHT BECOME DAY.  
SO THAT LIFE MAY END AND DEATH BE UNDONE,  
LET BALANCE BE MAINTAINED AMONG ALL THAT WAS ONE.

In the moment of silence, the fingers of Setsuna’s right hand opened and released her staff. Rather than clatter to the floor, it drifted to a spot in front of her and hung there, perfectly upright, as she began to speak once more:  
  
THE SHAPING IS BROKEN, AND REALITY SHORN,  
BY THE HAND OF SPIRIT, THE PATTERN IS TORN.  
LEST INFINITY UNRAVEL AND ETERNITY END,  
THE WEAVER OF TIME SEEKS NOW TO AMEND.  
AS THE WOUND WAS MADE BY THE CHOICE OF A MIND,  
SO BE IT RESTORED, REPAIRED, AND ALIGNED.

Setsuna’s eyes flashed open, and her voice dropped back to normal to speak two words: “MOBIUS SPIN.”

The staff began to rotate, slowly at first, but it accelerated until it became a featureless blur except for the red jewel at its head. At that point, the lines between the Orb and the broken pieces of Time flared. The ripples in the air shrank and were drained away into the lines like water sucked up by a straw, after which the lines themselves collapsed into the Orb.

Wide-eyed, Medea brought her own weapon around and fired a Dead Scream. The howling attack streaked towards Setsuna and collided with the whirling blur that was her staff. The Scream fell apart; the staff continued to turn. Medea’s next move was to let loose a volley of Stasis Bolts, trying to overload Setsuna’s Orb again. That had an effect—it made the thing rotate faster, undoing the damage of her Time Bomb even more rapidly than before.

Those who had aged returned to youth; those who had grown young now matured. Sara, Venus, and Artemis all returned to their normal sizes, their magically-created garments thankfully altering with them. Venus still had her arms partway around Usagi, and Artemis—now fully human again—was still sitting on all fours, with his knees up near his ears as a result. He and Venus looked at themselves, at each other, and then blushed and quickly got to their feet. _That_ had been a disturbing experience.

Elsewhere, as Mercury helped her up, Jupiter was shivering as she stomped her feet several times to make sure they were working normally again; Neptune was blinking her eyes slowly and deliberately for the same reason. Platforms of red force lifted Mars, Uranus, and Karla from floor and gently bore them back to their companions. Even the guard who had dissolved was returning to normal, his liquefied body reconstituting into solidity.

In the middle of coming to, ChibiMoon happened to glance over and see this process of slime becoming human when it was about halfway complete. Her stomach twisted and burbled, her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and she passed out a second time.

Her eyes shining with red light, Setsuna watched the restoration proceed for several minutes before she turned to Medea. “And now for you.”

Medea looked down at herself in horror as a dark aura appeared around her, a field of crimson light darkening almost to black at the edges.

“What... what are you...”

“Testing a theory,” Setsuna replied. Her own aura had appeared, solid crimson and every bit as strong as Medea’s, but nowhere near as dark. She glanced at the two slowed-air domes and extended her hand, making a pulling sort of gesture with her fingers. The slow-shifting webs of red light gave a combined lurch as their defined shape was lost, the domes breaking up into free-floating force and being drawn to Setsuna’s Orb like all the other errant bits of temporal energy in the hall. She plucked them out of the air before they reached the Orb, though, holding the energy in a roughly spherical mass with her left hand while her staff continued to spin and repair the damage Medea had caused.

When the last of the lines of Time had vanished into the Orb, the staff ceased to turn. The halt was not gradual, but all at once, and it was accompanied by a bright flare from the jewel. After that light faded, the only traces of Time-force in the chamber were the energy in Setsuna’s left hand and the auras surrounding her and Medea.

“I don’t like you,” Setsuna said calmly as she retrieved her staff. “I think you’re the first person I’ve met so far that I genuinely dislike. Of course, I have the luxury of being able to go back with my friends and know that, in our time, you’ve been dead for several thousand years, but I’m also slightly curious about something. I admit that I’m a little new at this, but I happen to agree with your era’s Venus about why we exist. We’re here to defend, not dominate, and from what I know of my friends, it goes beyond a simple calling of duty. We don’t just protect people because we have to; we do it because it’s part of who and what we are. And yet you, somehow, seem able to operate on purely selfish motives without even batting an eyelash, and you’re ready to kill your allies for your own convenience over those same motives. You don’t _think_ like the rest of us, and I’d like to know why.”

Medea glared at her. It was mostly anger, but she also seemed afraid. And in the next second, she blinked out, teleporting away. Setsuna sighed.

“Saturn,” she said politely over her shoulder, “would you please bring her back?”

The Atlantean Senshi jumped when they looked over and saw Saturn, and her friends gave a collective wince. The right side of the girl’s face was one solid bruise, forcing her eye shut and twisting her mouth into a snarl. Or maybe she was snarling because she wanted to. Her open eye was so thick with energy that it appeared to be a bottomless hole or a piece of a starless night sky.

She gestured at the spot where Medea had been standing, and she was there once more, materializing out of a purplish mist and stumbling as if she’d been walking or running somewhere when Saturn had reached out for her. The blank look on her face turned sick as she recognized the one responsible for bringing her back.

“Thank you, Saturn.” Setsuna turned back to Medea. “Now, as I was about to say, I’d like to know what it is that allows you to behave the way you do. I’ve got a guess, and I think it’s a good one, but I’d like to do this scientifically, so we’re going to conduct a little experiment and see if my guess is right.” She looked back over her shoulder at her friends. “Any objections?”

“We need Saturn to do some fairly extensive healing,” Usagi replied, looking at Mars, Uranus, and Luna, and at the guards the two transformed cats had taken down earlier; none of them had been restored by the removal of Medea’s distortions. “And we can’t kill her,” she added, indicating Medea with a sharp look.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Then go ahead.”

“Thank you, Princess.” Setsuna looked at the Atlanteans next. “And you?” The six Senshi looked at each other carefully.

“Is there anything in the Codices about a situation like this?” Sara asked hopefully.

“Actually,” Mercury replied, “there is. ‘What has been and must continue to be as it has been must and shall be given precedence over that which is yet to be.’ Direct from the Mobius Accords, section five, paragraph nine.”

“And it means... what?” Karla demanded, shifting the shoulder Medea had busted.

“It means,” Allys replied, “that a Pluto from the future has authority over a Pluto from the past when it comes to matters of temporal security. It may be a part of _our_ future in question, but it’s a piece of _their_ past.” That had the sound of a concession to it. “Besides,” she added glumly, “I don’t think we could stop them anyway.”

“Thank you,” Setsuna said, nodding gravely. She turned back to Medea, who again vanished. She returned even faster this time, appearing upside-down and about two meters in the air, at which point she fell to the floor with a thud and lay there groaning.

“Hotaru,” Neptune chided.

“Not now, mama.” Her attention fixed on Medea, Saturn’s tone was absent. Then she nodded. “She won’t be able to get away again, Pluto, but you might want to do something about her staff. I can’t take it away from her.”

“That’s a good idea,” Setsuna agreed. She stepped closer to Medea, hooked the end of her own staff onto the ornamentation at the head of the other, and pulled it out of Medea’s hand.

“Oh no you don’t,” Saturn muttered, seeing Medea begin to reach for her weapon. She snapped a Silent Wall into existence around the woman, and then did the same thing to her staff once Setsuna had moved it off to one side and stepped clear. That done, Saturn dissolved the barrier around Medea, nodded at Setsuna, and turned her attention to healing, pausing for only a moment and a suspicious look as she realized the life-energies in the white-haired man and the dark-haired woman perfectly matched those of Artemis and Luna.

Setsuna watched Saturn start to work, then turned to the task at hand. “I’ll start with a list of the various inconsistencies you’ve displayed that I’m aware of. In chronological order, of course.” She paused. “And don’t try any more tricks, or I’ll take steps to restrain you. Understood?”

Medea didn’t move, but Setsuna was sure she wasn’t going to make any trouble; without the staff and the Orb, Medea was simply no match for her, and they both knew it. Setsuna cast back in her mind to the point of their arrival, and then began:

“Item One: You attacked us on sight even though you had to know who I was and, by extension, who the others were as well. I don’t know your laws, but I doubt immediate violence is the accepted means of handling such a situation. But you were obviously fighting with Usagi before we arrived, so you might just have been making a hasty judgment. We’ll let that one go for now.”

“Item Two: The dome you used to imprison Saturn. You were fighting Uranus when I tried to breach it, and yet the dome resisted me as if being guided. That might have been because of your version of the Garnet Orb, but when I tested the dome with _my_ Orb, the reaction suggested that a living mind was controlling the barrier.”

“Item Three: When the other Senshi destroyed your shield, you ordered your wizard to assist you, and his response was to summon a large number of monsters—the very sort of monsters we’re supposed to fight and keep _out_ of this world, if I understand correctly.”

“Item Four: When you attempted to breach the dome I created to hold some of those monsters, it took nearly every bit of concentration I could muster to hold it. Given that these”—she gestured at their respective auras—“and our own battle would seem to indicate that we’re roughly the same strength, it’s rather unlikely that you could have fought Uranus and held your earlier barrier against me at the same time. Certainly, you would have shown some sign of strain when I made an attempt, but since you didn’t, I have to conclude that someone else was responsible for maintaining the dome.”

“Item Five: You deliberately attempt to kill a number of the people you’re supposed to be defending, and at the same time, attack your fellow Senshi.” Setsuna stopped speaking and looked at the others. “Did I leave anything out?”

“You might want to add the orders she was giving to her guards before Usagi called the rest of you,” Artemis suggested. “They were to seize anything magical Usagi was carrying and hand it over to Medea herself for safe-keeping. That really seemed to surprise the wizard, but Medea started throwing around large words like ‘temporal security’ and ‘Imperial decree’ when he objected, and it shut him up. Usagi agreed to go quietly, but she refused to hand anything over _and_ made it pretty clear she was carrying something that would screw up the timeline if it fell into the wrong hands. Medea ordered the guards to kill us at that point.”

“That’s _not_ standard procedure,” the Atlantean Mercury said flatly.

“True enough,” Vaurinn agreed, surprising everyone as he stepped out of thin air a short distance from the Atlantean Senshi. “Ladies,” he greeted them, bowing. “In light of this recent turn of events, I believe it would be best if I remanded myself to your custody.”

Allys looked at him for a moment and then nodded, pulling a small golden bracelet out of nowhere and sliding it around Vaurinn’s left wrist. Karla held out her hand next, sending a stream of electrical energy at the bracelet, which swallowed up the power and began to glow softly. Saturn, watching closely, was startled to see bands of golden energy appear around the wizard’s aura, as if shackling it.

“Consider yourself remanded, wizard.” Vaurinn bowed again and backed away.

“From everything you’ve said, Pluto,” Neptune—the future one—mused thoughtfully, “I get the feeling that you suspect there’s another mind at work here besides Medea’s own. A mind which has been able to do all these things because it _isn’t_ a Senshi. Do you think she’s being controlled by something?”

“That’s not quite what I was thinking, but it might be the case. There’s just one other thing. Item Seven, if you will.” She raised her left hand towards Medea, holding out the mass of energy but not actually doing anything with it.

“I don’t get it,” Jupiter said finally.

“The colors.” Luna’s voice sounded strange coming from a human throat, but it had all the familiar authority even though she was still lying against Usagi on the floor. “When you use your powers, you gather elemental force, but the core of it comes from you. It takes on traits specific to you, to your aura—and the energy Pluto’s holding is the wrong color.”

It was true. The auras surrounding the two Plutos and the mass of energy in Setsuna’s hand were all dark red, but they were visibly not the same. Her own aura was the wrong shade of red to be the source of the energy, and Medea’s aura was far too dark.

“Somebody else is maintaining that,” Luna said, coughing. “But how did you know?”

“I realized it when I was examining the dome earlier,” Setsuna said. “I saw six people who were connected to the power of Time; Medea and myself, Mars, the two wizards, and Ryo. I’m sure now that none of us were holding the barriers around Saturn, but I also saw connections to a seventh person. I couldn’t see who before Medea interrupted me.”

“Why would you be connected to Time?” Sara asked, looking across the hall at Mars.

“I see things with my mind,” Mars replied. “Warnings, mostly, or the location of something I want to find. Sometimes I have dreams of the future. What might be.”

“And your friend?”

“He sees what _will_ be,” Mercury said quietly, gently brushing hair back from Ryo’s face and wondering what he’d seen when the daimons appeared.

The Atlantean Mercury frowned, then turned to the small crowd near the door, looked through it, and nodded. “Lydia, please come here for a moment.”

“Stay where you are, girl!” Medea snapped, but there was more desperation in her voice than authority, and the silver-haired girl emerged hesitantly from the cluster of guards. She walked wide of her mistress with a number of frightened glances and bowed her head when she reached the other Senshi.

“How can I be of service, Lady Mercury?”

“Just stand here for a few moments, child, and try not to panic.” She glanced at Setsuna, who raised her staff towards Lydia and extended a tiny trickle of her own energy.

The aura which appeared around Lydia was the same sparkling crimson as the energy in Setsuna’s hand. And when Mercury reached out a moment later—her hand immediately flaring with pale blue light as her own aura kicked in—and gently lifted the girl’s face, the sign of Pluto was flickering on her brow.

Mercury sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

“Lady?” Lydia asked in confusion. “What’s going on?”

“You’re earning your freedom,” Mercury replied, embracing the girl. “Welcome home, Pluto.”

“NO!” They all turned around and were startled to see energy racing up Medea’s arms from clustered spots of power around her clenched fists. In the same way that Saturn’s aura and powers were a shade of deep violet verging on darkness, this new energy was such a deep, thick shade of red that it was almost black.

Blocked from the temporal power of the Garnet Orb, Medea had lost the ability to command her more powerful Time attacks, but she was far from helpless. It was the omnipresent nature of Time which allowed a Senshi of Pluto to access her full strength no matter where she was, this despite the fact that the world which was the source of her strength was a tiny ball of ice in the furthest corner of the solar system. But there was another power connected to Pluto, a power every bit as far-reaching as Time. It had, to some measure, been absorbed by the powers of Saturn, but any Senshi of Pluto could still channel the pure, primal essence of her world.

Medea did so now. This was the same force that empowered the Dead Scream, but it was capable of far more terrible uses. And not even another Pluto was shielded against it.

“DEATH WAVE!” Medea screamed, bringing her hands together. The two globes of energy between her fingers merged into one and then exploded outwards as a solid beam of force, directed by the curve of her hands at Setsuna and the Atlantean Senshi beyond her. Nearly black energy spiraled around the void of the main blast, tiny flecks of dark red falling away from the front of the attack like embers from a fire.

It hit a dark Wall and vanished like it had never been.

Saturn forced her swollen eye open so she could glare at Medea at full strength. She wasn’t about to kill the woman, or even physically harm her, though she was sorely tempted to beat her within an inch of her life. No, not an inch, a centimeter. It was a smaller unit, closer to ‘0’. A millimeter, even. Lord knows she had cause to want to, but she also had a list of reasons not to, and the fact that killing Medea would alter history ranked only second on that list, at best.

*I will not become a monster,* Saturn told herself. *I won’t become _you._* _You_ was usually associated with an image of Mistress Nine’s coldly perfect smile, but now Medea’s face seemed to have replaced it. *But I am going to stop you. Right now.*

She could see a connection of some kind in the air between Medea and Lydia, a glowing silvery wire along which beams of dark red energy were pulsing and shifting. Saturn was pretty sure her friends couldn’t see it, so she knew they might freak and try to stop her when she moved—and so she moved _fast,_ swinging the Silence Glaive down in an arc and sending a wedge of power at that silver wire, slicing it as neatly as the air. One end of the connection shot back into Lydia like a taut elastic that had just been cut in half, causing the girl to gasp and stiffen as the symbol on her forehead flared. The other side of the link surged into Medea, and she reacted the same as Lydia, except that the sign on her forehead flickered, dimmed, and vanished.

“No,” she whispered. “You can’t! It’s mine, do you hear me?! MINE!” She gestured with her hands again. “DEATH WAVE!”

Nothing happened. Medea looked at her hands in shock, then banished the emotion and tried again. “STASIS BOLT!”

Again, nothing happened. At least, nothing visible. They could all _feel_ that something had happened, though, that this apparent failure of Medea’s powers was merely the calm before a terrible storm. Something darker and more deadly than any daimon had just entered the room, and even if none of the Senshi could see it, they still knew it was there, could still feel the slow building of its power.

Tiny flashes of energy sizzled up from the floor and down from the ceiling as the empty air around Medea began to move in a slow spiral. The outer edges of whatever was happening dragged slowly past the Senshi, tugging physically at their hair and clothing, tugging mentally with a sense of unease and impending dread. It even affected their powers, a weird psychic pressure that wasn’t exactly a push or a pull, but the simple reaction of energy to energy.

Medea screamed. Her aura had returned, but instead of dark red it was now dark blue, sort of like the darker depths of the ocean. In addition to the new color of her aura, red energy was flying around Medea in sizzling bolts and pouring out of her eyes and mouth as if she were on fire inside but not burning up. Her skin began to glow with the alternating shades of power, and soon it was bright enough to show a silhouette of her body through her robes, which were flapping wildly in the tightly compacted cyclone of force that surrounded her.

The light intensified, and everyone—Saturn in particular—looked on in horror as Medea’s face cracked open to reveal, not bone and blood and brain, but the seething red and blue energy. Other cracks were visible through her clothes as slashes of more concentrated light, and they were getting larger and more numerous. Medea continued that single, unbroken scream even though her throat and mouth had been split by those cracks.

Then she exploded.

By all rights, the blast should have been titanic, leveling the manor if not the entire city and hurling a mushroom cloud of dust and debris several miles into the sky. Instead, all the spectacular force spent itself in a singularly unimpressive ‘whumpf’ as Medea’s body blew out into dust, falling down in a ring around the section of floor where she had been standing.

The Silence Glaive clanged loudly as it hit the tiles, fallen from numb fingers a moment before Saturn sank to her knees, staring wide-eyed at the loose pile of brown dust and trembling uncontrollably. For the next several minutes after that, nobody dared to do anything more than breathe, as the future Senshi watched each other very carefully for signs that Medea’s destruction had unwritten some vital part of their future.

“Now what?” Uranus asked quietly.

“Well,” Artemis said, “offhand, I’d say the fact that we’re all still here is a hopeful sign.”

“And our world?”

“That, I couldn’t tell you. We may not know for sure until we get back.”

“Uh, guys?” They looked over; Mars was looking inside the Book. “I think... um... I can read some of this, and it’s... uh... it’s talking about us.”

Usagi, the nearest of the other Senshi, took a quick peek at the pages and immediately went cross-eyed trying to make sense of what she saw. It was very much like the jumble of lines on the cover in that recognizable symbols appeared gradually from different parts of the page. The difference was that the pattern on the cover was fixed and unchanging. The patterns on the two pages were not.

A spot that was smooth, pure white paper one moment would seem a little distorted or even bumpy the next, and the bump would begin to take on definite shape and color. Each character thus revealed rose from its invisibility like a whale from the depths of the sea, shedding the pale white of the paper like water to gradually reveal its colors. For a time, the symbols would remain plainly visible, frequently overlapping each other, and then they would slowly sink and fade into the background again.

“Ack,” Jupiter added, looking over Mars’ shoulder. “You mean to say that you can actually _read_ that?”

“Not all of it,” Mars admitted, tracing the shape of one of the clearer characters with her finger. “But this part right here is clear... listen.” She began to read aloud.

“’In the last year of the reign of the ninth Emperor of the House of Istar, there occurred a distortion in the fabric of Time, an event which caused its flow to diverge down an unexpected path. The central manifestation of this divergence was the girl Tsukino Usagi”—Mars hesitated for a moment; the symbols representing Usagi seemed to say a lot more about her than just her name— “dislodged from her own era through the Time Gate and now trapped in the past. The first important event her presence risked affecting was the journey of Akhmed of House Neraan, who was set upon by bandits seeking to obtain documents of importance that he carried. Without Usagi, the young man would have escaped his trio of would-be robbers unharmed; being, however, a man of some not- inconsiderable moral decency and honor, he chose to assist and protect her when the three thieves approached. Fortunately, the decision of Usagi’s guardian Luna to assume her largest and most menacing feline form frightened the three men away and preserved this important piece of history.’”

They all looked at Luna. “’Largest and most menacing’?” Uranus asked. “A cat?”

“About this high,” Artemis said, indicating a spot somewhere between his waist and his chest. “Sort of looks like a panther. Claws, teeth. Big teeth. That sort of cat.”

“Oh.”

“’Some minor changes to the timeline would inevitably occur because of Usagi’s continued presence, but the three bandits had still failed their mission and survived, and so been forced to flee the city to escape the wrath of their employer, finding their own destinies on the way as they would have before—only for a slightly different reason. The events surrounding Usagi’s arrival and welcome to the Neraan estate would similarly be absorbed into the timestream without incident, minor incidents with little if any far-reaching effect, easily compensated for by the natural power of Time. Nothing of true importance was to have taken place at the dinner engagement Usagi attended, and so it remained, her presence merely another facet of the meaningless games which filled the lives of the attending nobles.’”

“What does _that_ mean?” Jupiter asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Usagi replied. “Mars, what about Medea?”

“Hang on.” Mars flipped back a page, then went ahead two, and began to read again. “’The most potentially damaging incident created by Usagi’s presence was the pursuit of Medea of House Elar, a woman who wielded the power of Time given to the Senshi of Pluto, even though she herself had not been born with it.’” The Atlanteans stared at Mars, who had herself paused briefly. “’Seven generations prior, the power of Pluto was born into House Elar in the form of Tielna, who was Medea’s direct ancestor. Tielna’s daughter Lyra was also born to be Pluto, as was _her_ daughter, Arienne. By the time of Arienne’s birth, the Elar family had come to regard the power of Pluto as an heirloom, rather than as the duty and test it truly was, and so they proved unworthy to retain it. By its nature, the power was inherited, and it was widely believed that it passed from mother to daughter; this was not quite true. The power of Pluto was at that time being passed to the eldest female child of each generation, regardless of her parents—and thus it was Mara, the child of a union between Arienne’s brother Traeden and a household slave-girl named Yulee, who was born to be the next Senshi of Pluto.’”

“_That_ probably pissed a few people off,” Amarelle chuckled.

“’Although furious with her brother, Arienne believed that the problem could be solved. Now that they understood how the power was passed from generation to generation, all the Elar family had to do to reclaim it was to make sure that one of their children had a daughter before Mara. In the meantime, Arienne linked herself to Mara so she could control the girl’s powers, and wove spells to prevent the then-infant from ever having a child. When her own daughter Jura was born a year later, Arienne set about convincing the rest of the world that this was to be the next Senshi of Pluto, and saw to it that as she grew up, Jura was taught a mix of illusory, necromantic, and temporal magic with which to aid that deception. Though Jura would in time prove to be a highly gifted sorceress, her powers were not truly as strong as those of Pluto, and she soon came to hate the slave-girl who had stolen what she was raised to perceive as her birthright.’”

“’When Mara was twenty-two, one of Jura’s older cousins gave birth to a daughter, the oldest female child of that generation. The Elar family rejoiced, believing their heritage had been reclaimed, but they soon learned that the child bore no special powers. Seven more female children were born to the Elar line in the course of the next five years, including Jura’s own daughter, and none possessed the power of a Senshi. It was not until Arienne finally let go the spells that had kept Mara childless that the truth became known—for while Mara had inherited the power to control Time from her father, she had inherited from her mother the ability to _perceive_ Time, a talent which ran strong in the slave-family’s bloodline and which had been the reason behind their long-ago purchase by Tielna. By chance or by some unknown design, the two complementary abilities had been irrevocably mixed, and Mara’s first daughter, Shione, inherited both. In time, the powers would descend to Shione’s eldest daughter, and then to _her_ eldest daughter, a pattern and heritage that, once established, would continue unbroken.’”

“Does that mean that Lydia and Setsuna are related?” Venus asked. They all looked over at the pair: Setsuna, tall, dark-haired, and with those strange red eyes; Lydia, silver-haired, green-eyed, appearing almost ghostly frail by comparison. Physically, there wasn’t a thing to suggest any sort of kinship between them.

“After three thousand years,” Luna said finally, “there’s really no way to tell for sure. But from what the Book says, it seems likely.”

Venus grinned. “Well, don’t just stand there like a limp, Setsuna; go on and give your great-great-however-many-times-removed-grandmother a hug.”

“I... think that can wait,” Setsuna said after a moment, although a part of her—a very lonely, very empty part—wanted very much to latch on to some part of the long-dead family she must once have had. “Mars, keep reading. The longer we take, the more likely it is we’ll miss something that has to be fixed.”

“Yeah, Mars,” Usagi added. “Does this ever get back to Medea, or what?”

“I didn’t write the thing, odango-atama. Just hold your horses until we find out where it’s going with all this.” Mars turned her eyes back to the pages, looking for the pattern of squiggles that she’d left off her reading at. There they were. “’Arienne finally accepted that her family had lost the power of Pluto, and that her successor would be raised from the lowest level of her culture to wield authority over the highest. To her daughter Jura, however, the birth of Shione was the theft of her birthright all over again, something she refused to let take place. Using her magical knowledge, Jura was able to develop a powerful enchantment which would transfer command of Kara and Shione’s sleeping powers to herself, a spell which could only work because of their shared ancestry and ignorance of their powers. Once the spell was cast, it could not be undone; for all intents and purposes, Jura was now as her family had always claimed, the next Senshi of Pluto.’”

“’This pattern, too, once established, continued from generation to generation, with each of the false Senshi of the Elar line revealing the truth and the spell of control to her eldest daughter, who would then be ‘revealed’ as the next Pluto. Medea, however, never fully trusting her own ambitious daughter, chose to hold back the knowledge and retain full control of the stolen power for herself for as long as possible, using it to further her personal goals.’”

“That sounds like something Medea would have done,” Allys said.

“’It was this mistrust between mother and daughter which spelled the end of the line of false Senshi,’” Mars continued, “’for in her greedy ambition, Medea sought to protect her power by destroying all other records of the spell of control, save only one which she kept with her at all times. Her destruction would also be the destruction of the spell, clearing the way for the true Senshi of Pluto to assume their place, but in her pride, Medea did not believe such an end would ever come to pass.’”

“And that _also_ sounds like Medea,” Sara sighed.

Mars flipped through a few pages. “This is just everything we went through. I’m trying to find... hang on.” She read a few lines, then looked up. “Saturn?”

“What?” Saturn asked in a miserable-sounding voice.

“You might want to hear this,” Mars suggested calmly. “’Even when cut off from the source of her stolen powers, Medea still had a chance to live, but by choosing to draw on the power again, without her link to Lydia to shield her own essence against the energy of Pluto, Medea destroyed that chance and herself. In this, though the circumstances of her end were different, the means by which Medea met her end were the same—her own cruel ambition and arrogant pride. For just as it had been these traits which brought her to Khairoah in pursuit of Usagi and the ginzuishou, and therefore to her doom, so would they have been the cause of Medea’s death had Usagi never entered her time. The fact that she perished on Earth that night instead of while investigating a temporal anomaly in the far end of the system would, in the final analysis, make no difference.’”

Saturn blinked. “How does it not make a difference?” she finally demanded.

“She came here to find me,” Usagi said, carefully thinking her way through what the Book _seemed_ to be saying. “If I hadn’t been here, she would have gone off to check out something in space instead—and died there? Is that right, Mars?”

“That’s what it says.” She quickly read through the description of what would have been, but now wasn’t. “’The existence of such free-floating tears in the fabric of the universe was a documented fact, though one of this size and inherent stability had never before been encountered naturally. The standard procedure for dealing with such occurrences required the combined efforts of at least four specially-trained wizards, but confident of her own abilities, Medea would have attempted to seal the breach alone. A true Senshi of Pluto could have done it; a false one could not. The result of Medea’s attempt would have widened the rift and destroyed her, freeing Lydia and eliminating the spell of control. When she tried to tamper with Time in order to defeat the future Senshi, Medea again affected the rift; similarly, Lydia still gained her freedom, and the spell was still destroyed. As a result, the greater flow of Time remained intact despite the presence of the future Senshi, with the errant lesser effects of their involvement being as easily adapted into the pattern of ages as what had originally been intended.’”

“Will _somebody_ tell me what all this gibberish _means_?” Uranus demanded.

“It means we’re in the clear,” Pluto replied, waving her staff and creating a patch of red energy in the air. “This is Time, in the instant of the present, with all the events of NOW taking place as they ought to.” She stuck the head of her staff into the energy, and ripples spread outwards. “This is us, arriving and changing events. The present is altered. But Time isn’t a fixed thing; it moves forward.” The energy began to move, flowing like a river and obliterating the ripples in the process. “The effects of our presence are absorbed and washed away. So long as certain key events remain unaltered, the ultimate outcome is the same. Usagi’s friend came home; the men who tried to rob him weren’t killed; Medea died; Lydia was freed. WHAT was supposed to happen did, if not exactly HOW it was supposed to.”

“So our future,” Saturn said carefully. “It’s still there? I didn’t...”

“You didn’t,” Pluto replied firmly. “And you didn’t kill Medea, either. She destroyed herself.”

Saturn relaxed noticeably before she went over to Mars and hugged her fiercely. “Thank you, Rei.”

“You’re welcome,” Mars replied, a little embarrassed. “Now do you suppose you and Pluto can take us home before we have a chance to get into any _more_ trouble?”

“Before we do that,” Pluto said, “we have to make sure we don’t leave any loose ends lying around. Anything we brought with us has to go; anything from this time has to stay.” She knelt to pick up the glove she had removed earlier and then dropped when Medea attacked. While sliding the glove back on, Setsuna glanced over at the black dome that still held the other staff. “Saturn?”

“Right.” The dome flickered out. As Saturn turned her attention to helping Mercury revive ChibiMoon and Ryo, Pluto retrieved the past version of her staff and then handed it over to Lydia.

“This is yours now. It always was. Make sure you put it to better use than Medea did.” Lydia nodded nervously as she accepted the staff, holding it uneasily and giving a start when the Orb flashed. Pluto hesitated briefly before she went ahead and hugged the girl; after a moment of uncertainty, Lydia returned the embrace. Immediately, the Orbs flashed in unison, and both women were staggered as a flood of images passed in front of their eyes.

First it was Lydia, standing by herself. Then a man appeared next to her, his face shadowed and unclear. Several children followed, and most of their features were also hidden, but the first, a girl, appeared in distinct clarity. The images of the other children remained vague, but this one girl quickly grew to maturity, and she was in turn joined by images of a husband and children—the first of whom was also a daughter, and who was again clearly visible while the rest of the family remained unseen. The pattern repeated itself many times, down many generations, until at the very end of the line there stood a tall, dark- haired woman. The shape of the man next to her was as indistinct as all the others, but in her arms the woman held a tiny baby girl.

Pluto felt her heart lurch. The woman’s face was the same one she herself saw each time she looked into a mirror, and she had the same dark green hair. Only her pale brown eyes were different—but the eyes of the baby were deep red.

*Mother?* She started to raise her hand, to reach out... and as the staff in that hand shifted, the Garnet Orb went dark; the image fell apart.

“Pluto?” Usagi asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Usagi. I just... I’m okay.” She smiled at Lydia. “And it’s true. We are related.”

“Oh.” There was a long silence. “Setsuna, if you think you need a few minutes to...”

“No. Thank you, but Mars was right. We have to leave.” She turned back to Lydia, gently squeezing the hand she still held. “I hope you understand.”

Lydia looked up at the Orb on her staff and nodded slowly. “I think I’m beginning to.”

“YAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

“WAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Heads spun around to where Ryo had just woken up with a loud yell, causing a startled Saturn to let out a yell of her own and then fall over backwards. “Don’t do that!” she shouted, hitting him on the shoulder as she righted herself.

“Ryo-kun?” Mercury said in a worried voice. She was kneeling next to him, holding one of his hands in her own. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What did you see?”

“What? Oh, Ami-chan. What happened?” He looked around at the room. “Aren’t there supposed to be a bunch of... oh, I guess you beat them already.” He looked at the Atlantean Senshi and blinked. “Who the...”

“I’ll explain later,” Mercury said, helping him get to his feet. “I promise. But what did you see before you passed out?”

“It must have been something pretty awful,” Jupiter added, “considering the way you were yelling.”

“Oh. Uh... actually, what I saw was some guy with white hair getting smacked in the side of the head by a woman with black hair. I’ve never seen either of them be... fore...” His voice trailed off as he noticed Luna and Artemis. Luna immediately looked at Artemis.

“Whatever it is,” he said immediately, “I didn’t do it.”

“Obviously, you did. Or you _will,_ at any rate.”

“Luna... hits... Artemis,” Venus said slowly. “And _that_ made you scream?”

“What? Oh, no. That was...” He frowned. “Have you ever had about ten thousand icy razors dragged across your skin while something reaches into your chest and freezes all the blood in your veins before tearing your heart out?”

Venus stared at him and shook her head back and forth. “Uh-uh.”

“I don’t recommend it,” Ryo told her, lightly touching one hand to his chest.

“But you’re okay?” Mercury asked.

“Much better. I...” Ryo looked down at the Caduceus Rod. “Okay,” he said, rubbing at his eyes and then pointing at the strange device, “where did you get _that_?” His tone was that of a man who has had just about all the surprises he can handle for one day.

Mercury blinked. “Oh. I almost forgot...” She quickly walked over to her counterpart and handed the Caduceus over. “This is yours, I think. You’d better take it back before I leave; I don’t want to drag it along with us.”

“That could cause some problems,” the Atlantean Mercury agreed, taking the Rod.

Mercury was about halfway back to where her friends were gathering when there was a sudden rush of blue light. When it faded, she sighed, realizing that she had dropped back into her civilian identity.

“Later,” she told her friends wearily. “We can talk about it later. Right now, can we please just go home? I’m very tired.”

They formed a circle around Pluto and Saturn, with Mars and Luna on either side of Usagi, and Ryo and Jupiter on either side of Ami, supporting her.

“Do we have everything?” Pluto asked, looking at Luna and Usagi. Usagi nodded; she wasn’t exactly wearing her civilian clothes at the moment, but they were all still with her, and would return once she dropped out of Serenity-mode. “Then everyone else stay back,” Pluto warned the rest of the room as she and Saturn began to gather their strength for the largest time-teleport yet.

“Usagi!” At the sound of her name, Usagi looked back and smiled, pulling her hand away from Luna’s to wave back at Kaiya, near the door with her father and brother.

“Good-bye, Kaiya! I’m sorry about the mess!”

“Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve ever had! I’ll miss you!”

“I’ll miss you, too!” Usagi glanced at Lund, standing just behind Kaiya. *Don’t give up, Lund. Kaiya may not have much time left in this life, but if you two love each other enough, you’ll be together someday. Even if it takes a thousand years. Just don’t give up.*

“Akhmed!” Artemis called out. “Sorry we didn’t get a chance to spar! Maybe next time, eh?”

“See you in ten thousand years!” Akhmed replied with a nod.

As the combined red and purple energies built to a peak, there was a tremendous surge of white light. Everyone in the circle looked at Usagi, who was herself staring down at the ginzuishou in amazement as it siphoned something of the swirling powers into itself.

“Uh-oh.”

A coiling bolt of red, purple, and white force shot out of the side of the growing storm that now surrounded the Time-displaced Senshi and raced across the room to hit Kaiya. It lasted only a split-second, and when the light of the projectile vanished, Kaiya looked different. Not quite so frail as she had been, with more color in her cheeks.

“Usagi!” Luna snapped. “What did you...”

The energy surged.

 

# 

_(There is a large, dark space. Not completely dark, just as dark as any other point in deep space where stars and planets and other bodies of matter that will either generate or reflect light aren’t particularly common. Balance comes walking along through this emptiness while blatantly ignoring the fact that one generally needs a surface of some sort in order to walk at all. Of course, the human form Balance is currently wearing shouldn’t be able to go out into deep space in the first place without suffering the ravages of—among other things— cosmic radiation, a total lack of breathable air, and decompression—and not necessarily in that order—so...)_

**Balance** : I know it was here somewhere... (looks up as someone off-camera coughs) Oh. That time again, is it? Well, okay. But I’m not doing the next one. With all the other characters on the payroll, you’d think that somebody could find the time to...

_(There is another cough, louder.)_

**Balance** : Well, if you’re going to be _that_ way about it... The majority of this episode is given over to a lengthy running battle, and as was stated, that’s not always the best time for philosophical discoveries. However, there is an interesting question posed later on when Mars begins reading back the Book of Ages, and it has to do with the nature of Time. Actually, the question has been asked, or at least hinted at, in a number of previous episodes: what is fate?

_(Balance leans back as if sitting on a chair and continues.)_

**Balance** : Is fate a constant, an immutable, unchangeable thing which cannot be altered no matter what? Are all aspects of existence laid out according to some Divine Plan? Or is there no Plan at all, with everything that happens doing so at random, for no particular reason at all except that it can? Personally, the author believes that Option A is a load of rubbish, because he has more respect for God—or whoever—than to believe He/She/It would set Him/Her/Itself up to be bored out of His/Her/Its metaphysical skull for all eternity by creating a universe where He/She/It knew everything that was ever going to happen. Option B doesn’t particularly impress the author either, so he subscribes to a different idea.

**Balance** : In the words of a certain 10,000 year-old Lemurian chicken, “Destiny is equal parts necessity, chance, and free will.” What this boils down to is that while there _are_ certain things that have to happen, not _everything_ is predetermined. The Plan is there, in a general sort of way, but it’s not set in stone—and if it is, we’ve always got jackhammers to fall back on when it’s time to renegotiate the contract. This is the one the author likes, and it’s what he’s been reminding himself of whenever questions of Time pop up. It makes for a better story than saying everything happened a certain way because ‘it was supposed to,’ or because ‘they just got really lucky.’ It gives the characters a certain degree of support from Higher Powers while still leaving them enough room to actually go out and live their own lives.

**Balance** : Bear in mind that the author is not trying to start a religion or something with this. Truthfully, he went with this little monologue of fate because—surprise, surprise—he couldn’t find a truly _moral_ lesson in the episode.

_(Balance gets up from his ‘chair’)_

**Balance** : Now, where was I? Oh yes...

_(Life’s voice comes in from off-screen)_

**Life** : Have you found that ball of yours yet?

**Balance** : Yes.  _(He pulls a golf club—about a five iron—out of nowhere and takes up a stance near a small sphere that looks rather disturbingly like Earth.)_  FORE!

16/09/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

Just out of curiosity; does anybody out there _besides_ me know the name of that chicken?

Next time:  
-Home at last; and  
-Enough filling in of the distant past, it’s time to advance the story again!


	15. Tea and Biscuits, Questions and Answers or Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?

# 

“...do?!”

Tel looked up from the fence post he was trying to straighten as the shrieked word echoed loudly across the fields. His first thought was that the word had been a figment of his imagination, helped along by the aftereffects of the drinking he’d done the night before at the harvest festival, and that he could ignore it and go back to work. Then he noticed that Old Nip had perked up his floppy ears at the sound. Now, Nip might be a lazy sheepdog five years past his prime, blind in his milky left eye and half-lame besides, but he had good ears, and if they were up now, that meant he’d heard something.

And sure enough, a few birds had taken wing from the thicket to the south of the field, startled into flight by the shout—a woman’s shout, Tel thought, although he couldn’t think of who she might be. It wasn’t the missus, that much he could tell; she’d ripped him up one side and down the other for drinking so many times that Tel could have picked her voice out of a crowd of a hundred with one ear stopped up. Besides, Herself would be back at the house at this time of afternoon, finishing up the laundry before getting supper underway.

“Well, Nip,” Tel said after several moments of slow and careful thought, "I guess we’d best be seein’ to that.”

Nip made a show of rolling over and going back to his nap, but when Tel started out for the trees, the mangy old dog hauled himself to his feet, let out a whining yawn, and trotted along behind his master, who had brought along the heavy mallet he’d been driving the fence posts into the ground with. Tel hadn’t ever heard of bandits or the like in the area, and the woman’s voice had sounded royally angry more than it’d sounded scared—if there was one thing Tel had learned from listening to the missus, it was the sound of a woman’s voice when she was angry—but even so, it didn’t hurt to take precautions.

Neither Tel nor Nip were in any great hurry. As they drew nearer to the trees, man and dog could both begin to make out voices raised in a heated argument—women’s voices, and quite a few of them at that, but Tel couldn’t understand a single word they were saying. Make that shouting.

Once he’d gotten close enough to actually see these women, Tel had to wonder just how much he’d had to drink last night, _really_. All told, there were thirteen people in among the trees, one a tall, white-haired man with a couple of claw-shaped weapons hanging from his belt, another a young lad whose attention was fixed on the pretty blue-eyed girl holding his arm for support, as if she were too weak to stand on her own. Those three were dressed a bit strange, but one of the oldest women and a younger lady both wore the sort of gowns Tel had last seen when his Lord’s daughter had gotten married; all the others, ranging in age from young women to younger girls, wore outfits the likes of which Tel had never heard of. Three of them were armed, and another was carrying a heavy book.

The girl with the leatherbound tome and the finely-dressed dark-haired lady were shouting at the blonde girl in the white dress, who was shouting back and gesturing at a small stone or jewel in her right hand. Tel didn’t have to understand the language to know that they were blaming her for something, or that she was trying to shift the blame—to the thing in her hand, unless he missed his guess—but the whole scene was giving him an uneasy feeling.

Not all that many things gave Tel an uneasy feeling. It wasn’t that he was a particularly brave man, he’d just led a life which hadn’t been troubled by the sort of situations where bravery was necessary except in the everyday sort of measures. Once he’d gotten over being scared of the dark and all the other childhood fears, about the only things that could make Tel uneasy were the ring of standing stones to the east of the village, and that weird old hermit who lived in the forest, the one people said was a wizard, or an evil spirit. Tel had long since come to regard these uneasy feelings as quiet warnings from some part of his mind that he was in the presence of something magical and otherworldly, and that he’d probably be a lot better off if he left it well alone and far away.

He was getting that feeling right now, so Tel decided he’d listen to it and leave these strange people to themselves.

Nip had other ideas. The old dog’s nose snuffled at the air for a moment before he growled low in his throat and shot forward with a speed Tel hadn’t thought he possessed, barking at the top of his wheezy old lungs and making a beeline—well, a dog-line—for the dark-haired woman in the dress.

About halfway to his target, Nip suddenly skidded to a halt, the woman forgotten as one of the youngest girls stepped forward. She was easily the smallest of the entire group, a pale little girl-child with a face like an angel—currently a very battered, very bruised angel—but she was giving Tel that uneasy feeling in spades. Nip seemed to feel the same way, as the old dog went down on his belly with a whine; Tel couldn’t see his face, but from the posture of the rest of his body, Nip seemed to be trying to look sorry. Nip had _never_ tried to look sorry, not even when he’d gotten in trouble as a puppy, nor even when an irate bull ten times his size had taken offense at being barked at. This dark-eyed girl didn’t look much larger than Nip, but she accomplished with a simple look what that angry bull’s charge hadn’t.

She knelt down in front of Nip, setting aside the strangely-shaped polearm she’d been carrying so she could take the old dog’s head in both hands and lift it to look him in the eyes. Tel had no idea what happened next, but Nip’s tail started to wag, and all the cringing fell away as he licked the left, uninjured side of the girl’s face from chin to cheek. She scratched Nip behind his floppy left ear, patted him on the head, and nodded in the direction he’d charged from; Nip got up at once, turned around, and trotted back towards his master.

Even hidden behind a tree at the edge of the thicket, Tel was sure the girl’s good eye winked at him before she picked up her weapon and turned back to her friends. That, he decided, was quite enough for him, and once their attentions had left Nip, Tel quietly backed away.

Only when man and dog were well clear of the trees did Tel glance down at Nip. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Nip’s eyes, both clear and shining brown, met his master’s and slowly blinked in agreement.

# 

Following the brief encounter with the battered old dog, the group decided it might be wise to move deeper into the trees, to avoid drawing the attention of any other locals. Unwilling to waste the moment, Luna and Mars continued to argue with Usagi as they walked, words hissing back and forth even as they helped her along.

Mars had willed a small but intensely burning fireball into existence to help keep Usagi warm in spite of the cool winds; some of the others cast nervous looks at her, knowing as they did how Mars liked to wave her hands around when she was getting on Usagi’s case. Uranus led the way, discreetly pushing twigs and branches aside from their path with small bursts of air while Neptune brought up the rear, watching Mars’ flame-bearing hand and keeping herself ready to thoroughly douse any stray sparks—just in case. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

After ten minutes of walking, they reached a small clearing where a few old, mossy boulders had so far prevented any trees from taking root. Saturn, who had been leaning on the Silence Glaive a great deal as they walked, looked at the smallest of the heavy rocks and frowned. Purple energy flashed, and the boulder began to change. Divots of moss, loose soil, and a few startled insects rose up from the surface of the boulder en masse and were deposited atop a nearby stump as the boulder shifted, flattened, and became a wide, high-backed bench of clean grey stone.

Ignoring the startled looks from her friends, Saturn sank down onto the wide seat with a relieved sigh. The stone was a bit too cool to be entirely comfortable, but it let her get off her feet and rest, and after the strain of whatever it was that had gone wrong and flung their little time-trek off course, Saturn was more in need of rest than comfort. She was joined shortly by Pluto, who appeared just as worn out, and then by Ami, who looked even worse and was actually having to fight to keep her head up and her eyes open. Ami spared a tired smile for Ryo as he sat down to her left, on the very edge of the bench, and then she seemed to forget that the rest of them were even there.

Saturn examined Ami carefully out of the corner of her eye. Ami’s aura was the same pale blue as always, and the slightly dull quality of the unseen light was something Saturn had long since learned to identify as weariness. She couldn’t see her own aura of course, but the red energy surrounding Pluto had something of the cloudiness Saturn was seeing in Ami’s aura—just not as pronounced.

What bothered Saturn was not the slight change in intensity, but the weird manner in which the energy field surrounding Ami was continually wobbling and shifting. One moment its vague outline defined a peaceful halo, and the next, it took on a wavy, uneven quality, bending into blurred ripples. Saturn had no more idea what this waviness in Ami’s aura meant than she had any idea what the thin darkness infusing Ryo’s aura meant, but she didn’t like either effect. At least Ryo’s little mystery didn’t seem to be making him sick.

“Are you three all right?” Saturn looked away from Ami and up at Usagi, who wore an almost blinding aura of white energy over her simple gown for the split second before Saturn remembered to shut off the life-vision. Next to her, ChibiMoon’s aura had been incandescent pink, as had the tiny glow emanating from Usagi’s belly. All three of them were in absolutely perfect health—which, considering what Saturn had thought she’d known about using the ginzuishou, ought to be impossible.

“Just tired,” Pluto said.

“Tired,” Ami repeated in a drowsy voice. She was leaning against Ryo, her head on his shoulder and her eyes not even half-open anymore. In any other situation, being caught that close to Ryo would have been sufficient cause for Ami to turn completely red, but she was barely conscious enough to even acknowledge her friends’ presences, let alone the fact that they were watching her. The only things that were really keeping Ami awake at all were the cool stone she was sitting on and the slightly uncomfortable pressure of Ryo’s shoulder against her forehead, but cold had never really bothered her, and his shoulder wasn’t that hard anyway, at least not once she snuggled a little closer and managed to put the side of her head on the front of his shoulder instead of the side...

Usagi smiled as Ami fell asleep. Ryo hesitated for a moment before putting his arms around her—getting another half-conscious attempt to snuggle closer as a response—then looked up at the Senshi as a whole with an almost defiant expression. He needn’t have bothered; there were only more smiles. A few were wistful, others a little envious, but nobody appeared to mind. Uranus _did_ start to say something, but Neptune elbowed her in the ribs before whatever it was got out.

Still smiling, Usagi turned back to Saturn. “And what about you? Are you just tired, too?”

“My face and shoulder hurt a little. Do you suppose you could do something about that?”

The smile went away, and Usagi sighed. “I’m sorry, Saturn, I really am, but that wasn’t me you saw healing Kaiya. The girl, I mean.”

“It wasn’t?” Now that she stopped to think about it, Luna and Mars had been rather quiet for the last two or three minutes, as if the argument had been settled. Saturn looked past Usagi and spotted Mars, who looked back and nodded once, grudgingly, in answer to the silent question. “Well, if it wasn’t _you_, then who was it?”

Usagi held up the crystal. Saturn looked at it, at first not entirely understanding the gesture. Then it came to her. “It did that _itself_?!”

“Shhh!” Ryo admonished softly.

Saturn clapped a hand over her mouth and mumbled, “Sorry,” around her fingers before moving them aside and looking at Usagi again. In a near-whisper, she said, “By itself?”

“Not entirely,” Usagi admitted. “It’s sensitive to what we... to what _I_ think and feel, and right before we left, my attention was mostly on Kaiya.” She frowned and examined the crystal closely. “I’ve always known that this thing has a mind of its own, but it’s usually like it’s asleep, or just observing what we do. It turns me into Sailor Moon and lets me fight for myself, and it only really steps in when and if I get into real trouble. But in the last couple of months, it’s like the crystal’s been waking up—I mean _really_ waking up.”

“Don’t try to blame this on _me_,” ChibiMoon said. “I had no control over it at all. It’s _your_ fault.”

“I wasn’t blaming you,” Usagi retorted, blushing only a little. “And this is as much your father’s fault as it is mine.”

“That’s not what Papa said.”

“Oh REALLY?” Usagi put her hands on her hips as she faced her daughter. "What exactly _has_ he said to you about this, anyway?”

“Now you _know_ I’m not allowed to tell you that, odango-atama.” Usagi’s face twitched, but she was up against a brick wall here, and she knew it; ChibiUsa had made a promise not to talk about the future, and she was going to keep it. Usagi made a noise in her throat and turned back to Saturn.

“What I was going to say was that I’m not used to dealing with the ginzuishou when it’s this active. Before, it was aware, but not really awake; now it’s both, and that’s why it went off like it did. It always used to just do whatever I told it to, or whatever was necessary to protect me, operating from moment to moment without actually thinking. But now it does think, and that means it can remember things that it’s seen or done.” Usagi looked down at the crystal. “It can communicate with us, in a way, and that’s basically how I found out how to call you all, but the communication works both ways. I know what it thinks, and it knows what I think—and when it realized I was thinking about Kaiya and feeling sad, it tried to help.” She smiled faintly, gestured with her hands, and shrugged. “Zap.”

“So it can heal a sick girl,” Saturn began.

“A dying girl,” Luna corrected. “One who was _supposed_ to die, at that.”

“...and it can’t heal _me_?” Saturn finished incredulously.

“It still needs energy to do things,” Usagi said, “and I can’t spare very much right now. But when you two started generating all that power... do you recall what I said about it remembering things? Well, it remembered how we’ve combined our strengths before, and it went from there.”

“You mean WE used the crystal?”

“It’s more like it was using you. I’m sorry about that.”

“You know,” Pluto said thoughtfully, “it might have worked to our advantage. That’s the second time we’ve been teleported by the crystal, and...”

“’Second time’?” Luna echoed.

“The first was when Usagi brought us to the hall, and...” Luna wasn’t listening anymore, but had rounded on Usagi with a fresh crop of fury well on its way to harvest.

“You... brought them... through TIME... are you TRYING to kill yourself?!”

Usagi sighed, raised the crystal, and looked around. “Uranus, away!” The crystal flared with white light, and Uranus’ aura kicked in at full power, wind swirling around her.

“Wha...” She was in midword when she flickered out and vanished, taking the sudden breeze with her.

The other Senshi were still opening their mouths to ask what Usagi had done when she spoke again, in the same commanding voice. “Uranus, to me!” There was another flare, and Uranus reappeared in a rush of air.

“...you doing?” she finished.

“Settling another argument before it gets started,” Usagi said flatly, looking at Luna. “Just because I normally get wiped out from using the crystal doesn’t mean _everything_ it can do is dangerous.” She held it up again to illustrate the point, creating a small sphere of faint white light around herself and then expanding it outwards. The transparent barrier slipped around and past everything except Mars’s steadily-smoldering fireball; that, the expanding dome pushed away from Mars’s hand and carried along through the air for a meter or two before its expansion crawled to a halt. Inside the dome, the temperature had gone up several degrees.

Mars looked at Usagi, then around at the warm air in the dome, and then at her flickering fireball, still floating and burning without any visible source of support or fuel. The fireball went out with a small puff of smoke.

“I can’t fight, I certainly can’t blow up any more asteroids, and the most healing I can manage on my own isn’t very much.” A small, short-lived shower of sparkling energy rained down from the dome, and everyone suddenly felt a great deal less weary than they had; Saturn’s bruises hadn’t faded or shrunk, but they also didn’t ache as much as they had, and the fatigue that had been bothering her was considerably lessened. Pluto looked better as well. “But there are still a few things I can manage. Light and heat are easy to create, and the barrier is practically automatic anyway. It just isn’t as strong as it might be.”

“And the teleportation?” Luna asked, sounding much more calm than before. "I know you don’t have enough energy to do that.”

“I couldn’t teleport myself to the other side of those rocks.” Usagi glanced at the piled-up boulders. “But I wasn’t the one actually teleporting. The Senshi did that themselves, just like we usually do, except that this time I chose the destination for the rest of you.”

“How did you move Uranus, then?” Venus asked. “None of the rest of us were affected that time. Were we?”

“No, she did that on her own.”

Uranus blinked. “I can do that? Teleport by myself?”

“You all can,” Luna said, “at least in theory. It’s a _lot_ easier to do in a group, but you all have the potential for self-teleportation. Some Senshi pick it up easily, and others just aren’t strong enough. The ginzuishou probably helped you a little this time, so it may be a while yet before you’re able to...” She broke off as Uranus disappeared into another half-visible funnel of air. They all started looking around before they heard a whistle from behind Neptune—and above her.

“Get down here,” Neptune said without even looking up at her partner, who was standing on a sturdy tree branch a good three meters off the ground. Uranus grinned, then disappeared again. Several leaves from the tree were still whipping about her as she rematerialized next to Neptune. “Showoff.”

Uranus ignored Neptune and brushed a few leaves off herself before nodding to Usagi. “Thanks, kid. This could come in handy.”

“You’re welcome,” Usagi said dryly. She looked at Neptune and gave a smile that was closer to a wince. “Sorry.”

Neptune sighed. “Well, it’s not an entirely bad thing. Now that she can be anywhere in the blink of an eye, she won’t need that car anymore.”

“Bite your tongue, woman.”

Pluto was nodding thoughtfully. “I wasn’t entirely sure why that trip went so easily, especially considering how much trouble Saturn and I were having with the others, but if the rest of you were moving yourselves... there is one other thing I’m curious about,” she added, looking up at Usagi. “How exactly _did_ you reach us? We were five thousand years ahead of you, thirty-five thousand years behind you, and a thousand or so kilometers out of place on top of that.”

“She cheated,” Artemis said. “The ginzuishou can’t reach through Time right now, but it wasn’t the only force in the hall capable of that sort of magic.”

“The Garnet Orb?” Luna said in astonishment. “But Pluto’s the only one who’s supposed to be able to use it, and I can’t imagine that Medea would have...” She stopped short. “But Medea _wasn’t_ Pluto, and that means...”

“...that she couldn’t have controlled the Garnet Orb as well as a real Senshi,” Artemis finished. “For all we know, the Orb might even have helped Usagi willingly so that it could get itself out of Medea’s hands and into Lydia’s, where it belonged.”

“What they said,” Usagi said to Pluto, rolling her eyes. “I stuck a message into the Garnet Orb for you—sort of a ‘Do Not Open For Five Thousand Years’ rush delivery. And that was _all_ I did,” she added, with a meaningful look at Luna.

“You did a little more than that, Usagi,” Mars disagreed. “Ami and Jupiter weren’t even transformed when your little surprise caught up to us. Ami said she _couldn’t_ transform, because of whatever’s wrong with her.”

Usagi blinked. “When did this happen?”

“She tried to transform seven days ago,” Jupiter said. “Seven days ago in the time where we wound up, I mean—and it backfired even worse than the night we went back to the Moon. The ice on the walls was still there the next day, and Ami blacked out besides. Sasanna had to take some fairly drastic measures to wake her up again.”

“Who?”

“Someone we met,” Jupiter said, absently brushing her thumb over the spot on her uniform beneath which the silver acorn rested, smooth and warm, just over her heart.

Usagi frowned. “I was wondering why she changed back, but I thought she was just tired. Luna, I thought you said she’d be better after a few days.”

Luna shook her head. “I don’t think this has anything to do with the mana nexus. If it did, Ami’s powers would have been snuffed out the second the thing blew. Since she can still become Mercury, if not on her own, whatever’s wrong with her isn’t connected to the nexus. At least, not beyond the fact that that’s what set it off.”

“Then what _is_ causing it?”

“I don’t know, but there are some tests we can run—assuming she can still use her computer?” Luna asked, looking to Jupiter, who nodded. “Right.”

“Speaking of changing back,” Venus said, looking at Usagi, “were you planning to any time soon? I mean, you look good in white and all, but this Usagi-speaking Serenity thing is a little creepy.”

“How do you think _we_ feel about it? This reincarnation business borders on a split personality syndrome as it is, but usually there’s just _one_ of us calling shots. _I_ don’t mess with Serenity when she’s doing something magical, and _I_ don’t meddle in Usagi’s everyday life.” Listening to her/them say that raised hairs on the backs of several necks.

“So why not just change?”

“This is why not,” Usagi said, holding up the ginzuishou. “If we change back, it goes back to sleep in the locket, and right now it doesn’t _want_ to do that. Not until it knows we’re safe.”

“Which would entail getting home,” Luna said. “But before we can go anywhere, we have to know where and when we are...”—and here she looked at Pluto and Saturn.

“Third century England,” Pluto replied. “Or perhaps I should say Britannia.” She shrugged and smiled faintly. “When in Rome...”

Luna nodded. “...and second, we have to figure out if anything’s happened to our own time because of what the ginzuishou did to Kaiya. Mars, does the Book have anything to say about the rest of that night?”

Mars blushed in embarrassment. “I’d almost forgotten about this thing,” she mumbled, taking the Book out from under her arm and opening it to search for the helpful, long-winded passage she’d found before. After quickly flipping through all the pages without finding a trace of that particular section, she sighed. “It’s gone. I don’t know if it happened when we teleported, or because I closed the Book, or if the words just faded out, but I can’t find them. I’m sorry, Luna.”

“It’s okay, Mars; I didn’t really think it would still be there. The Book has a history of being annoying in that respect.” Luna rubbed at her forehead as she tried to think, a gesture that the Senshi had seen before many times, and which made it a lot easier for them to accept that this dark-haired young woman was still Luna.

“Do you suppose Pluto might be able to do something?” ChibiMoon asked timidly. “Now that she has her staff and the Garnet Orb back, I mean?”

“Definitely,” Luna said, nodding. “But I have no idea what, let alone how, and speaking of which,” she said, turning her head to look at Pluto, “where _did_ you get those?”

“They were with me when I woke up after falling into the Gate. And out of it, I suppose. I’m not actually sure where they came from.”

“Uh... I know.” All eyes turned to Usagi; she hadn’t wanted to mention this—they had enough to worry about—but it was too late now. “When we got pulled through the Gate, I looked back and saw one of those things throw it in after us.”

“Which one?” Uranus said immediately. “The ordinary-looking man with the grey hair?”

“Not this again,” Neptune groaned.

Usagi blinked, startled by the intensity of the question and by Neptune’s reaction. “N-no. Actually, it was the one in the second seat, the one that kept changing shape. Why?”

Mars sighed. “A strange man helped Haruka with some last-minute travel arrangements when she, Michiru, and Hotaru were stopping over in Berlin on their way home. He gave her an extra ticket—which turned out to be _very_ fortunate, since ChibiUsa arrived not two minutes later—and when she went back to talk to him, the guy was gone. While they were talking, ChibiUsa mentioned that when she’d gone to the Time Gate, she’d seen someone talking to Pluto, someone who just happened to look like the mystery man Haruka had just been talking with.”

Usagi looked at ChibiMoon, who nodded. “I didn’t really get a good look at him either time, and he wasn’t wearing the airline uniform this time, but I’m pretty sure it was the same person. I don’t think there can be two people who look so... well, ordinary.”

“I’m telling you,” Uranus insisted, “it was the same guy.”

“She’s been going on about this for the last ten weeks,” Neptune said wearily.

“But it’s only been six weeks since you came back,” Usagi objected.

“We racked up an extra month thanks to the Time Gate,” Mars told her. “And I had to listen to them argue about this nearly every night before Katina let me move in with her. I’ll explain later,” she added, seeing Usagi about to inquire about the unfamiliar name. Thinking about her ‘student’, Mars had to wonder how Katina and the three children she had been training were doing. It occurred to her that if she could figure out how to get straight a few answers from the Book, she could find out—but that was going to have to wait.

“One of the three women in the larger gallery looked exactly like me,” Pluto said slowly. “And I think... there was a man working at the hall of records when I went there with Ikuko, and when I was talking to him, for a moment I was almost sure I’d met him before. He had grey hair, but even with that, he could have disappeared into a crowd.”

“Grey eyes, too?” Uranus said quickly. “Not exactly dark-skinned or tanned, but not pale either?”

Pluto nodded. “Yes, that sounds like him. He was very helpful.”

“It’s the same guy,” Uranus said, shooting a triumphant look at Neptune.

“Saturn?” Luna said in a worried voice. “Do you remember what that animal control worker who dropped me off at Makoto’s apartment looked like? I didn’t get a very clear view of his face, but I think...”

“It... might be...” Saturn fidgeted uncomfortably. “I didn’t really look at him at the Time Gate, Luna. Most of my attention was on the figure at the end of the row.”

There was a collective hush as the others recalled that same figure, with its tattered black shroud of a cloak, its bony hands, and the ominously empty space beneath the hood. Pluto shifted her staff to her right hand and put her other arm around Saturn’s shoulders.

“Ah, not to worry,” Venus said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “It’s not like this is the first bozo we’ve come up against whose fashion sense ran to black cloaks and rusty farm tools. We’ll find it and deal with it just like the rest.”

“No,” Saturn said, lifting her head from Pluto’s shoulder. “That wasn’t just some two-bit monster trying to look dangerous, Minako; that _was_ Death.”

For a moment, Venus looked as if she were going to try and laugh off Saturn’s claim, but then something distinctly un-Minako crossed her features, and she became absolutely serious. Saturn was aware that most of her friends were looking at her now, Neptune and ChibiMoon with sympathetic understanding, and most of the rest with expressions ranging from concern to skepticism, but only Venus seemed to be about to ask _why_ she was so certain about the identity of the strange being.

“It gets worse,” Usagi sighed, beating Venus to the verbal punch and getting everyone’s attention off of Saturn in the process. “I know the one who threw Pluto’s staff into the Gate for us. It talked to me again later on, in the dining hall, and told me how to call the rest of you. And we’ve met before.”

“It did sort of look like it was wearing your hair,” Artemis said with a nod. “But I don’t recall ever seeing...”

“It was Chaos, Artemis.” A very strange sound came out of Luna then, the result of a breath trying to get into her lungs and a shriek trying to get out, and she started to cough. “Breathe, Luna.”

Jupiter was the closest, and she slapped Luna on the back a couple of times. “I’m okay,” Luna finally croaked, waving off Jupiter’s ‘help’. She coughed once more, then looked up at Usagi. “Chaos?”

“Chaos. Trust me on this, Luna.”

“This day just keeps getting better and better,” Uranus observed lightly.

“Why would Chaos be helping us?” Neptune asked, ignoring Uranus.

“I asked it that myself, but it wasn’t helping ‘us’. It was helping _me_. It said it owed me a debt, and I think it must have meant for setting it free from Galaxia. Giving Pluto back her staff and then showing me how to call you all once she and Saturn had gathered you up seems to have been Chaos’ way of repaying that debt.”

“Wonderful. So not only do we have a potential paradox to worry about, but now Chaos is back as well. _And_ it’s brought friends.” Luna sighed and looked up at the cloudy sky in a profoundly disappointed manner. She glanced at Usagi again. “Was there anything else you wanted to tell us?”

“No, that pretty much covers it for me.” Usagi’s gaze turned to the rest of the Senshi. “Of course, I’m not the only one who has some explaining to do.”

“You can quit looking at me,” ChibiMoon said bluntly. “I’ve already been scolded for playing games with Time today, so...” She made a quick, dismissive gesture with her hand.

At that moment, the Garnet Orb and the ginzuishou both flickered. Pluto looked up at the jewel atop her staff; Usagi looked down at the crystal in her hand; and ChibiMoon stared at both stones in shock before looking at her hand.

“I didn’t do anything!” she objected.

“It wasn’t you,” Jupiter said, her head turned to the left, looking to where this relatively well-spaced patch of trees grew closer, thicker, and into a true forest. “Someone’s coming.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jupiter could see that she had just taken Saturn’s place on the receiving end of the curious looks; Mars was staring openly, startled—and more than startled—that someone had just beaten out her sixth sense, although that was still working normally, telling her that a strange presence was out there, and that it was indeed approaching them.

*Usagi was right for once. She’s _not_ the only one who has some explaining to do.*

The explanations were going to have to wait, though. Jupiter moved up behind Usagi, putting herself in a spot to get her or Ami out of the way if there was any trouble, while Pluto and Saturn stood and moved between Usagi and who—or whatever was out there. ChibiMoon was right behind them, and Mars moved out to one side, close enough to reach Usagi if Jupiter had to move Ami, but far enough away to be free to use her flames without harming the others. Luna was mirroring Jupiter to Usagi’s left while Uranus and Neptune had both vanished into another swirling funnel. Venus used a quick signal in their private hand-code to send Artemis ranging around to the other side of the rockpile, which she scaled in a single leap, getting a slightly better view—it wasn’t really that high off the ground—and the angle to rain destruction down on anything that came out of the trees with unfriendly intentions.

Ryo had watched their entire discussion/argument in silent bemusement, and he was the last to move now, turning to look at the forest with that curiously absent look which suggested he was trying to call a vision. He blinked, frowned in a puzzled manner, and then gently shook Ami awake. She came to only very slowly, yawning prodigiously and looking up at Ryo with a mildly confused but rather appreciative smile, and it wasn’t until Jupiter coughed politely that Ami blinked and sprang to her feet, blushing to the roots of her hair. Jupiter silenced her stammered words by simply covering Ami’s mouth with one hand, then pointing past her to the trees with the other. Ami nodded, shook her head to clear away the haze, and got out her computer. She noticed the force-bubble then and started to speak a second time, but thought better of it and left the question for later.

Luna and Artemis heard it before the others did, the noise of boots scraping against stone, clomping onto hard-packed dirt, and every so often snapping a branch or crackling a pile of leaves. Their more sensitive ears and longer years of experience with tracking by sound identified only one pair of booted feet, but also picked out a soft, steady thud which was either a third foot or a staff or cane of some kind. Ami’s computer returned a similar conclusion: one humanoid was approaching.

A figure appeared from the shadows beneath the trees, and sure enough, in one hand it held a tall, gnarled, knob-headed branch with which it—he, actually—picked out the way. And it—he—certainly seemed to need the support of the thing, at least at first.

At first glance, the man was old, with long grey hair and beard and a weathered face that was dominated by two piercingly blue-grey eyes, whose intensity nicely complemented the hawklike proportions of the nose they framed. The Senshi could use the term ‘hawklike’ because there was a member of that particular family of birds perched on the man’s raised left hand, its talons dug into the thick leather glove beneath and its gaze fixed forward with the same intense-eyed, beaked manner as the old man.

Or was he really that old? As he got closer, the Senshi found it harder to be certain of the man’s age. For all the grey hair and weathered skin, the man didn’t have many visible wrinkles, and the long-boned fingers wrapped around the staff, though just as sun-browned and work-hardened as his face, were still straight and smooth. For that matter, the staff itself now appeared to be an affectation of style rather than function, for with his long, smooth strides and ramrod-straight yet somehow relaxed posture, the man hardly seemed the sort to need an aid to walk.

The man came to a halt at the edge of the clearing—and Usagi’s barrier—and looked at them each in turn. His gaze was made all the more intimidating by the fact that he was a head taller than even Artemis, whose human form had a slight height advantage over Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto. Fortunately, the not-so-old man’s eyes didn’t appear to be hostile, so his searching look was moderately bearable. He studied them for three minutes and only blinked five times during it: once when he looked at Pluto; again when he saw Saturn standing next to her; a third time when he noticed ChibiMoon behind them; and then twice more when he spotted Usagi beyond them all. His head shifted to the left to regard Artemis—who was leaning nonchalantly against the boulders and nodded politely—and then turned towards something up in the trees off to his right. A moment later, Neptune and Uranus descended, looking a bit disappointed that their hiding place had been so quickly picked out.

“Well, Xerxes,” the man said finally, his voice low-pitched, very clear, and intended mostly for the hawk, “I understand now how you lost that rabbit. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, my friend. And better luck with your next hunt.”

The man raised his left arm, and the hawk took wing with an ease which suggested it had launched from that particular perch many times in the past. After watching the bird climb into the cloudy sky, the strange man’s eyes returned to the Senshi. Then he extended one hand towards the edge of Usagi’s glowing barrier, pushing against it lightly. Usagi could feel it through the ginzuishou as the wall of energy absorbed the inconsequential force of that push, keeping the hand out without bending even the slightest fraction of a millimeter.

“A very impressive display, your Highness,” he complimented Usagi, nodding both in recognition and approval. “But you might want to give some thought to extending such a defensive barrier _below_ ground level, should you ever have need of it in the future. Much better,” he said a moment later, right after Usagi had adjusted the shield. “Of course, when you’re totally isolated like that, you have to make sure to keep cycling fresh air in and stale air out, or else you’ll suffocate yourself"—Usagi turned white and made another hasty adjustment—“and it’s important to be careful to seal the flows of air energy you use, so that someone can’t ride them through the barrier and...”

“Will you stop doing that?!” Usagi demanded, half-shouting and half- pleading.

“Of course.” He bowed his head again.

There was a brief silence, and then in spite of herself, Usagi asked, "How’s that?” Part of her—Serenity—was feeling like she was back in a class of magic on the Moon. The man tested the barrier with his hand for a second time, and once again he nodded.

“Very well done, Princess. The only way to improve it further would be to increase the level of power"—he eyed her for a moment—“but all things considered, the fact that you’re able to manage even this much is an impressive achievement.”

“Thank you.” Usagi could be forgiven for sounding a bit snippy.

“Even so,” the man continued, “I can’t imagine that your mother will be very happy to learn you’ve removed the crystal from its resting place, to say nothing of its proper era.”

There was a silence. “How did... no,” Usagi said, answering her own question, “let me guess. Pluto and I are dead giveaways, aren’t we?”

The man nodded. “Pluto’s appearances in the timestream are not _always_ the result of her duty to guard the Time Gate, but that is the case more often than not. You are unquestionably _a_ Serenity, but the current Princess of that line is only six years old, and her mother is thirty-two. There are similar conflicts of age between these Senshi and the contemporary Senshi and their pupils—none of whom happen to be Saturn, or this young lady.” His eyes turned to ChibiMoon briefly, then went back to Usagi. “Your sister, perhaps?”

“A... close relation.”

“I see.” Those hawklike eyes examined ChibiMoon again. “I happen to know that there have never been any Senshi in the Royal Family of the Moon Kingdom, so I must conclude that you are from a future age, when a new power has either developed or been created. By the design of that uniform, your power is that of a Greater Senshi, which means your source is either a planet or a moon of considerable size, latent power, or both. Several moons of the outer system would do, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say your resemblance to the Princess is more than a coincidence.”

“Would you like to guess my weight next?” ChibiMoon asked. Wisely, the man ignored the question.

“You would be the Senshi of the Moon, then?”

“ChibiMoon, actually.” She curtseyed with an impressive amount of grace and dignity, considering that the gesture had been designed with something a great deal more full than a miniskirt in mind. “Pleased to meet you, milord.”

“Your servant, milady,” the man replied, executing a courtly bow which defied the common, hard-worn appearance of his clothing. “And my name is Merlin.” In the sudden hush which followed, a look of resigned annoyance crossed the man’s features. “I see you’ve heard of me.”

“Uh... actually,” Usagi said, “no.”

Merlin raised a curious eyebrow as the group facefault shook the trees.

# 

The trek through the woods lasted about twenty minutes, the old man leading the way and pointing out all the rough spots in the trail so those who were being assisted along—Usagi and Ami—and those who were doing the assisting—Mars and Luna, and Ryo and Jupiter, respectively—would have plenty of warning. Most of the others were busy keeping one eye on the forest in case anything else showed up, and another eye on their guide—not just because he might _not_ be who claimed to be, but also because he very well _might_.

Venus was of absolutely no help during this entire time. She wasn’t typically the greatest reader or historian, but she’d spent a lot of time in England, once, and the whole ‘Camelot thing’ was a pretty big part of British mythology. She absolutely would NOT shut up about everything she’d ever heard, read, half-heard, or misread about Merlin. He was supposed to age backwards and see the future by remembering it; he could change shape and become any creature in the world, be it animal, bird, bug, or fish; he could tame dragons with a wave of his left hand and conjure a thunderstorm with his right.

Nothing in any book or movie even came close to mentioning a link between Merlin and the Moon Kingdom, but as Venus pointed out, it was pretty silly to think that the most powerful wizard in history wouldn’t have at least _some_ idea of what was going on up there. Luna had to admit—reluctantly—that she had seen some records to support Venus’ insistent claims, and that of course only sent the girl off into the realm of “See?” and “I told you so.”

They finally sent her to the back of the line to bend Uranus’ ear for the last six or seven minutes so the rest of them could have a little peace. What they had overlooked with this strategy was that Uranus had been picking up a lot on how to control the wind recently, and there was very shortly a light breeze moving along from somewhere behind them, carrying Venus’ excited and overly loud whispers along to everyone else.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make life worthwhile.

The house at which they finally arrived stood alone in the middle of what had to be the darkest part of the forest, a low-roofed, ivy-wrapped heap of stones and wood squatting in the empty space between three big oak trees, and looking not unlike the larger cousin of the pile of boulders they’d stopped at earlier. Like its owner, there was more about the place than met the eye at the first glance, for once the Senshi had stepped inside, they found a huge chamber which simply should not have been able to fit within the dimensions of the building they’d seen. It begged the question of whether the space within the house had somehow been magically expanded, or if instead everyone and everything which entered it was shrunk without realizing it.

A large table with a mix of over a dozen chairs and stools and one particularly large padded armchair scattered around it stood in the center of the vast room, near the fireplace, over which hung three oddly-shaped masses of blue-green crystal or glass. The central space held by the table and chairs was surrounded by other spaces, each of which had apparently been set aside for a certain purpose. One, filled with pots and pans and pieces of cutlery, was obviously the kitchen; next to it was a great array of beakers and bottles and weird metal tools, a kitchen of a very different kind. A third corner was piled high with half-open chests and cabinets, and the fourth held three separate doors and two staircases, one going up and the other going down. Books were everywhere—on the table and chairs, on shelves on the wall, on the floor, and one or two were even floating in the air since most of the other available space seemed to have been taken—and they were joined by exotic bric-a-brac which ranged from fanciful animal skulls and wooden carvings to a complete, slightly rusty suit of plate armor.

The place made Jupiter’s fingers itch with longing for a broom.

There were also a number of animals in the huge room. A great grey hound lounging at ease before the dancing flames of the fire looked up briefly as the guests entered, and then went back to his nap. A cat with black-striped grey fur bounded out of the shadows to rub itself around Luna’s legs and purr spectacularly until she gave in and picked it up, at which point it nuzzled at her face; Luna pointedly ignored the sharp look Artemis gave her and the cat, which just happened to be a tom. ChibiMoon took a seat at the table and blinked as a trio of chittering black and grey ferrets appeared on the chair opposite her; Uranus spotted a puff-feathered owl snoozing away in a shadowy corner of the too-high rafters; and after a moment of listening, Pluto heard squeaks from another dark corner which had to be rodents of some kind, though she couldn’t tell for sure whether they were of the flying variety or not. Given the height, she didn’t dismiss the possibility.

As she turned through a slow circuit to study the room, Mars found herself nose-to-beak with a great raven, fully as large as the hawk that had been perched on Merlin’s hand earlier. It looked dark and regal, mysterious and wise, and she took it to be a stuffed trophy or even an entirely artificial creation until its head turned, the dark eye that was now aimed towards her blinking once. Looking into that eye, Mars realized once again how much she had missed Phobos and Deimos during her month-long stay in the future. She realized something else, too, though she couldn’t have said how.

“Your name is Thrax, isn’t it?” The raven’s head bobbed once, and when she reached out to brush the feathers along the back of its neck, it did not pull away. The old man regarded the two of them with a neutral gaze and an equally neutral nod.

Thrax—if that was indeed the bird’s name—did flinch and squawk as a black shape exploded through one of the open windows, a much more normal-sized crow who was fluttering madly and cawing loudly as it flew into the room and began to circle around overhead. The humans and most of the animals looked up at the bird, and Mars was stunned to realize that the noises it made were actual words.

“Company! Company!” The bird’s voice was rough, raucous, and high-pitched, but its words were amazingly clear. “Old fool in the forest! Fools for tea! Caw!” With avian agility, the noisy crow landed atop Pluto’s staff, gripping the metalwork for balance as it leaned down to examine the Garnet Orb with one greedy eye. “A pretty for Rooky! A pretty! Awp!” it added, startled back into flight as the Orb pulsed once, either because Pluto had told it to or because the jewel didn’t care for the crow’s company. The crow—Rooky, apparently—flapped about crazily and then settled onto Usagi’s head, right between the odangos, and dipped its head over the front, turning its head to one side to meet her gaze. “Who’s the fool? Who’s the fool?”

“Get off my head,” Usagi warned, “or you’re a chicken dinner.”

Ignoring the threat, the crow examined the odangos for a moment, poking curiously at one with his beak before his attention was caught by the small strings of pearls that always appeared in Usagi’s hair when she became Serenity.

“Pretties!” he cawed in delight. “Pretties for Rooky!” He pecked at one of the stones and then leapt into flight with another spooked squawk as a flash of white energy pecked back. The crow’s next target was the head of Merlin’s staff; clearly, Rooky didn’t care to risk being pulsed at or zapped again.

“Behave yourself, Rook,” Merlin said sternly. “These are guests. And why aren’t you with the lad? I told you to keep an eye on him.”

“Old fool! Old fool! Awp!” The bird’s head continued to move about—he seemed incapable of sitting still—looking at each of the ‘fools’ in turn. He cawed loudly at Luna and Artemis, apparently sensing their feline origins, and his feathers shuffled nervously when he looked at Saturn. Then he looked at Mars and fell silent altogether before fluttering over to the table in front of her. The crow’s voice was softer and not quite so high-pitched as he crooned, “Who’s the pretty lady?”

Of course, Rook’s speech patterns were not nearly so concise as common text and proper spelling would have one believe. Even though his words were intelligible, the fact remained that he was creating them using a hard, inflexible beak and a tongue with a different shape than what the humans or the shapechanging cats possessed, and that resulted in an unavoidable accent. For example, he couldn’t produce a hard ‘k’ sound without adding a long ‘e’ or an ’aw’ after it, and his lack of lips made finer control of certain sounds like long o’s difficult, where they were not altogether impossible, so when he said his own name, it came out something like ‘Ruhkee’. ‘Fool’—one of his favorite words—typically came out as ‘hool’ or ‘huhl’, and it was actually this similarity in sound to the word ‘huhan’—or human—which made Rook habitually call them all ‘hools’. That, and a smug surety of his own surpassing cleverness.

Despite the fact that the vowel sounds in ‘lady’ were stretched out to something like ‘laaaydeee’, Rooky’s greeting to Mars came through very clearly. She was surprised at hearing a respectful mode of address come out of such a seemingly rude creature, but she was also blushing at being called a pretty lady. Not that she didn’t feel she was worthy of the title, it was just that having it handed to her in a compliment from a scrawny, hyperactive, and loudmouthed member of an entirely different species in front of all her friends was embarrassing.

“Who’s the pretty lady?” Rooky repeated, hopping a little closer to her outstretched hand, which had been frozen in place by surprise, and brushing the back of his head up against it. Out of habit, Mars gently stroked the light feathers, and the small crow responded with a low croaking sound. Then, greatly daring, he hopped up from the tabletop onto the same hand, holding on firmly but being careful not to pinch. Maybe it was just their imagination, but the Senshi got the impression that Rooky cast a triumphant look back at Thrax, who was far too large to manage the same trick.

“Who’s the pretty lady?” Rooky said for a third time, cocking his head at an angle. His eyes all but glowed red as he was momentarily mesmerized by Mars’ earrings, the jewel in her tiara, and the larger stone on the front of her uniform.

“M-my name is Rei,” Mars stammered.

“Rei?” Rooky repeated. “Lady? Rei-di?” He sounded out the words, apparently very pleased at how close they sounded, and then he started to sing. "Rei-diii! Rei-diii! Rooky finds a pretty Rei-diii!”

Mars didn’t know if it was possible for a person to die from sheer mortification, but she thought this might be a good time to try it.

“Rook,” Merlin said, “I asked you a question, and I expect an answer.”

“Otter’s a fool! Otter’s a fool! A fool, a fool, a boring fool! All chores, all day, all boring!”

“He’s very hardworking. Unlike some around here that I could name.”

“A fool!” Merlin rolled his eyes skyward and shook his head in resignation.

“You’d think that by now I’d know better than to talk to a crow about work ethic.” He sighed. “Never mind. Rook, go back and keep an eye on that boy. Make sure he stays out of trouble.”

Rooky preened at one wing and gave no sign that he was going anywhere. Merlin considered that for a long moment and then reached into one of the dozen or so small pouches hanging from his belt and the leather strap running across his chest, pulling out a handful of seeds of one sort or another. He offered these to Thrax, who accepted them graciously. The logic here was clear, but except for a slight ruffle of his feathers, Rooky didn’t take the bait and demand to be fed. Merlin seemed surprised until he realized that, while Rooky might want to be fed, he knew he’d have to give up something else he wanted to get the food—and at least for the moment, the crow seemed to want to stay with Mars more than he wanted a snack.

Mars set down the Book and held out her free hand for the old man to give her some of the seeds, which she then brought close to Rooky. She let him eat perhaps a quarter of them in three quick pecks before closing her fingers around the rest and pulling her hand away.

“No more for you,” she said.

“Seeds? More seeds for Rooky? Pretty please, pretty Rei-di?”

“Only if you do as you’re told.” Food-based bribery, she knew, was one of the quickest ways to get anything out of a lesser intellect. At least, it always worked with Usagi, and Artemis would jump through flaming hoops for tuna fish. Mars had to wonder briefly how Venus was going to coax the lazy cat into doing anything now that he could open cans for himself.

“Rooky goes! For the pretty Rei-di!” And he launched himself, flying out the window with the same frantic energy he’d shown on the way in, this time calling out “The pretty Rei-diii!” as he went.

“I think you’ve made a friend there, Mars,” Neptune observed.

Mars ignored the comment and held out the rest of the seeds to Thrax, who croaked appreciatively and gulped down a few beakfuls of his own. “I don’t suppose _you_ can talk, too?”

“No,” Merlin said, setting his staff in a corner with no less than four other equally gnarled lengths of wood, “that’s a particular talent of Rook’s. That, stealing, and getting into trouble. I suspect it has something to do with the wild magic area where he was living before I found him. Such areas, as you may or may not already know, are created when too much magic is unleashed in too small an area in too short a span of time—usually because a few contentious apprentices out looking for trouble with their master’s wands happen to find it— and the end result of such incidents is rather like the warping effect of Saturn, albeit on a smaller and slower scale. Talking birds are actually a rather benign example of what can be created by them.”

“He... uh... mentioned an ‘Otter’,” Venus said slowly. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Not yet, but he will be. Currently he’s a fifteen year-old village boy who fancies himself something of a knight-errant and spends half his time working in the fields and the other half battling dragons and vile miscreants in the form of a dozen or so local bullies, lending a helping hand to some village maidens, and generally getting into a lot of good-natured trouble. And no,” Merlin added, without turning around, “I’m not letting you get within five miles of him if I can possibly help it.”

“Why not?” Venus objected, on the verge of a whine.

“Because he’s not intellectually prepared to deal with you yet. I expect it’ll take me a good twenty or thirty years more to grind off his rougher edges and cram enough good sense and learning into his head so I can introduce him to the Moon Kingdom, to say nothing of women who can think and fight for themselves.”

“Stick him in a room with Uranus or Jupiter for ten minutes,” Artemis suggested. “He’ll get the message. And a concussion, probably, but...” He shrugged.

“It may yet come to that,” Merlin agreed. “Of course, once he gets his hands on that blasted sword... well, that’s a problem for another time.” He was standing in front of the fire now, lifting part of one of the crystal objects off and looking down into it with a satisfied nod. “The tea should be done in another minute or two. Please, make yourselves comfortable. And you three,” he added, turning to point at the ferrets, who had climbed across the table so they could poke their noses curiously at ChibiMoon, “get off the table.”

The placement and design of the chairs turned out to be every bit as serendipitous as the presence of the three crystal teapots over the fireplace. The great armchair was obviously Merlin’s own, so the Senshi chose other seats for themselves—or perhaps the seats chose them. Each seemed to be perfectly, individually shaped for whomever sat on it. Usagi got the one with the most cushions, settling herself back with a sigh and a smile which said they were going to have a fight to get her out of the thing. Luna and Mars immediately sat down to Usagi’s left and right, and Venus took the seat beyond Mars, the chair closest to the fire and to Merlin’s place—and to the dog, which was tall enough even laying down for Venus’ dangling right arm to idly scratch him behind the ears.

The second chair left of Luna’s seat seemed curiously large until Jupiter push... er, that is, until she _helped_ Ami and Ryo sit in the thing. While too large for one person, the chair had plenty of space for two, especially since the two in question tried to sit as far apart as they could. The chair was having none of that, though, and Ami and Ryo both quickly discovered that, while the chair was extremely comfortable when they were sitting close, fidgeting even the slightest hair’s breadth apart made it extremely UNcomfortable.

The old man’s turned back got a couple of suspicious looks right about then, but he was very busy with the tea and failed to notice.

Once she had Ami and Ryo settled, Jupiter looked at the empty seat next to Luna, then up at Artemis, and rather deliberately took the chair beyond Ami and Ryo instead. Pluto was already sitting beyond Jupiter, leaving her staff standing at its usual impossibly upright angle behind the chair, and the spot after her was ChibiMoon’s. Saturn had quickly claimed the next seat for herself, and Uranus and Neptune had the last two seats on that side, but the Silence Glaive was giving Saturn some obvious difficulty; it was not exactly the sort of thing you bring to the table, and Neptune had raised her to have better manners than that. She glanced at Pluto’s staff for a moment, obviously debating with herself whether or not she wanted to try and duplicate the effect of immobility. Saturn knew she couldn’t play the same kind of games with Time as Pluto did, but if she could adjust the force of gravity on the Glaive, redirect some of the pull to make her weapon fall _up_ at the same rate at which it was falling _down_...

Merlin looked up from the fireplace as his house rather abruptly gained a new skylight. Saturn was standing with her left hand holding empty air and her face turned towards the ceiling with a startled expression.

“Oops.” A flicker of energy brought the Glaive back to her hand and filled up the small hole in the roof. “Sorry about that.”

“No harm done. But you actually do it like this.”

There might have been a few lingering doubts about the truth of the old man’s identity—after all, while he certainly _talked_ a good piece about magic, had a few magical qualities about himself, and a few more magical things in his home, he hadn’t actually _done_ any magic yet—but those doubts evaporated when the three crystal teapots levitated themselves up from the fireplace and drifted towards the table. At the same time, an entire set of cups, saucers, and trays—all in the same blue-green crystal—drifted up out of the chaos of the kitchen area and in from one of the doors in the corner.

Venus started grinning hugely as everything floated smoothly into place, and Usagi’s eyes sparkled as the lids of the trays lifted away to reveal neat little rows and carefully-balanced piles of cookies and pastries. The crystal cups floated up to the teapots in three neat rows, filled themselves, then moved towards each person at the table. Saturn watched it all very closely, looked at the Glaive, and then carefully let go of it. This time, it settled to the floor with a soft thump, but after that it remained upright; satisfied, Saturn took her seat just as a group of fifteen small jugs and bowls assumed an orbit around each other above the center of the table.

“The cream,” Merlin said, taking his own place and indicating three of the jugs with a finger and a slight increase in their altitude. “Milk, sugar, honey, and butter.” All of the containers bobbed in turn before neatly settling to the table. “Help yourselves.”

The next few moments were a maze of “Pass the sugar" and “Who took the milk?” and about a dozen other requests and comments. Neptune took a sip of her greenish tea, made a slight face as she considered the taste, then added a bit of honey and some cream. It was much better the second time, but Neptune frowned anyway; she was certain she recognized the flavor, and she couldn’t think from where.

Usagi, to the surprise of most of the others, didn’t attempt to consume everything in sight, or even within arm’s reach. She was simply still too full from that huge meal at the Neraan estate to handle anything more than a biscuit and a handful of sugar cookies. A handful and a half. And maybe a small piece of that cherry cheesecake...

While Neptune puzzled and Usagi planned, Ami was adding sugar to her tea—a lot of sugar. She usually preferred milk, but in her current state, warm milk in any quantity would probably send her off to sleep for the next ten hours. Sleep was inevitable, but enough sugar in her system might let her make some sort of meaningful contribution in the next hour or so. After stirring in a couple of spoons’ worth of sugar, Ami took a sip to see if she hadn’t killed the flavor of whatever sort of tea this was. She had to set the cup back down in a hurry and try not to cough.

“Ami-chan? Are you okay?”

Ami made a sound and took a closer look at her ‘tea’, confirming what her tastebuds had already told her. The liquid in the cup was a very rich, dark brown color, and she recognized the smell. Ami didn’t typically drink coffee, but that was definitely what this was; the heaps of sugar she’d stirred in had neutralized some of the bitter taste, but it was still _very_ strong.

“Ami-chan?” Ryo repeated.

“I’m okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’m awake now,” she added.

“Too strong?” Merlin asked, shaking his head.

“Just right,” Uranus countered, taking a long drink. Ami watched for a moment, remembering that Uranus preferred coffee over tea, and that she drank it black. Just the thought of what this stuff must taste like without anything to take the edge off was enough to make Ami shudder.

“Here,” Merlin said, sending a different cup to Ami, “this may be a little better.”

While Ami tested the second cup—and found the pale, orange-brown cinnamon tea within to be a vast improvement over that deadly coffee—Pluto was examining her own cup with a look of intense distraction. ChibiMoon noticed.

“Something wrong, Pu? Too much sugar?”

“I know what this is,” Pluto said, her voice as distracted as her expression as she gently shifted her cup, slowly swirling the contents. “How do I know? And what is it?”

“Martian rustthorn green,” Merlin replied, frowning curiously. “Your favorite.”

There was a pause. ChibiMoon looked from the old man to Pluto’s cup; Neptune blinked, took a sip of her own tea, which was the same as Pluto’s, and blinked again.

“I knew I recognized this,” she muttered, turning to Pluto. “It’s that same brand you were always drinking when we lived together.” Her eyes widened and went back to Merlin. “How did you know?”

“Ah. That is the question, isn’t it? How do I know anything?” He drew a long-stemmed pipe and a small pouch out of the folds of his long shirt and began filling the bowl of the pipe with a crushed, gold-tinted leaf as he talked. “How did I know that this particular tea is Pluto’s favorite? How do I know that your past life"—he looked at Neptune—“was named Larissa, or that yours"—he turned to Venus—“was called Ishtar? How do I know about the destruction of the Moon Kingdom by the youma armies of the Dark Kingdom, or the resurrection of the children of the fallen realm on Earth, ten centuries later?”

“You... uh... you knew about that?” Usagi said with a weak smile. “About us?”

“It would be more accurate to say that I _will_ know.” Merlin paused to blow a silvery streamer of smoke towards the fireplace. “The soul of a living being is eternal, but the bodies it inhabits are not. Each eventually passes away, and the soul moves on to a new existence, a new body which is unaware of its prior life. You, Princess, understand better than most people what happens when one incarnation becomes aware of another, and a past life is allowed to influence the present. So let me ask you this; what do you think would happen if a present life were to become aware of multiple past lives? What if, instead of just one or two or three, a person could remember as many as thirty of their soul’s separate existences?”

Usagi blinked. “I’m not sure. I... Usagi and Serenity get along well enough, but we’re really not that much different from each other in the sense of personality. And at the same time, even though we think and act alike, our lives are different enough that we don’t have any trouble keeping them separate. But thirty...” She—or they; her voice had shifted when she mentioned the names, as if each persona were speaking of her other self—paused. “I think,” she said at last, in a quiet voice, “that a person would have to be patient, wise, and very, very brave to deal with that many past lives without losing their mind.”

“Either that or incredibly stubborn and with an ego large enough to blot out the sun at noon,” Merlin observed, speaking around the stem of his pipe. "Mind you, either combination will work, but most people react better to the first sort of person than to the second.”

“So which are you?” Venus asked. “Brave and wise, or pigheaded and self-centered?”

Merlin chuckled. “I’ve been called all of those from time to time, but my situation is actually a little more complicated.” He blew out a series of four smoke-rings, each passing through the one before it in quick succession. “You see, I was one of those people with the fortune, good or ill, to be born able to recall a large number of my prior lives. At the same time, I was also one of those people born with a great deal of latent magical talent. The two traits— I’d hesitate to call them gifts, exactly—interacted, and as a result, I was not only able to see the past existences of my soul, but a number of its future ones as well. That,” he added, “is why my face appears to be young and old at the same time. They say the body is shaped by the mind, and _my_ mind happens to think of itself in a number of different ways, and Times. In two of those lives, I will meet you.”

Usagi looked at him very closely; so did Luna and Artemis, and finally they all had to shake their heads. “You don’t remind me of anyone from either the Moon Kingdom or Tokyo,” Usagi said.

“And it’s just as well that I don’t. In your time on the Moon, I will not be a creature of magic, but a common soldier, quite ordinary and unassuming; my future life in Tokyo is equally mundane. I will not tell you who I will be, because then at the very least, you would treat that person in your time differently; at the worst, you might be tempted to ask them for help which they simply cannot give you. So far as I know, _I_ am the only incarnation of my soul which is aware of the others and has access to their knowledge, and I would like to keep it that way if I can. Knowing things in advance is not always a blessing, and recalling the truth of things long past is sometimes just as bad. Besides, so long as you have that"—he pointed at the Book—“you have at your disposal a source of information far greater than anything even I could offer.”

“Assuming that I ever figure out how to _find_ what we need to know,” Mars muttered.

“Stop that,” Usagi told her. “You’ve barely had an hour to read the thing since it opened. You’re doing fine.”

“Oh yeah. Real fine. We’re still stuck over a thousand years out of our proper Time, we may or may not even _have_ a proper Time to go home to, we _still_ don’t know who or what was responsible for Pluto’s amnesia, and...”

She stopped talking as Merlin began to cough violently, sending a cloud of smoke in all directions. Venus quickly stood up, hesitated for a moment, and then went ahead and slapped him on the back until he stopped hacking up smoke and waved for her to cease.

“You okay?” she asked carefully.

“Fine, thank you.” He looked at Pluto. “Amnesia?” She nodded slowly, and the old wizard sat back in his chair. “I was wondering why you were spending so much time in a single period of history, but I never would have guessed...” He stopped and looked around at the others. “How did it happen?”

“We don’t know,” Usagi replied. “Not really. Someone or something pushed her out of her place by the Time Gate about a month and a half ago, and we’ve been trying since then to figure out who, how, and why.”

“From what you said earlier,” Uranus said, raising her cup, “my money’s on Chaos. Or one of its buddies.”

“Chaos?” Merlin echoed, his ears picking up at the name. “And... friends?”

Uranus nodded and swallowed the mouthful of coffee. “We ran into them at the Time Gate.”

“There were nine of them altogether,” Neptune said. “Chaos, three women who looked something like Pluto, a very ordinary-looking man with grey hair and eyes that we’ve apparently been encountering a great deal, and four others we haven’t met yet. There was also one empty seat.”

Merlin’s face went white. “The Court.”

Eyes widened. “You _know_ who those creeps are?” Jupiter said.

“Everyone knows who—or rather, what—they are. And at the same time, no one is aware of it.” Seeing her start to frown, Merlin hastened to explain. “The beings you saw were the physical manifestations of the eight primal forces of the universe—Order and Chaos, Evil and Good, Life and Death, the three faces of Time, and the Balance which is created from all the others.”

Ami frowned. “That sounds almost like a line from that chant you were reciting when you reversed Medea’s Time Bomb, Pluto.”

“I’ll... have to take your word for that, Ami-chan. I... um... I can’t actually remember what I said. Well, I can’t,” she said, her voice becoming defensive as they turned to look at her in surprise. “I was seeing... I don’t remember what I was seeing, except that there was a lot of it. Something about a pattern, and a message... and it was just too much for me to hold on to, okay?”

“It’s okay,” ChibiMoon said, patting her on the arm. “We believe you.”

“What are they?” Saturn asked, looking at Merlin. “This Court, I mean. What do they do? What do they _want_?”

Merlin made a face. “There is no easy way to answer those questions. Not many people are ever made aware of the existence of the Court, and none have ever truly understood what they do.” He tapped on his lower lip with the end of his pipe for a moment. “There is a legend,” Merlin said finally, “or perhaps it is better described as a theory. Some people believe that universe began as pure Chaos, all things existing at once, without borders or separation or limitation. Everything simply _was_, and at the same time, it was not, since there was no difference to any of it.”

“This sort of talk always puts me to sleep,” Uranus muttered.

“Then it’s a good thing you have all that coffee, isn’t it?” Neptune whispered back. “Now hush.”

“Into this primal Chaos,” Merlin was saying, “came the force of Time. It may have been sent from outside or somehow separated from the rest of Chaos, but when it appeared, it caused all else to separate as well, for Time is the force which keeps everything from happening at once, and allows the universe to proceed with some degree of Order. Order was the second force to appear, establishing the patterns of the material universe that we know, the rules which govern and direct all things—patterns which the remaining power of Chaos managed to influence and corrupt to some extent with randomness and disorder. Life eventually developed from this mix of Order and Chaos, bringing with it Death, and as Life developed and gained awareness of itself, the concepts of Good and Evil became separate from one another.”

“What about that whole ‘Look! There be light!’ business?” Venus asked, getting a brief silence followed by a lot of long-suffering sighs. Merlin blinked and looked at her as if he were about to say something, then shook his head and thought better of it.

“It was the manifestation of Good and Evil and their associated emotional impulses which supposedly caused the original creation of the Court, for these two forces require awareness, which none of the others had previously possessed. A flower may be beautiful, but it is not necessarily a Good thing; it is just a flower, alive for a time and then dead. Similarly, a hurricane may be destructive, but that does not make it Evil; it is simply a form of weather. To be ‘Good’ or ‘Evil’ requires a choice, the awareness to make that choice, and the knowledge to make it for all the right or wrong reasons.”

Merlin blew out another plume of smoke. “Of course, a choice can only be made once, with one outcome, and both Good and Evil are forever determined not to allow their opposite to be the choice that is made. So they struggle against each other, and as a result, cause the other forces to struggle in turn. The Court came into existence as a means to give limits to otherwise limitless powers, to define the rules of the contest and to contain it so that the full strength of the opposing forces is not unleashed all at once, for such an encounter would destroy the whole of creation. Or so the story goes. As you can imagine, no one’s ever tried to test that particular part of the theory.”

While Merlin paused to puff out a few more smoke ring, Ryo looked around the table. “Everyone who is now thoroughly confused, please raise your hand.”

ChibiMoon, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Artemis, Usagi, and Ryo himself all put one hand up. Merlin chuckled.

“Yes, it’s not the sort of concept you can come to grips with in an afternoon. It’s been nearly sixty years since I first heard that story, and parts of it still give me a headache when I go back and mull over them.” His next laugh held a wry tone. “And of course, since it _is_ a tale conceived by the human mind, the entire thing may be wrong. The only ways I can think of to find out for sure would be to either go and ask the Court...”

“Been there, tried that.” Venus made a gesture with her left hand that approximated the crashing of an airplane.

“...or to read the Book of Ages very closely and hope your luck is in.”

“Which is basically like looking for a needle in a whole field full of haystacks,” Mars muttered.

“Or you could, under better circumstances, have asked Pluto. If any mortal being could have said what exactly it is that the Court does, it would have been her.” Merlin’s smile was not a humorous one. “That, of course, is likely half the reason her memories were taken from her in the first place. After twenty-four centuries of watching over the Time Gate, she was in a position to know and tell too much about whatever is going on in your era.”

“Twenty-_four_ centuries?” Luna asked in surprise.

Merlin nodded. “One for each year of her life within the flow of Time, as I understand it.” In the middle of taking another draw on his pipe, he looked at them. “She didn’t tell you.” It was not a question, but Luna shook her head anyway. The old man’s mustache danced as he breathed out sharply. “Not surprising, really. She’s always been rather close-mouthed about herself. Not that I don’t understand the reasons for it, but it’s bloody annoying sometimes.”

“You’ve noticed,” Uranus said in a wry voice. Then she did a double-take. "Wait a minute. How did...”

“...did I know? I thought you would have guessed by now; I’ve met her before. In a number of my prior lives, in fact, and others in the future besides the two from which I know the rest of you. And a few times in my current life as well.”

Pluto stared at him, a very fragile and desperate hope welling up in her eyes. “Could you... please, can you...” She couldn’t even say it.

“Here’s an idea,” Venus said suddenly, interrupting Merlin’s reply and earning a shocked, almost angry look from Pluto. “Why not just find Pluto _now_ and have her sit down with herself for a long talk?” Pluto’s expression changed again; clearly, she hadn’t thought of this.

“Wouldn’t work,” Merlin said. “Pluto can affect Time the way she normally does because she’s outside of it; your prior encounters with her, and mine, and anyone else’s who has met her since she took up custody of the Time Gate, would have been with a Time-displaced projection and not the true physical reality. It’s the only way she can be effective in so many different Times while still keeping watch over the Gate in the eternal present. She’s been physically returned to Time now, so she isn’t _at_ the Time Gate.”

Ami, Neptune, Luna, and Pluto all frowned. “There’s a hole in that reasoning somewhere,” Luna said. “I think.”

“I think I see how it might work,” Pluto disagreed. “But I don’t know for sure.”

“How much _do_ you know?” Merlin asked, not ungently. “How much have you relearned?”

“My name—at least, what they think my name is.” Except for Ami, ChibiMoon, and Neptune, the Senshi blinked, for it hadn’t occurred to them that ’Meiou Setsuna’ might be an assumed name. Ami and Neptune had both guessed a long time ago that this might be the case—the odds of whatever long-vanished era in which Pluto had been born having the same naming customs as modern Japan were too remote to even consider—while ChibiMoon didn’t really care; to her, Pluto was simply Pluto.

“I know where I was born,” Pluto continued, “at least in a general geographical sense, and I know how old... no,” she corrected herself, “I don’t know how old I am. I know that I’ve spent enough time _in_ Time to age twenty- four years, and I know the day I was born, but not the year. I remember a lot of information about the rest of the world, I’ve been told a great deal about what I do as Pluto, and I’ve learned something of how I do that, but I still don’t know very much about _me_, about the person who I used to be. I know that one of my ancestors was a slave named Lydia, that the eldest daughter in every generation of my family since her has been a Senshi of Pluto... and that except for my eyes, I look like my mother.” She ignored the startled looks and kept talking. “I work as a seamstress, and I’m pretty good at it even if I don’t know why, and I can see things—events and places—in Time with my mind.” She smiled unsteadily. “And now I know that I like this tea.”

“As long as we have all the important bits covered,” Merlin agreed with grave humor. “Very well. If the powers that be have allowed you to come here, then you’re obviously supposed to hear what I have to say. Which is, as usual, little enough.” He shook his head wryly. “Ah well. I shall begin at the beginning.”

# 

 

> MERLIN’S TALE
> 
> Deep below the wondrous palace of the Queens of the Moon lie vaults which few are allowed to enter, hidden chambers which contain many old secrets and sleeping powers, held in magical stasis and guarded by wards of deadly power until they are needed. One such chamber is the resting place of the ginzuishou, and another holds the mysterious Book of Ages, but not all the vaults hold items of such incredible power. Many are in fact archives of the half-forgotten lore of lost Atlantis, salvaged from the wreckage of the dead realm by the original Serenity and her supporters when the greatest Empire in human history fell apart and vanished forever. Within these storehouses of history sits the knowledge amassed by over ten thousand years of Atlantean scholars and philosophers and scientists, knowledge drawn from a thousand worlds across space and from cultures that were dead and gone before Atlantis itself rose from the dust of Earth.
> 
> In one of these vaults, there are several rows of Atlantean lore dedicated solely to the study of the curious powers of the women known collectively as the Senshi. From proven fact and speculated theory to wild legend and shadowy prophecy, all aspects of the known history of the Senshi are there. The books also record the names and deeds of a great many of the Senshi, most—if not all— of the women born with these powers during the age of Atlantis. The list of the names of the Senshi of Pluto is in particular quite complete and prominent, and perhaps the most prominent name on that list is Athena Nelara.
> 
> The only child of Lady Lyssa Nelara and Dorian of House Perantyr, Athena was in many ways the culmination of Atlantean society. She was the last of her line, the last of the family whose daughters had for over two thousand years been chosen by some higher power to be the guardians of the Time Gate. She was the last woman to inherit the powers and responsibilities of Pluto, but she was also the first to so totally and quickly master them. By the age of seventeen, Athena had completed the standard training regimen of the Senshi, and before she was twenty, she had succeeded her mother as their overall commander. At each testing of her abilities, Athena completely overturned existing records, proving herself to be the most powerful Senshi of Pluto since the raising of the Time Gate, her strength among all Senshi second only to that of Saturn.
> 
> Most Atlanteans who attained such a degree of power, whether magical or political, would have used it with little regard for the consequences. Not so a Senshi, and least of all Athena. Her devotion to duty was a legend in its own time, and her compassion and incorruptibility were rare traits in an age of ruthless ambition and cunning greed. In a curiously perverse twist of fate, these strengths of character gave a young woman with little to no active interest in politics an enormous influence among the Atlantean government; because they knew that she had no personal ambitions and could, moreover, look into the mists of Time for a greater understanding of any given act, the Lords of Atlantis often found themselves listening carefully to what this generally quiet girl had to say.
> 
> Many factions among the ruling Council of Lords and even within the Imperial Family itself sought time and again to gain Athena’s support, without success. This in turn gave her rarely-voiced opinions even greater weight, which increased the drive of the various groups to gain her as an ally. Conventional Atlantean political practices being what they were, when someone proved this influential and incorruptible, blackmail and assassination would quickly come into play, but neither of these options were of any use against Athena. How do you threaten someone who could simply step back in Time and erase you ahead of schedule? How do you kill the guardian of one of the most powerful forces of magic in the known universe?
> 
> You don’t, obviously. Athena had the rarest of all advantages in the political world—a position of unassailability. Between that, her powers, and her strengths of mind and personality, she would have made an almost perfect Empress. The fact that another family held the Imperial Throne at that time would have been no obstacle, for Athena was of an age with Janus, the Crown Prince of the Empire; moreover, she was a longtime friend and companion of the Prince’s twin sister Jenna, and there were indications that neither Athena nor Janus would have objected to being married.

# 

While Merlin paused to direct the crystal teapots to refill various cups that were nearing emptiness, Ryo was looking off into space, not in the way that indicated a vision, but rather because his attention was focused inward.

“Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom and war,” he said, “and the patron of weavers, if I remember correctly. Is that a coincidence?”

“No.” Merlin looked faintly amused. “Where do you suppose the Greeks got their inspiration? Athena was more than competent as the commander of the Senshi, and even as a child, she was wise beyond her years. And yes, she was an excellent weaver. I’ve wondered at times what might have happened if she’d married Janus and become the Empress.” He shook his head and sighed. “But of course, it didn’t happen.”

“Why not?” Venus asked. If there was one thing Venus hated in her unofficial capacity as the Goddess of Love, it was a romance that didn’t end well.

“I suppose you could say that an old ghost came back to haunt the Atlanteans.” The smoky breath Merlin let out took on an appropriately ghostly shape as he explained. “I can tell from what my future self will see in your city of Tokyo that you know what a mana nexus is.”

“We’ve had the pleasure,” Uranus confirmed dryly.

“Does this have something to do with gigantic city-stomping monsters getting loose because the mana nexi were draining the power of their prisons?” ChibiMoon asked, referring to the discourse Artemis had given them on the subject that same night they’d gone back to the Moon.

“In fact, it does, but there _were_ a number of other factors involved besides the beasts.” Merlin frowned, muttering something under his breath and moving the fingers of his left hand as if ticking off items on a list. “Roughly three thousand years ago,” he said at last, “there was a war between the Atlanteans and an army of daimons who somehow managed to get their claws on a stable dimensional rift and turn it into a gateway. It only lasted two weeks, but given the size of the army and the fact that it appeared right on Earth’s front doorstep, most of the Atlantean cities on the planet were partially or totally destroyed. The fallout from the kind of magical battles and wholesale destruction that were going on during those two weeks would have been bad enough, but the Atlanteans wrapped up the whole business by turning loose Saturn AND the Grail.” Merlin shook his head. “They never were the sort to settle for half-measures, but that’s always struck me as excessive.”

“How bad was it?” Saturn asked faintly.

“Well, the _daimons_ certainly regretted it. Every last one of them actually on Earth at the time was wiped out, and your predecessor spent the better part of the next five years running around in the daimon universe with an axe to grind.”

“Good for her.” Uranus punctuated the statement with another drink of her coffee, then forged ahead with another question so the old man wouldn’t have the opportunity to go into any great detail about what a past Saturn had done to the Earth. “Now, what does this ancient history lesson have to do with the fall of Atlantis?”

“The war left most of the Earth inhospitable to the kind of magic-dependent society to which the Atlanteans had become accustomed. Except for Atlantis itself and a few remote areas which hadn’t been quite so heavily assaulted as the rest, the ley lines had been so contaminated by magical fallout that trying to use magic to do anything was unreliable and even dangerous.” Merlin shrugged. “So they left. The bulk of those Atlanteans who had survived the war—and there were quite a few of them—moved out to the other planets in the first great wave of resettlement since the dawn days of their Empire. They never came back.”

“Why not?”

“They had no reason to. It took nearly a thousand years for the Earth’s imbalanced energies to sort themselves out again, and by the time that happened, the Atlanteans weren’t really Atlanteans or even Terrans anymore. The original relocated population would have gone back readily enough, but to their descendants, all those scattered planets were _home_, while Earth was little more than a savage, backwards world with nothing important except the Imperial City.” Merlin took a sip of his tea. “I lived three separate lives during the two thousand years after the exodus, and I can honestly say that a fair number of people didn’t even know Atlantis _was_ on Earth. To their way of thinking, the Imperial City was heaven, and Earth was... well, dirt. Most people who came to Earth from off-world went directly to one of the cities; only the native Atlanteans had any real contact with the rest of Earth, and even they preferred to ignore the ‘primitives’ as much as possible.” Merlin briefly closed his eyes and smiled. “That was a mistake of arrogance on their part. After all, if a neighbor’s house catches fire, you really want to know about it before your own home starts burning.”

“I take it from that that there were some fires, then?” Neptune inquired with a small smile.

“Some of the ‘gigantic city-stomping monsters’,” Merlin said with a look at ChibiMoon, “got loose when twenty-five centuries of increasing use of mana nexi after the daimon war finally took their toll. If someone from Atlantis had been out in the hinterlands paying attention, they might have realized trouble was coming _before_ it showed up on their front doorstep.”

“And started burning the house down,” Neptune added.

“Exactly. The Atlanteans eventually managed to put the beasts back in their prisons, but they had to relocate a considerable amount of their military strength to Earth to do it, and there were casualties. Many of the more distant nations objected to having their soldiers die in some pointless war on Earth, so the armies had to be relocated again, spread out to keep order on a number of worlds that were inching towards revolution. And right in the middle of all the social, political, and economic unrest _that_ was causing, _your_ several- generations-removed grandmother"—he pointed at Usagi—“unveiled her little creations.”

Her face lightly dusted with biscuit crumbs, Usagi immediately looked down at the ginzuishou.

“No, not that. Not at first. _Those_.” Merlin indicated Neptune’s tiara with the stem of his pipe. “Have any of you ever tried to fight without wearing your tiara?”

“Not really,” ChibiMoon admitted. “I _use_ mine as a weapon, and Jupiter and Uranus can fight pretty nasty even when they’re not transformed, but...”

“None of the Atlantean Senshi were wearing a tiara,” Neptune said thoughtfully. “And _our_ Venus at least seemed to be stronger than _theirs_ was. Her Crescent Beam nearly got through Medea’s barrier when everything was warped, and it really shouldn’t have been able to do that. Not when someone with the same power and at least twice her experience couldn’t pull it off.” Neptune turned to Merlin—who had looked up sharply when she mentioned ‘Atlantean Senshi’—and touched her own tiara. “So these affect our powers somehow?”

“They do, although they aren’t actually making you stronger. Your personal strength and control of your powers comes from within, and like anything else, there is a natural tendency for the power of the Senshi to get stronger with each new generation, as the human race as a whole grows and makes new discoveries about itself and its world. The function of the tiaras is keyed to the mystical radiation of your respective worlds, the energy which allows you to use your powers at all. That energy empowers and replenishes you, but as you move further and further away from the source, you are in contact with less and less of its force, so recovery takes longer. The tiaras counteract that and allow you to function at full strength and maximum endurance no matter where you go.”

“Or when,” Saturn added.

“Yes, or when.” The manner in which Merlin shook his head was the sort that suggested they all ought to be grateful for Pluto’s amnesia, since without it, she probably would have already had their hides for whatever mess they’d made of Time by playing with the Time Gate. “They also include safeguards which prevent a younger Senshi who hasn’t been completely trained from trying to tap into too much power at once and damaging herself in the process.”

“What sort of ‘damage’?” Ami asked, trying her best to sound casual about it.

“Energy oversensitivity, for one thing, a sort of delayed allergic reaction which would kick in after the girl transformed or used any of her powers. It was also possible for a girl to permanently cripple her own capacities as a Senshi, weakening whatever part of her mind actually harnessed the force so that she would be permanently stuck, unable to increase her strength beyond whatever level of skill she had already reached. Or over-reached. In extreme cases, the power could be burnt out entirely.”

“Oh.” Ami shivered, but she was a little reassured to hear all that, since it didn’t sound like what was wrong with her. There was nothing _delayed_ about her reaction to her power—or its reaction to her—and she’d done a few things back in that dining hall she’d never even thought of before. Calling the Caduceus Rod had been pretty easy, and it seemed to have produced the Frost Lancet mostly on its own power, but she’d turned into the cloud of mist all by herself. Being mist had actually been kind of fun, but it had been HARD to do, too, and that helped her feel a little better, since it had clearly been pushing back the limits of her strength.

“There were a few bugs in the first generation,” Merlin admitted. “Power fluctuations, one or two of the devices breaking apart from absorbing too much power, even one that _repelled_ the energy it was supposed to draw it, but Serenity worked them out eventually. The problem was, despite the unquestionable usefulness of the tiaras and the other devices which she had developed or was still working on, not everyone wanted to see them put to use. Certain of the theories Serenity had conceived and based her work on flew in the face of everything the Atlanteans thought they had known about magic, and one of those ‘facts’ was the mana nexi. If they accepted Serenity’s work, then they had to accept that the mana nexi, the central power base of their Empire, were also the cause of vast amounts of damage _to_ the Empire, both in the past and in the possible future. Once Serenity’s work became public knowledge, there was a huge uproar, since it meant that the beasts had been turned loose because of the Atlanteans, and that the mysterious illnesses and world-withering blights that were cropping up all over the galaxy were also because of the Atlanteans and their techno-magic. The fuel for a tremendous fire had been laid, and the spark which set it off was the disappearance of Atlantis itself.”

“Volcanic eruption?” Ryo guessed.

“No one really knows what happened, young master. My life at that time was as a servant named Ramos, and while I learned a great many things about the time and Athena from him, he was an old man when she was born, and he died shortly before her twenty-first birthday. Whatever happened to Atlantis took place two or three years later, and nobody got around to writing about it for quite some time after—and a lot of those records, already garbled with mistakes and omissions on top of all the usual revisionist history, were lost during the civil wars.”

“Did _I_ know?” Pluto asked.

“I’m certain you did. You, Serenity, and most of the other Senshi in that era were among the few members of the Atlantean nobility on or near Earth who were still around after the Imperial City vanished.” Merlin paused to refill his teacup, and then sloshed it back and forth absently as he talked. “I asked you about it once, when we met in this particular life of mine, but you didn’t want to talk about it. All you would say was that Serenity, as one of the leaders of the faction calling for the removal of the mana nexi, had been summoned along with the Senshi—who were among her strongest supporters—to a meeting with the Council of Lords, to present whatever evidence she had to support her claims. You refused to say what actually took place, but that was the same night that Atlantis disappeared.”

“What a coincidence,” Uranus noted. Neptune absently reached out and punched her in the shoulder.

“The city took most of the heads of the Atlantean noble families and the military hierarchy with it, and without their guidance, the rest of the Empire disintegrated almost overnight.” Merlin’s eyes were closed tightly as he recalled words, both heard and read. “The story circulated by the surviving Imperialists was that Serenity had created the tiaras and her other devices to gain the loyalty of the Senshi and use them as a base for her own power, and that they were somehow responsible for the destruction of the city. Serenity, as you might expect, had a slightly different story, but she also had some actual evidence to support it. Here. Watch.”

Merlin set aside his tea and his pipe and then held his hands forward, palms turned up and fingers moving slowly in arcane-seeming passes. A mist quickly coiled up from his hands and gathered into a loosely spherical cloud above the center of the table, its inner area quickly darkening to form distinct shapes and colors.

Eyes still closed, Merlin spoke. “What you will see here is taken from my own memories, of a recording I saw in the Lunar Archives some years ago. The information was recorded by the Senshi of Mercury who accompanied Serenity that night.”

For the next five minutes, they watched in silence as the images within the mist played themselves out. When the blue-tinted display of numbers and scanning lines appeared, everyone glanced briefly at Ami, who nodded to confirm that this was indeed the sort of thing she saw when using her visor.

The replayed memory showed a group of a dozen women and four men walking through a series of spectacularly decorated halls and chambers, past lifelike statues and ornate sculptures of marble, crystal, and other materials even more incredible. The appearance of the place had echoes of the mystical, quasi- fairytale architecture of the Moon Kingdom, but many things about it—the abundance of sleek lines and shiny nonmetals in the construction, the muted glows of blue and yellow light within the very walls—were reminiscent of the cities and starships of science fiction.

The men were guards of some sort, wearing grey uniforms, long silvery cloaks, and helmets with face-concealing mirror-like visors. All but one of the women were Senshi, two from each planet except for Mercury and Saturn; the other woman was a tall, regal blonde with the same sort of plain white dress and precisely the same hairstyle as Usagi was currently wearing. The Senshi wore the same style of marked robes that the girls had seen back in the Neraan dining hall, but with the addition of the tiara. The elder of the two Senshi of Uranus carried the Space Sword, while the younger of the two Plutos—women who were virtual twins save for the older features of the one and the crimson eyes of the other—carried the staff. It was also possible to catch a glimpse of the Caduceus Rod in Mercury’s right hand every now and then.

The only warning was when both Plutos suddenly looked up at a brilliant flash from the Garnet Orb, and then figures of darkness were appearing as if from thin air on all sides, men and women in swathes of an all-concealing black material which seemed to swallow the light. Both sides hesitated, the Senshi in surprise at seeing the others, the others in apparent shock from having _been_ seen.

Absolute mayhem ensued as the black-shrouded figures leapt to attack with blades of blue-black energy, and the Senshi countered with their familiar powers—and a few not-so-familiar ones. The elder Jupiter raised her hands, revealing two matched bracelets of what might have been pink pearls, except that four were about half the size of golfballs, and all of them glowed with a bright green- white light before suddenly flying away from her in a veritable storm of electrical energy. A coiling drill of water—obviously the work of one of the Neptunes—went flying across Mercury’s field of vision, the liquid pulverizing everything solid in its path as Mercury summoned the icy blade Ami had used and took on one of the assassins at close range. Shards of glass, falling like rain as the chamber’s dome was shattered by the sudden appearance of a howling funnel cloud, were liquefied in mid-air by a tremendous gout of fire and then picked up and hurled at the enemy with bullet force by the fierce winds.

The dark-clad assassins were clearly getting the worst of it, but the fight wasn’t entirely one-sided. They saw out of the corner of the visor’s sensory field that the elder Mars was standing guard over her fallen student with great waves of intense flame. When Mercury’s head ducked around a moment later, there was a momentary glimpse of the elder Uranus finishing off with a sword-thrust to the head the enemy whose weapon had just gone into her chest. One of the mirror-masked guards had gone down, while the rest were fending off the blue-black energy blades with blue-white swords of their own; even Serenity was fighting for her life, not with the ginzuishou—from what Merlin had said, it probably didn’t exist yet—or the power of Sailor Moon—which DEFINITELY didn’t exist yet—but with the same style of magic Usagi had seen the Atlantean wizards use.

Since Mercury’s visor did not record sound, it all happened in eerie silence. The fight was brief, and when it had ended, the one guard, the younger Mars, and about twenty of the black-clad killers lay dead on the floor; the elder Uranus was sitting up against one wall and keeping one blood-stained hand against her chest as she passed the Space Sword over to her apprentice; and, bleeding from a light cut on her forehead but otherwise uninjured, Serenity knelt on the floor and reached out to close the eyes of the elder Venus, whose body she held close in her arms and cried over. It wasn’t hard to guess why she was so upset, for the physical similarities between the two of them were even more pronounced than those between Usagi and Minako.

After a time, the elder Jupiter walked over—trailing a personal system of small, green-white glowing, pink pearl ‘planets’—rather abruptly yanked Serenity to her feet and shouted something at her. She was crying too, and despite the fact that she was nearly a foot taller and had streaks of white in hair that was otherwise dark brown, her features were almost the same as those of Serenity and the dead Venus. There was an argument—even with the painful nature of the previous images, the girls had to smile to learn that they weren’t the _only_ group of Senshi in history who’d had problems agreeing with each other—which ended with the elder Jupiter and the two Plutos heading off down one hall while the rest of the Senshi gathered up their dead and wounded and teleported away.

The misty image fell apart as Merlin’s eyes opened again. “That was the end of the record,” he said simply.

“They were sisters, weren’t they?” There wasn’t any need for Usagi to name names.

“Yes, they were. Their mother was a Venusian, and she was married twice, once to a Jovian, and later to an Atlantean Lord. Lady Furia, the Senshi of Jupiter you saw, took after her father in size and temper, and she was ten when Lady Joy was born. Serenity was born two years after that. Given that her two older sisters were both Senshi, it’s not much wonder that she devoted so much time and effort to trying to improve their powers.”

“What happened to them after that fight?”

“Serenity and the rest escaped the trap while Athena, Lyssa, and Furia went looking for answers. Only Pluto came back, and then just to deliver the news that her mother and Furia were both dead, though she didn’t say what had happened to them or the rest of the city. She took up residence at the Time Gate not long after that, and that was the last that most people of the era saw of her. Not that many looked,” he said grimly. “They had enough troubles trying to hold together their own little empires while dragging down those of their rivals.”

Merlin sat back in his chair again, looking directly at Pluto. “So. Now you know more or less all that I have to tell you about yourself. I’m sorry if it’s not everything you’d like to know.”

“It’s... it’s a start. It’s better than what I had before.”

“I don’t suppose you want us to start calling you Athena now?” Venus’ tone was half-joking, half-serious; Pluto shook her head.

“No. No matter how much I hear or relearn, I can’t be who I used to be. Not exactly; just knowing isn’t the same as remembering. Maybe I was Athena once, but I’m Setsuna now, and I have to live my life for my future, not my past. Athena... she was... she isn’t... damn, what am I trying to say?” She rubbed her forehead.

“When you told me what little you were willing to say about that night,” Merlin said gently, “you also said that that was when you gave up the name Athena. For all its problems, Atlantis was her world, and when it died, Athena died with it, with her mother and almost everyone else she’d ever known or loved; being Pluto was all that was left, so Pluto was who you were. Is that something like what you’re trying to say?”

Pluto nodded. “Something like that. I feel better knowing who I used to be, but it’s who I am _now_ that really matters.” She smiled one of the mysterious Pluto smiles and looked at Usagi. “Besides, what would your family say if I suddenly changed my name for no apparent reason?”

“In order from Mom down to the runt, ‘That’s nice, dear’, ‘Did you say something?’, and ‘Death from above! Yaaaaah!’ sound about right.” There was some laughter, but it ended when the others noticed Usagi’s pensive look. “I hope they’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Merlin asked.

“We hit a stag a few thousand years back.” Venus explained the predicament the ginzuishou’s misfire had left them in, and then Artemis explained it again to clear up the problems Venus’ choice of language had created.

When they were done, Merlin waved one hand. “Easily fixed. The power of Time binds all possible futures into the single unbroken past. No doubt there are future worlds where saving that child’s life has radically altered your entire history, but there are also just as certainly futures where nothing in your world has changed. The trick is finding the right world, and the Garnet Orb can help you do that.”

“How?” Usagi and Pluto asked in unison.

“There are two steps to it, and they have to do with the basic properties of matter and energy—temporal energy, to be specific. When you travel through Time, your personal temporal energy is adjusted to match that of your destination world; otherwise, you’d either be snapped back to your own Time or even cease to exist altogether. A small trace of the energy of your proper Time remains, and the Garnet Orb can identify that and compare it against the energy of the world you happen to be in. It also has the ability to... I suppose ’filter’ is the best word for it. The Orb can adjust your passage through Time to bring you to the world whose trace temporal signature is the same as your own.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Of course, it will slow down your trip home to a certain extent; instead of one great jump, you’ll have to make several smaller ones so the Orb can compare and adjust.”

“In that case,” ChibiMoon said abruptly, “we’d better get going. A few hours aren’t going to matter much if we get back a month after we left, but they could make all the difference if we’ve only racked up a few hours so far on this trip.”

The Inner Senshi, the cats, and Ryo blinked; ChibiMoon hadn’t told them about the little Time-limit imposed by her mother, but she did so now.

“If it isn’t one thing,” Mars grumbled, “it’s another. Come on. We’re going.”

“But...” Venus objected.

“NOW, Minako.” Mars got a sneaky look on her face. “Unless you want to stay here and miss the pre-season track meets coming up in March. I’m sure Himeko wouldn’t mind.”

Venus was on her feet in a flash. “We’re leaving.”

# 

They stepped outside before trying the Time-teleport again, since even Merlin couldn’t be entirely sure what would happen if they tried to jump out of the dimensionally-warped space within his home.

As Usagi still couldn’t transform herself back to normal, they decided that they might as well use the ginzuishou’s energy-magnifying powers to their advantage, and perhaps spare Pluto and Saturn some of the trouble of the next few jumps forward in Time. Merlin offered some helpful advice on how that might best be accomplished, and also went over with Pluto the details of what she was going to have to do to get them safely home. Thrax had flapped out to watch the proceedings with dignified curiosity, but his attention quickly shifted to another target.

“Awp! Awp! Old fool! Old fool!” They all looked up as Rooky came flapping back in a whirlwind of feathers. “Old fool!”

“What is it, Rook?”

“Otter’s a fool! Lost in the forest! A fool in the forest!”

Merlin frowned. “He’s not in the west woods, is he?”

“Awp!”

“Blast! If he finds that sword now...” Merlin turned to the Senshi. "Ladies, gentlemen, I’m afraid I have to see to this. You’d better get going.”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” Uranus said to him. “Why Camelot? Why Arthur and Excalibur and the Round Table? Why do it?” In spite of his obvious concern, Merlin took the time to answer her.

“In this life, I was born on Earth. When I was young and couldn’t understand or control my magic or the memories of my past and future lives, I ran away from home to try and find some answers. There were none on Earth, but using what I had known and would know, I was able to leave this world and travel among the other planets for a time, studying and learning. Everywhere I went, I saw beauty and culture, but I also saw pity and disdain for both myself and the crude, violent world of my birth. I wanted to change that. I knew that I had the power to help create something that would change this world for the better, to make it into a place the other worlds could no longer hold in contempt—but to inspire an entire world, I needed a single nation as a model. To inspire a nation, I needed the right people, and to inspire those people, I needed a leader.”

She looked at him. “If you can see the future, you have to know it isn’t going to work.”

“Isn’t it? True, the reality of Camelot will not survive to become the unifying nation I had hoped for, but what about the dream? What will knowing that such a place existed once before and can exist again help do for this world? How many lives will be made just a little better by the ideals championed in a story?” He smiled. “Everything that is built eventually crumbles into ruin, but what comes out of that ruin can sometimes be even more wondrous than what was before. Take Atlantis. They dominated this galaxy with an iron fist for ten thousand years, and yet it was their science, art, and higher philosophies which created the Moon Kingdom. Camelot will fall, and the Moon Kingdom will fall, and the Silver Millennium will end, but even if I haven’t seen what will come out of that, I believe it must be something good.”

“It will be.” Usagi walked forward, stood up on her toes, and kissed the old man on the cheek. “Good-bye, Merlin.”

She rejoined the others, looked at Pluto and Saturn, and lifted the ginzuishou as they raised their weapons. At the same time, the others joined hands in a circle, and the deep red, royal purple, and brilliant white were joined by an explosion of colors as the entire group disappeared.

Merlin watched the last traces of the light show fade, then nodded. “On their way to being back where they should be. Right, then; to work. Rook! Where did you see Arthur last?”

There was no answer. Merlin frowned again and looked around. “Rook? Rook! Where are you, you blasted chatterbox?”

Motion in the area of the teleport caught the old man’s attention, and when he looked close, he saw four black feathers drifting around in an eddy of wind. Three of the feathers were small and tattered, while the fourth was whole and bigger than all of the others combined. And after a quick look at the trees, Merlin confirmed that Thrax had disappeared, too.

A slow smile spread across his face before he turned and headed off into the woods, calling one of his walking staves forth from the house with an impatient wave of his right hand.

# 

Wherever and whenever they had landed, it was night. A very large full moon hung low in a cloudy sky, and the dark, crooked shapes of leafless trees rose up in many places.

“Ah-aaaaachooomph!”

The others looked over in confusion at the weird outcry and saw Ryo laying on the ground with Ami laying half-on, half-next to him, and looking totally astonished, utterly mortified, and very worried all at once.

“Ryo-kun? Are you okay?”

“Uugh.”

Smiling, Jupiter extended her hand to help Ami stand and then hauled Ryo up. “What happened?”

“Something buzzed me,” Ryo said, sniffing and shifting his back. “Right when I was about to sneeze. I fell over, and I couldn’t let go of Ami-chan’s hand in time, and... where did it go?” he demanded, looking around.

“I think this is the culprit you’re looking for,” Mars sighed, holding forward the hand that Ryo had let go of when he flinched, to show the small and disheveled-looking crow now perched there.

“Awp?” Rooky said, looking around.

“He brought a friend,” Saturn added, pointing with the Silence Glaive to where Thrax was perched calmly on the lone branch of a nearby tree.

“What are THEY doing here?” Luna demanded.

“Rooky follows the pretty Rei-di, furl.” He pronounced that word something like ‘foo-url’, a blend of ‘fur’ and ‘fool’.

Luna growled at the small crow and then looked up at Thrax, who returned the look calmly and enigmatically. Luna’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and then she sighed and threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, fine. Bring the whole universe along, for all I care.” She stalked off a short distance and stood there muttering and gesturing to herself.

“Furl,” Rooky croaked.

“Don’t push your luck,” Mars warned him. “You’re in enough trouble already.”

“Rooky’s sorry, pretty Rei-di. Forgive Rooky? Pretty please, pretty Rei-di?” Even though she knew Rooky was almost certainly lying, he looked so pathetic that Mars sighed and raised her thumb to gently stroke the crow’s breast.

“I forgive you. But behave yourself, okay?”

“Rooky promises. Rooky will be good for the pretty Rei-di.”

*I’ll believe that when I see it.* Mars suspected that Rooky was likely to prove more troublesome in his own way than a month’s worth of monsters. *I wonder Phobos and Deimos are going to react to their new neighbors. For that matter, how’re Grandpa and Yuuichirou going to react when they hear this bird speak?*

“Are we on course?” Artemis asked. “Even with the birds?”

Pluto looked up at the Garnet Orb and nodded slowly. “We’re getting there. This is Europe, sometime around 1000 AD. I’ll need a minute to check our course before we can try...”

“KLAATU, BARATA, N-harrumph!” a man’s voice rang out suddenly. The first two words had been pronounced clearly and confidently, while the third had trailed off into a nonverbal mess.

“What was _that_?” ChibiMoon asked. Everyone shook their heads or shrugged, looking around for the source of the voice.

“Uh, is it just me,” Venus said nervously, “or do those look sort of like tombstones?” She was pointing at several rows of stone markers and the few small monuments scattered among them. Even from a distance, the statues didn’t look reassuring, and the night suddenly seemed a great deal darker than it had.

Rooky and Thrax both cawed loudly a moment later, right before the ground began to shake and buckle in the throes of an earthquake. Seismic conditions being what they are in Japan, none of the travelers were too terribly concerned until the earth actually started cracking open in places.

“Maybe we ought to think about leaving!” Jupiter suggested, stepping clear of a gap that had split open to her left and which was now radiating a weird yellow-orange light. *I really don’t like the look of that,* she thought, shivering as a wave of darkness seemed to wash out over her.

Neptune screamed then, a sound of pure terror which none of the others, not even Uranus, had ever heard her make before. Whirling around in shock, they found her sprawled on the ground, one leg caught in... faces whitened as they realized it was a hand, a fleshless claw of bone which had erupted from the shivering soil to seize her by the ankle.

Down came the Space Sword, and the hand exploded into splinters.

“Oi!” a muffled, rattling sort of voice shouted—from somewhere below them. “I saw ‘er first! Bugger off and find yer own!”

The shocked look those words triggered on Uranus’ face was almost indescribable, but also very short-lived; her next swing at the stumpy arm severed the two bones of the forearm about halfway down.

“Sod this,” that creepy voice muttered, right before what was left of the arm withdrew into the dirt. Uranus looked at the patch of loose soil that was left behind, shook her head, then pushed the whole moment out of her mind and crouched next to Neptune.

“You okay, Michi?” she said quietly. Pushing herself up, Neptune nodded shakily, and although she was still very pale, she looked up at Uranus and managed a smile.

“My hero.”

Uranus chuckled. “You’re okay.” She stood and helped her partner back to her feet, keeping a sharp eye on the ground around them.

“I’m never going to hear the end of this from them,” Neptune muttered with an embarrassed glance at the other Senshi. “I _never_ scream.”

“Oh, I can think of a few times,” Uranus remarked in a low voice. Neptune blushed and hit her in the shoulder again.

“Hands off!” Venus shouted, reducing another grasping claw to powder with a lash of her Chain. Jupiter stomped on a third hand, crushing most of its fingers, then spun on that heel—grinding the busted bones even further—and kicked another hand off at its wrist. Pluto was using the butt of her staff and a certain amount of accelerated Time-force to smash the things, and Saturn just laid about with the Silence Glaive, shearing two or three dirt-caked bony forearms down to stumps with each slice. Voices as distorted and subterranean as the first one protested each and every disarmament, but they shut up quickly when Saturn started sending bolts of force curving out of the Glaive, into a rough line of the grasping claws, and down into the ground below, from where the noise of several muffled explosions quickly followed.

The ginzuishou had started glowing again as soon as the ground got unstable; few of the bones were coming up anywhere near its barrier, and those that did quickly withdrew into the dirt as if in fear of the tiny stone’s power. Uranus cleared a path, the force of the World Shaking blowing a wide swathe through the brittle bones, and the group quickly fell back to the safe zone. Thrax had taken wing from his tree as soon as the shaking began, and now landed neatly on the ground before Mars; Rooky was still clinging to her hand, though in his fright it was only the durable Senshi gloves that kept Mars from being painfully pinched by the crow’s feet.

The few remaining hands scrabbled around at the now-empty ground beyond the barrier for several moments and then withdrew. Venus glared at the last of them and fired a Crescent Beam at it, but a sudden shift in the ground threw her aim off; the shot clipped the edge of the thumb and left a gouge in it, but the main force of the attack buried itself in the dirt beyond. After shaking itself, the hand turned and made a rude gesture in Venus’ direction, then quickly sank back into the ground with the others.

In the relative silence, they could all clearly hear a man’s voice—the same one that had called out the words—alternating between bouts of triumphant laughter, startled shouts, more than a few painful groans, and some profuse profanity. Neptune listened for about three seconds before clapping her hands over Saturn’s ears, and ChibiMoon dutifully covered her own ears to keep anyone else from trying.

A figure appeared some distance away, a man running all-out with something tucked under one arm while trying not to slip on the shifting rocks or to be tripped up by the hundred-odd hands grabbing at his feet. He was sort of handsome, but he looked as though someone had been using him for a punching bag recently, and he was about two days overdue for a shave besides. On one hand he seemed to be wearing a metal gauntlet, and in the other hand he was carrying something that looked astonishingly like a sawed-off shotgun. His clothes appeared to have originated in the late twentieth century as well—though with plenty of medieval accessories piled on top—and his vocabulary was repeatedly proving itself to be about a thousand years ahead of this Time.

“Why do I get the feeling that he’s not supposed to be here any more than we are?” Uranus asked of no one in particular.

“Shouldn’t you...” Ryo started to say, pointing at the more or less intact skeleton that had just hauled itself out of the earth and jumped in front of the guy. A loud BANG cut him off as the weapon proved that it was indeed a shotgun, the business end spitting out a blast at point blank range which cut the fleshless mass of bones in half at the waist. “...help him,” he finished lamely.

“No,” Pluto replied, looking closely at the running man while the Garnet Orb glowed softly. “Strange as it sounds, he’s supposed to be here. And we aren’t. Saturn, Usagi, let’s try again.” She looked around at the unnatural glow emanating up from the rifts in the soil, and specifically at the weird shadows that periodically moved across the unwholesome yellowish light. “Whatever’s going on here is supposed to happen, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and I think we’d all rather not be around to watch when it does.”

“Amen,” Saturn murmured.

“Hey!” a voice rumbled from around the nearest tombstone. “Watch yer language!”

Saturn looked over, frowned once, and the earth in front of the stone marker jumped with a low thud and a surprised, “Oi!” Then Saturn looked around at the rest of the graves.

“Would anyone _else_ like to say something?” When it was clear that silence—or perhaps Silence—would be the only reply, Saturn nodded. “Good.” She took Pluto’s hand, and they gathered their energies once more.

“Good riddance, you mean,” a voice muttered as the blaze of rainbow light flared.

# 

“Achooo!”

“Bless you,” Jupiter murmured absently as she looked around. They were standing somewhere in a modern or nearly-modern city, not far from what appeared to be a shopping mall. It was nighttime here, too, but fairly warm, and it was FAR less creepy than the place they’d just left. The two birds were still with them, Rooky much calmer now that the ground wasn’t heaving around anymore.

“North America,” Pluto said before anyone could ask. “The United States, in fact, sometime in the mid 1980’s. We’re almost there.”

“Good,” several voices said in unison.

BOOM.

It was the sort of explosive sound which doesn’t need exclamation marks to make itself noticed. The Garnet Orb certainly noticed it; the jewel flashed with brilliant red light in the same instant as the noise went off. Rooky and Thrax both started backwards and cawed in surprise at the sound—and the flash—and then they heard someone yelling at the top of his lungs, not in fear or pain, but in sheer exhilarated delight.

“EIGHTY-EIGHT MILES PER HOUR!!!! WOOO-HOOO-HAHAHA!!!”

“Over there,” Jupiter said cautiously, pointing at a grassy rise between them and the source of the shouting.

Looking carefully over the top of the small hill, they could see a medium- sized tractor-trailer out in the middle of the mall parking lot, which was otherwise devoid of vehicles at this hour. Two figures were out near the truck; the taller of the two was a white-haired man in a baggy-looking suit of what looked to be some sort of plastic, and the other was a young man of about the same age as Uranus and Neptune, dressed more conventionally than his companion and with an 80’s-style video camera in one hand. The pair were standing right on top of twin trails of fire, which burned and smoked atop the tar at just the right distance from one another to be tire tracks. The young man picked up something from the ground near the end of the trail and let it fall just as quickly, waving his hand around to dispel the heat.

“Christ, Doc, you disintegrated Einstein!”

The Senshi looked at each other as the older man began to explain something in a quieter but still extremely excited voice. They couldn’t make out exactly what he said or how his young friend replied, but they could at least understand that the poor guy was totally confused; the same sort of vague pointing and half-finished sentences were common reactions among people they’d just saved from monsters or who had experienced similarly abnormal events.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The Garnet Orb triple-flashed in time with the sonic booms, and the Senshi blinked collectively as, in a burst of white light, a low, sleek grey car with a seriously built-up rear section came tearing out of literally nowhere, materializing in the middle of the parking lot and shooting past the two men—who scrambled like mad to get out of the way—before it swerved and skidded to a tremendously tire-screeching stop.

“Nice car,” Uranus noted with an appraising glance. “Delorean, I think.”

“Did that... did they just...” Ami said in astonishment as she stared wide-eyed at the now-motionless car.

“I think they did,” Pluto replied, squinting as two huge plumes of white gas hissed out of the engine blocks on the back of the car. “That vehicle is positively painted with temporal energy just now.”

“Aren’t you going to _do_ something about that?” Luna asked. Pluto continued to squint at the car and the two men as she considered the question.

“No.” She raised her staff, and the ginzuishou flashed in response, kick-starting their auras and the group teleportation before the rest of them could even blink.

# 

Ryo sneezed yet again as they rematerialized, then sniffled. “I am _really_ getting sick of that.”

They were standing in front of a clocktower; by the hands, it was about twenty minutes to midnight, which would have been about the right time for them to return home if the future Serenity’s warning about equally-passing Time had been accurate, but the warm night breeze was too pleasant to have been the winter they’d left behind.

“Damn,” Pluto murmured. “I missed.”

“You _MISSED_?”

“This is somewhere in Japan,” she replied, “but during the late 1990’s.”

“Why did you make us jump?” Luna demanded. “We should have at least stayed long enough to put a stop to whatever those two were planning to do.”

“I already did,” Pluto replied. “Think about it, Luna. That was the middle of the 1980’s; at that point in my past, I was still at the Time Gate, so I would have been watching the whole event and dealing with it if necessary. But as long as _I_ was there, it was my present, not my past, so the past, outside-of-Time version of me wasn’t there to interfere. As soon as we left, it became the past again, which means that the past me is there once more. Unlike me, _she_ knows exactly what needs to be done, and how to do it.”

The only sound which followed that was the noise of chirping crickets off in the distance.

“As frightening as I know this is going to sound to the rest of you,” Usagi said slowly, “I think I understood that.”

“_You_ understood it?” Mars asked intently. “Or _Serenity_ understood it?”

“Mostly Serenity.”

“Good.” Mars nodded, sounding relieved. “That, I can deal with.”

Usagi inhaled in preparation for a retort, but Jupiter cut her off. "Someone’s coming. From that direction.” She pointed towards a stand of trees.

“Over here,” Neptune said, leading them back into the shadows along the side of the building. Wide arches and thick columns held up the overhanging second floor to create a walkway along this side of the structure, which provided plenty of places to hide.

“I’m reading four life-signs,” Ami reported. She had stuck her computer around the corner of the wall she, Ryo, and Jupiter were hiding behind, and was now analyzing the results. “It looks like... three children? Two girls and a boy, and the fourth is...”

The computer returned a reading of UNKNOWN LIFEFORM and created an image of what it had scanned. Jupiter glanced around the side of Ryo’s head to get a peek at the computer screen, and blinked.

“Looks like a stuffed bear with wings,” she said.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Ami agreed. “Although based on some of these readings, I’m not sure that’s its real form.”

“Never mind that,” Neptune said. “We should get out of here before they see us.”

Pluto nodded her agreement, but then looked up sharply as the Garnet Orb flashed unexpectedly.

“What’s wrong?” Usagi asked nervously. “Pluto?”

“Something around here... is influencing Time. The effect is localized, but it’s very strong...” Her eyes looked up, fixed on a point somewhere beyond the walls and ceiling, and narrowed. “And it’s up in that clock.” She took a step forward. “We’d better do something about that.”

Luna did a double-take; hadn’t they just _left_ a similar situation? Indeed, it seemed Venus was thinking along the same lines:

“What happened to jumping out and letting the old you take care of things?”

“No good this time. That car wasn’t doing anything once it stopped moving, but who—or whatever’s up there is generating a fairly constant effect on Time. I’m not sure what would happen if we tried to leave with something like that still around to throw us off-course, so we’ll just have to...”

“AAAAAHHHH!!”

Pluto had barely taken that first step out of the shadows when something that was a blur of white ribbons and moving at high speed collided with her with a startled yell, sending both of them crashing roughly to the ground. Pluto had tried instinctively to catch whatever it was before it hit her, and when it felt small, warm, and soft despite the elbow that had thumped into her hip, another instinct made her hold onto it and try to take most of the force of the fall herself.

*I seem to have a lot of those maternal impulses,* Pluto thought absently. *Not to mention bad luck with landings.* Then she looked down—or perhaps up, since she had been knocked flat on her back—and blinked upon seeing what she had caught.

The girl who had hit her also looked up—or down, since she had landed more or less on top—and blinked. She had short brown hair, green eyes that were currently wide with surprise, and she couldn’t have been more than ten years old. She was also wearing a costume—no other single word could have really described it—that made the Senshi fuku look almost normal; this outfit was a thing of white fabric, wing-shaped ribbons, and a puffy, frilled skirt. The sneakers clashed a little, but the almost bird-head-shaped wand in her hand fit the overall design fairly well.

“Tinkerbell, I presume?”

The girl blushed. “Uh, not exactly.” She smiled weakly.

“Sakura!” three voices called out, each one in a different tone. The girl winced visibly and hastened to her feet, then looked back and sheepishly offered Pluto a helping hand. Pluto accepted, but did most of the work of standing on her own, with help from her staff—which only made sense, since she was probably closer to three times the girl’s weight than to two. Still, being polite never hurt.

Of the three new arrivals, two stopped short and stared openly at Pluto with the sort of expressions which said they knew who she was. The one was a brown-haired, brown-eyed boy in very elaborate green robes and a curious matching hat; he had a sword in one hand and a bandaid across his nose. The other gawker was the small winged bear-creature whose image Ami’s computer had recreated. Its fur was a soft brown, its wings and the tuft of fur on the end of its long tail were white, and its wide, astonished eyes were gleamingly golden.

“Pa... Puh... Pah... Pluto,” the bear stammered. “Uh... you’re looking... um... well. Look, if this is about the time loop, we were just about to deal with the problem...” It—or he—flinched visibly when Pluto met his gaze; she didn’t think her expression was even remotely threatening, but the bear obviously had a different opinion. “Really, we were. Okay, so it’s not the first attempt, but hey, what’re three or four days between a couple of fellow guardians, right?” He smiled, but couldn’t hold the expression.

The third member of the group was a pale girl with long dark hair and equally dark eyes. She was dressed far more normally than her two companions, and she had a camcorder in one hand, the miniaturized descendant of the device the Senshi had seen being used by the young man back in the parking lot. The girl spared a momentary glance for Pluto, another for her two escorts, and then turned her full attention to the other girl—and her outfit.

“You’re okay?” she asked. “No tears, none of the ribbons came loose?”

“I’m fine, Tomoyo-chan. Really.” Sakura frowned. “And why are you so worried? I thought you said you made this thing to be durable.”

“Well, you can’t ever be sure something’s going to work until you actually try it out,” the dark-eyed girl admitted nonchalantly, frowning at something. "That’s it; you’re lopsided. Hold still.” She reached out and tugged slightly on one side of the skirt, then at the other. Then she nodded. “There. Much better.”

That problem solved, Tomoyo’s attention turned fully to Pluto—or more precisely, to her outfit. There was a look in her eyes that Pluto had seen in Hanna’s and Annah’s eyes at times while they worked at the store; she imagined it also appeared in her own eyes from time to time, the look of a designer being inspired. Pluto fancied she could hear gears turning and a sewing machine already humming inside the girl’s head.

“Hoeee,” the other girl sighed, apparently hearing the noises going on inside her friend’s head, and not liking the implications.

“That’s a very nice costume,” Tomoyo said in admiration, “but don’t you think you could have come up with something a little more original than stealing Sailor V’s design?”

“She didn’t steal it,” a voice advised from the shadows behind Pluto.

“Oh no,” another voice—Mars’—groaned from the shadows as Venus stepped out into the light. She had gone into her costume-alteration the second the girl had mentioned Sailor V, and concentrated hard to try and get the ‘classic Sailor V’ look as opposed to her ‘new and improved for the new millennium Sailor V’ look. From the difference in fit, she knew immediately it had worked—her tiara had disappeared, for one thing, though from the subtly different weight of her mask, V had a pretty good guess where it had gone.

The two girls stared at V, and she smiled. “It’s really more of a union look, you see.”

“Oh. Wow.” Sakura said, sounding awed. “Wow. Wow. Wow.”

“Double wow,” Tomoyo added.

The bear was blinking, but if the boy had been spooked by Pluto’s appearance, he was less than impressed by V’s. “Who are you supposed to be?” The girls looked at him in amazement; V frowned.

*A nonbeliever, eh? Well, I’ll fix that.* “I am the soldier of justice, the sailor-suited beautiful soldier! I am Sailor Venus, Code Name: Sailor V!”

V said it in her best, most commanding voice, and when she struck her pose, the now wide-eyed boy staggered backwards a couple of steps as if he’d been hit by lightning, a speeding truck, or just the sheer force of her personality. The winged bear also backed away cautiously.

“Uh... um... Sakura? Do you remember the Time Card?” He glanced nervously at Pluto.

“Huh? Oh, right.” The stars faded from the girl’s eyes—at least a little—and she looked up in the direction of the clock. Then she turned back to Sailor V. “Do you suppose you could wait right here for just a couple of minutes? I’ve sort of got something I have to take care of up there.”

V fixed a stern glare on her. “Nothing illegal, I hope?”

“Oh! No!” Clutching her odd wand, Sakura shook her head.

“Okay then.” V leaned casually against the wall of the tower. “We’ll wait here, if you like.”

“Thanks. We’ll be right back.” Sakura quickly led her friend away, then stopped, raced back, and bowed to Pluto. “And I’m really sorry about running into you like that.” Then she was off like a rocket, Tomoyo and the bear in tow; the boy had disappeared around the corner of the tower as soon as V’s near- blinding attention was off him.

As soon as it was clear, Uranus walked out of hiding, her head turned in the direction the two girls and their curious companion had gone. “A couple of ten year-olds and a talking stuffed toy are going to ‘take care’ of something that can play games with Time? Just like that?”

V nodded. “She certainly seemed to think so.”

A few minutes later, there was a bright flash from inside the clock; whatever it was, the Garnet Orb pulsed brilliantly at the same time, and again for several successive flashes. The Senshi could make out the sound of the one girl’s—Sakura’s—voice chanting something once or twice, though not clearly enough to understand the words, but the results were more bursts of light, followed by a loud rush of energy, and then silence.

When all was quiet, Pluto looked at the Garnet Orb. “The temporal distortion is gone. We can leave any time.”

“In a minute,” V said. “In a minute.”

“Minako,” Usagi began.

“Usagi-chan,” V said, in a cheerful voice that was nonetheless as hard as steel, “I have never once walked out on a fan, and I’ll be terribly disappointed in you if you ask me to start now. Particularly since it’s a fan who, for whatever reason, is out doing stuff like that"—she pointed up at the quiet clock—“at an age when she shouldn’t even be up at this time of night.”

Usagi looked at her. “Ten minutes.”

“Twenty.”

“Fifteen.”

“Done.”

# 

Sensory growths twitched nervously as Proteus sensed the change in the local energy fields. It immediately intensified control commands to all the units under its supervision—the unauthorized ones even more so than the authorized—for the last surge like this, some five hours ago, had caused several most untimely disruptions. One of the testing sites had almost been compromised when a unit there slipped Proteus’ control for a mere two minutes, its primitive thought patterns and ingrained program overwhelmed by the surge of unidentified energy. The damage had been contained, fortunately, and Proteus learned enough from it to know exactly how to keep the units in line when the second surge occurred.

A diagnostic of all systems was nonetheless well underway as Proteus sought to make sure the two surges had not damaged it or its experiments in some way. It was pleased to note that, aside from that one malfunctioning unit—which had already been deactivated and reabsorbed into the substance of that particular site—there were no apparent aftereffects resulting from its exposure. It made sure to add that to the report it was compiling for Archon.

Proteus had not been particularly happy when its carefully-hidden sensor had ‘overheard’ the conversation between Archon and his female apprentice some days before. It had already dispatched its daily report by that time—a report which had conveniently not mentioned the rogue Hiroshi-unit—and thus had no chance to cover for the mistake. Since then, Proteus had been both cautious and thorough; Archon undoubtedly suspected there was a problem of some sort, but as long as he had no reason to investigate further, he would not. Even so, Proteus was taking other steps as insurance... and then there were the experiments themselves.

No less than three human-unit hybrids were being developed at this time. The first was the woman Nanako, the one Proteus had selected for the tests Hiroshi _should_ have performed. It had modified the mix of chemical agents and honed the flow of energy to slow the development and prevent another premature activation and subsequent out-of-control rampage, but Proteus had also neglected to take into account certain fundamental differences between the male and female halves of the human species. Proteus was a being without hormones, but humans had them in abundance, and they were rather different in women than in men. This had thrown the maturation process of the Nanako-unit completely off, forcing Proteus to select one of its male specimens—Tetsuo—and try the modified mutagens again.

It had not ended the development of the Nanako-unit, however; though the process was taking longer and going down some very unexpected avenues, Proteus was beginning to think the end result might prove very useful. Now that it understood from experience something of the power of those curious natural chemicals in the human body, Proteus had selected another female—Hana—and started the original experiment over, to help pin down where the problems had been with Hiroshi.

All three experiments were coming along well, but Proteus had yet another problem to worry about because of that: it was running out of test subjects. Since taking the original eight captives, Proteus had only obtained two additional humans for its projects. Hana was actually one of those; in a moment of curious emotion-driven impulses it still did not quite understand, Proteus had decided not to separate Tetsuo from his girlfriend, and gone ahead and included her in the experiment with him. The other new acquisition was Nanako’s roommate Mariko, who was proving to be useful in covering for her friend’s ’disappearance’; it had no such insurance for Tetsuo and Hana, but fortunately, they were already nearing completion.

One subject used and lost, three more currently being put to use, four remaining, and only two new ones gained. If optimum results were to be achieved in the least amount of time, more new subjects must be acquired.

Proteus knew it had a problem here. It had no choice but to work with the materials it had available, but if it kept taking people in this manner, spreading its influence from friend to roommate to family member, sooner or later someone was going to realize that the people who were mysteriously disappearing from their homes were also turning up in hospitals in comas and then backtrack all their common traits until they finally led to the telecommunications center, and Proteus itself. The police were not really a worry to Proteus, except for the fact that dealing with them would inevitably draw attention, which would in turn almost certainly bring the Senshi AND Archon down on it.

The answer was simple—find a way to obtain a large number of subjects who were NOT connected to the phone center. Figuring out HOW to do that was the hard part.

*What I need, ideally, is a disaster. Something unconnected to me or my test units, something which will fool Archon and the Senshi and all the other humans who might find me. Some single event which would explain the disappearance of a large number of people. But what?*

While part of Proteus’ mind puzzled over that question, another part informed the central awareness that it had completed the report for Archon. Proteus reviewed the report one last time and was about to send it off when it considered the report and what that other section of itself was thinking of.

*I need test subjects. I need a disaster to cover how I obtain them. I have two hybrid units nearing completion, and the testing sites intended for the Senshi all over the city. And I have these incidents of unknown energy, energy which, however briefly, made at least one unit malfunction.*

Down in the darkness below the computer banks and floorboards, Proteus got an idea.

# 

It was late, and it was snowing. The blizzard was neither so unexpected nor as powerful as the one the Atlantean mana nexus had created a few weeks before, but it was still an impressive display of Nature’s capricious power, and had more or less shut Tokyo down for the evening when it hit a few hours ago.

Red lines of light exploded across the sky, an enormous maze of straight curves and broken angles which reached out in all directions, passing through solid matter as easily as liquid or gas. Great pillars of crimson force wide enough to serve as four-lane highways jutted out of the surface at awkward angles, the central supports of a vast mesh of shifting filaments which seemed as deceptively delicate as spider’s silk, blowing in some unimaginable breeze. Around them all danced innumerable masses of free energy, some of them tinier than the blowing snowflakes, others nearly as large across as the moon in the night sky overhead.

*And I’m the only one who can see it,* Pluto thought a bit sadly, as she watched the ebb and flow of Time all around her. There was something both frightening and reassuring in its inexorable passage, but most of what Pluto felt was curiosity—and then annoyance that there wasn’t anyone around who could answer her questions. What, for example, was the significance of the colossal Time-beams which went reaching up into space to join the vast web among the stars? What had caused the formation of the moon-sized spheres of temporal force? What did they do? How did they do it?

Pluto sighed and pushed the rest of her questions aside to focus on the one that was currently most important: Are we home?

She turned her attention from the enormous network of power beyond the window and studied each of her friends in turn as they stood in Michiru’s living room, illuminated by the bloody light of the Garnet Orb and outlined by concentrations of Time-force. Merlin had told her that she would feel a sense of rightness if this was their proper world, a synchronous echo of Time to Time, and Pluto drove everything else out of her mind as she concentrated on finding that.

As she waited, Pluto became acutely aware of a faint noise, an internal noise, the sound of her own heartbeat, slow and steady in the silence:

Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

She listened to it for a time before her consciousness detected another sound, softer and fainter yet. At first, the sound of her heart overwhelmed the other noise, almost totally blotting it out:

Thu-thump. (thump) Thu-thump. (thump) Thu-thump. (thump)

Very slowly, as she strove to push aside the noise of her heart, Pluto began to hear the new sound more clearly, and she knew that it came not from within her, but from somewhere outside. She glanced at the visible manifestations of Time-force and saw—or imagined that she saw—them pulsing in synch with this new sound. That was what this was, Pluto realized; the measured pulse of Time Itself:

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Exactly one beat each second, one precise measurement of Time being marked by a sound that, although soft, nonetheless shook Pluto from head to toe. This was the heartbeat of the universe, the perfect measure of the ultimate life, slowly and inexorably ticking away, each passing second and all its attendant possibilities lost forever as each new second waited for its chance to be born. The sheer enormity of what each beat represented seemed to make them all the louder:

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Now it was the sound of her heart that was being drowned out, but Pluto didn’t need to hear her own pulse to know that it was speeding up. Each thunderous beat of the universal heart set off a rush of energy to every part of her being, and each gaping silence between beats likewise triggered a moment of weakness, as if every cell in her body had just died a little more—which in truth, they had. She was living and dying within each second, each blast of noise, and the pulse was quickening. The sound of a second now became the sounds of the innumerable tiny fractions of Time within a second—tenths of a second, hundredths of a second, nanoseconds, picoseconds, and smaller yet, down to measurements beyond the abilities of science or sorcery to recognize. What had been a single sound now became a steady chorus of a thousand sounds:

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

And Pluto could feel it as each infinitesimal tick of the cosmic clock shook the entire universe. This was the first step; she had found the pace at which all the matter and energy native to this line of possibility moved. Slowly, so as not to break her own concentration and lose her sense of the rhythm, Pluto took the second step.

Up until now, the light of the Garnet Orb had been a steady glow, illuminating the entire room. Now that light redirected itself entirely towards the Senshi, a wall of laser-like lines of energy sweeping back and forth, up and down, over and around. After several long moments in which everyone in the room other than Pluto herself had been scanned about fifty times, the Orb’s energy withdrew, and the light at the heart of the jewel began to pulse with another rhythm, one it had taken from the time-displaced travelers. Pluto listened to that sound, and to the sound of the universe around her.

As the others watched, the light within the Garnet Orb ceased its curious flickering. For a brief moment, it shone forth with a crystalline chime, and then the jewel darkened back to its usual state, with Pluto watching it until its light had faded entirely before she looked at her friends again.

Her smile then was like the sun coming up as she said, “Friday, February 11th, 2000. 10:38pm, local time.” Almost unnecessarily, she added, “We’re home.”

 

# 

 

_(Fade in. Makoto, Haruka, Michiru, and Setsuna are sitting at a table drinking coffee; on the table in front of Haruka is the book, ‘the Art of Modern Fencing’, which Setsuna gave her for her birthday)_

**Makoto** : It’s got an idea... why don’t I like the sound of that?

**Haruka** : Experience? _(turns the page with her thumb and takes a drink of coffee with the other hand)_

**Setsuna** : We’ll worry about it later. Right now we have a moral to do.

_(They look at each other for a moment, and then play a few quick rounds of rock- paper-scissors to see who gets to suffer this time. First round goes to Setsuna, who picks rock while the rest pick scissors; despite some suspicious looks, she is allowed to withdraw and go back to her coffee. Michiru gets out a few rounds later with another rock, and then Haruka’s rock loses to Makoto’s paper)_

**Haruka** : Damn.  _(sighs)_  Oh well. Let’s see... okay, I’ve got one.

**Michiru** : Not a word about your teleport.

**Haruka** : ..... Fine, then. I’ve got another one.

**Setsuna** : Or the grey man.

**Haruka**   _(glaring)_ : ..... Alright. One more time.  _(looks at Makoto)_

**Makoto** : I didn’t say anything.

**Haruka** : I’m pretty sure the point of this episode was just to fill in some of the details about Setsuna’s life. If I understand this dramatic writing nonsense, all this stuff about her and Atlantis and the Court is eventually going to come together in some fantastically heart-stopping way, probably a confrontation with yet ANOTHER giant shadow of darkness hell-bent on destroying us and our world...

**Michiru** : Ahem.

**Haruka** : ...but if it’s a moral you want, I suggest you take a look near the end of Merlin’s piece about Setsuna’s life in Atlantis, when she stumbles over the bit about which name she should use—the one she was born with, or the one she picked up years later. I think the point had something to do with the reality of a person not being defined just by any single feature, whether it’s a thing like a name which can change at any time, or something more permanent, some physical or mental quality which could have good or bad preconceptions attached to it. But that’s just a guess on my part.

_(Haruka goes back to reading her book while the others look at her expectantly. Finally, she looks up)_

**Haruka** : What?

**Michiru** : That’s ALL you’re going to say?

**Haruka** : Damn right. You know this philosophical junk always gives me a headache.

**Michiru**   _(sighing)_ : Oh, Haruka...

_(Fade out)_

24/10/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_Major apologies to all for the wait, but first it was the Olympics—and hemmed in on both sides by fall previews on TV, I might add—and then a nice little illness which left me feeling positively suffocated for three days, and then... ah, bugger it._

_For those who didn’t know or haven’t already guessed, this episode’s guest stars were:_

_Ash, the time-warped, gun-toting, one-liner spewing, chainsaw-handed ‘hero’ of the somewhat peculiar but overall funny movie ‘Army of Darkness’, which bears so many similarities to the Hercules and Xena series (serieses?) that I can’t begin to list them. Foremost among these is the fact that Ash is portrayed by Bruce Campbell;_

_Doctor Emmett L. Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), from the modern time-travel classic ‘Back to the Future’, which I also enjoyed—though not nearly as much as a buddy of mine who shall remain nameless, and who also had this massive obsession with that souped-up Delorean for years;_

_and of course, Sakura and Co. from the anime ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’, which is one of the few anime series I’VE personally seen that is even REMOTELY compatible with the Sailormoon universe without some sort of major transdimensional incident. This was, in case you missed it, a slightly-altered version of the episode where they’re chasing the Time Card and constantly getting sent back through the same day. You have to imagine that something like that would get Pluto’s attention pretty quick, neh?_

_Don’t expect a crossover here. I was just amusing myself with ‘the ride home’._

_And now, on to episode 16..._


	16. Mercury Rising, or A Matter Over Minds

# 

It was about half an hour later.

After Pluto’s announcement of their safe arrival, the Senshi had changed back to normal and gone in search of clocks, newspapers, mail, and even the TV news and weather channels in order to confirm that this was indeed the world they had left behind several hours and as much as a month before. This was not to suggest that they didn’t trust Pluto; it was simply that, with a matter this important—and with two corvine hitchhikers along to confuse the issue—they preferred to have as much supporting evidence as they could possibly get their hands on.

The fact that the ginzuishou finally let Usagi change back to her ordinary everyday self and put it away helped immensely, and not just because it meant that the crystal was basically saying ‘all’s well’ in the process; as Venus had already observed, talking to both Usagi and Serenity at the same time was just plain creepy.

Shortly after that, there was a group agreement that yes, they had truly made it home, and that yes, this really was their world.

The sense of peace and safety this consensus created lasted for a miraculous four seconds before the shouting started. Everyone wanted to know where and when everyone else had been, how long they had been there, and what had happened during that time—and they wanted to know it all right then and there. Some of the Senshi also wanted to give some of the rest a piece of their mind.

While most of the others were watching Minako endure a three-way inquisition from Rei, Luna, and Usagi about her conduct in their last little stopover—she’d refused to leave until everyone had agreed to pose for a five-second video byte with Sakura and the rest, a group shot of the Senshi which V had managed to pull off by using the Disguise Pen to cover up Ami’s transformation problems and then rearranging Saturn’s hair to conceal the bruises on her face to some extent—Makoto was standing over by the window, watching the snow fall with eyes that were miles away. Thrax, perched atop a plush chair, watched her with a curiosity that was somehow more than merely birdlike; Rooky, perched on the back of the largest couch, had half of his attention on ‘his pretty Rei-di’, and the other half on the argument.

“How’s Hotaru-chan doing?” Makoto asked absently—and without even turning around—as Ami came up behind her.

“All her vital signs are steady.” She glanced over at the chair Thrax was sitting on, where the little Senshi of Saturn was sitting in some sort of meditative trance, legs crossed and eyes closed, while the bruises on her face healed at an incredible rate. It wasn’t as fast as her normal healing touch, but Ami suspected that was the whole idea, since by going in a slower, steadier stream of healing rather than a single burst, Hotaru was lessening the strain on her body’s reserves of energy. She’d asked Ami to monitor her carefully in case something unexpected happened, and the Mercury Computer was scanning and calculating away on one of the chair’s armrests; Thrax had been periodically shifting his attention from Makoto to Hotaru, as if he too were somehow following her progress.

“I’m not sure how she came up with the idea,” Ami continued, “but it seems to be working just fine. She should be as good as new inside of another hour.”

“That’s good,” Makoto said vaguely. “Seeing her all beat up like that was hurting Haruka and Michiru, too.”

Hearing that, Ami frowned and looked at Makoto very closely. During their week with Sasanna, she had noticed a tendency for Makoto to become visibly distracted when she was trying to listen to the emotional impulses pressing against her mind. The short-lived spells had grown fewer and fewer thanks to Sasanna’s help and instruction, but now Ami had to wonder if being stuck in the midst of several million emotional minds might not be too much for Makoto to handle after all.

“You can stop worrying, Ami-chan; I’m okay. Really.” Indeed, when Makoto pulled her eyes away from the snowstorm, they were back to their usual keen brightness, and the vague, distant expression had left her face. She held out one hand, saying, “You can check for yourself, if you want.”

Ami frowned again, but took the offer—and the hand—and pushed her own senses outwards through the link, just far enough to make sure whether Makoto was telling her the truth or not.

She was—sort of. The memory of putting her defensive barrier up was fresh in Makoto’s mind, but so was the memory of having taken it _down_ earlier. Ami blinked and let go of Makoto’s hand.

“You did that on purpose? Why?”

Makoto shrugged. “I was curious. I wanted to see what it would be like.”

“And?”

“It’s a big city, Ami-chan.” Makoto looked out the window again, her face and voice becoming distant one more. “It’s a very big city.”

They stood there in silence for a short time before Makoto shook herself and went back to normal again. “Have you told the others yet? About us, I mean.”

“Not yet,” Ami said, sighing, “and I’m really not looking forward to it.”

“Not looking forward to what?” Ryo asked, joining them by the window.

“Our turn under the microscope,” Makoto replied with dry humor, nodding towards the ongoing question period.

“There are some things that happened that we’re going to have to talk about,” Ami explained carefully. “I’m just not sure how everyone’s going to take hearing it.”

“It’ll probably depend on the size of the words you use,” Ryo said, scratching his cheek. “And speaking of words, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask one of you.”

“Oh?”

“Is there a course in ancient languages at Juuban that I wasn’t aware of?”

Both Senshi blinked. “I didn’t quite follow that,” Ami admitted.

“I missed most of what happened in that big hall,” Ryo said, “but I _was_ awake to see you talk to that blue-haired woman—she was Mercury too, right?— and I didn’t understand a single word she said. And when we met Merlin, his accent was so thick with Ye Olde English that I could barely follow him, but the rest of you weren’t having any problems at all. Is that a Senshi thing?”

Makoto looked at Ami in surprise. “You didn’t tell him?”

“It never came up before,” Ami murmured defensively.

“So it _is_ a Senshi thing?”

Ami nodded. “We get a lot of little benefits when we transform. Enhanced speed, strength, and resistance to injury all make sense for combat situations, but there are other things which don’t really have much to do with fighting, and one of them is the automatic translation of whatever we hear. I think it works both ways, too, so that other people can understand what we say.”

“It comes in very handy for telling a monster that it’s about to get creamed,” Makoto said with a nod and a grin. “I mean, can you imagine how silly we’d look if we went around spouting all those speeches when the other side didn’t even understand what we were saying?”

“It only seems to work when we’re in Senshi form, though,” Ami added, “which is a little odd, seeing as how so much else of what we can do—what we _are_—as Senshi carries over into our regular forms as well.”

“’Carries over’?” Ryo repeated. “You mean like the Mercury Computer and Hotaru-chan’s power to heal?”

Again, Makoto glanced at Ami. “You didn’t tell him about that, either?”

Sighing, Ami ignored Makoto and faced Ryo. “We’re stronger than we ought to be, Ryo-kun. Some of us”—she glanced at Makoto—“are stronger than others, of course, but we’re all above the normal levels of physical strength, speed, and endurance for other girls our age and size, and we’re still getting stronger. Except for Hotaru-chan and ChibiUsa, I’m the weakest in plain physical terms, and I could wrestle _you_ to the ground without too much trouble if I...” Ami stopped short and went red-faced at her poor choice of words. “That is... I meant to say... oh dear.” She turned around and faced the window, hiding her face in her hands.

“There, there,” Makoto consoled her, patting Ami gently on the back while grinning wickedly at Ryo. “Nice to know what she’s really thinking about you, isn’t it? Ouch!”

Ami had just kicked her in the shin. Makoto glared at her while rubbing the back of her other foot over the injury, but Ryo coughed politely before she had a chance to retaliate.

“You were saying, Ami-chan?” Ami lowered her hands and took a deep breath, but didn’t turn around just yet.

“I was saying,” she answered in a slow and careful voice, “that being able to transform into a Senshi is really just the first stage. According to what Luna and Artemis have told us, and from what I’ve been able to dig up with my computer, every time we transform and then turn back to normal, we’re a little _less_ normal than we were before. A bit of the strength, energy, and powers of our other identity gets into our everyday self and continues to build up with each transformation, until finally we _become_ our other self, permanently. When that happens, we won’t need to transform anymore, because all our powers will be with us all the time.”

“I see. So what’s the problem?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s the problem’?” Ami asked, turning around. “Why should there be a problem?”

“I just figured there must have been some complication, or... _something_ you were worried about that kept you from telling me about this sooner.” He looked at her. “There wasn’t?”

“N-no,” Ami stammered, shaking her head. “It just never occurred to me to mention it before.” Now she looked at him. “But now that we’re on the subject, doesn’t it bother you? Even a little?”

“That you’re stronger than I am?” Ryo seemed surprised. “Why should it bother me? Ami-chan, I’ve known since before we even met that you were stronger than me. I didn’t actually know how _much_ stronger until we had that talk at the fountain, but I did know that you were out there almost every night facing things that nobody our age should have had to worry about. I know I couldn’t have done that, because it was all I could do to deal with _seeing_ what was going on, and when I finally did get caught in the middle of things, it was just too much for me to handle. I was ready to give up right there until you convinced me I was wrong—and that was just you, not Sailor Mercury. It won’t ever matter to me how strong you are physically, because I know that inside, where it counts, you’re even stronger. You inspired me to try and be better than I was, and you _still_ inspire me to try and be better than I am, to be more caring or courageous.”

“’More courageous’?” Ami echoed in disbelief. “Ryo-kun, you’re not a coward.”

“No, but I’m not as brave as I could—as I _ought_ to be.”

“Not as...” Makoto had to step back in a hurry as Ami pushed past her. “Now you listen to me,” Ami said fiercely, seizing Ryo’s collar and looking him straight in the eye. “I have never in my life met anyone as brave as you are. Yes, _we_ fight evil, but we have the power to at least have a fighting chance; you don’t even have that, and you still tried _twice_ to protect me. You say you think I’m stronger than you are just because you had a few moments of being scared and tired? My God, Ryo, if I had to live with seeing everything you see and _knowing_ that all of it was going to happen no matter what I or anyone else did, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night! Being human entitles you to a _few_ moments of doubt in your life, and you’ve more than earned yours just by dealing with what the universe did to you, but don’t you dare believe for a second that you’re weak or a coward, because you’re not.”

“Ami-chan...”

“You’re not!” she snapped, shaking him once, though not very hard. “You’re not a weakling or a coward, and I’m not going to let you be a fool by thinking less of yourself than you deserve! You say I inspire you? Well guess what? _You_ inspire _me_. You’re one of the things that help me fight as Mercury and still sleep at night. You’re brave and you’re smart and you’re funny, and... and... oh, the hell with it!”

And with that, Ami dragged Ryo’s face down and kissed him. REALLY kissed him. After a moment in which a hundred or so variations of shock and amazement skittered across his brain and slowed down the passage of even the most basic signals, Ryo put his arms around her and kissed back.

It was either ten seconds or ten centuries later when a combined demand for propriety and air put an end to the kiss and left them both standing there, arms still around one another and heads bowed so that their foreheads touched as they both tried to catch their breath. Ami was also trying to figure out how what had just happened _had_ happened, how her hands had gone from a death grip on Ryo’s collar to the middle of his back without her realizing it until now, and also what corner of her lungs was coming up with enough air for her to keep talking.

“I love you, Ryo, and I’m not going to let you think poorly of yourself when you haven’t done anything to deserve it. If you don’t like it, that’s just too bad.”

“I think... I can live... with that,” Ryo replied, considerably shorter of breath than Ami was and absolutely red-faced besides; she wasn’t even blushing a little bit. Taking one long gulp of air, Ryo looked at her without raising his head, and in a quiet voice, said, “I suppose that if I fail to say ‘I love you, too’ right now, you’ll kick me in the shin like you did to Mako-chan a moment ago, right?”

“Fair is fair.”

“Well then, for the sake of fairness, my shins, and just because it’s true, I love you, too, Mizuno Ami, Sailor Mercury, and whoever else you are, were, or are going to be.”

Even though hearing those words made a part of her want to start jumping up and down and screaming out of sheer exhilarated joy like... like... well, like Usagi or Minako, Ami instead shot Ryo a warning look and delivered a Makotoism: “Don’t push your luck, buster.”

“Yes ma’am. No ma’am.” Ryo let go of her with one hand to snap a salute, and this time Ami had to at least let herself giggle. The moment didn’t last long, unfortunately.

“Ryo-kun,” she said quietly, “there’s something else I should tell you. It’s... um... it’s the thing I was worried about explaining to everyone. It... I...”

“Ami? What is it?”

“It’s a little... it’s a little scary.” Ami closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to regain a handle on her emotions. Ami was a master of this particular art, and one of her favorite tactics was to picture a mountain lake, cool and clear and calm, and focus on it until her inner state mirrored that of the lake.

Getting her urge to giggle under control was easy, and steadying her nerves was not much harder, but there was an absolute wave of embarrassment lurking just at the edges of her consciousness; it had been well-fed on the knowledge of what she had just been doing in plain sight of every last one of her friends, and took a little longer to put down. There was also one feeling that refused to go away, a deep warmth which caused her picture of the lake to shift and gain a bright sun overhead, its warm light beaming down upon the surface lake and sending rippling rainbows throughout every drop of water. Ami considered that and permitted herself a happy smile, but refused to let even this new feeling distract her.

When her eyes opened again, Ami was calm once more. Ryo had taken her hands between his own and was looking at her with concern; Ami smiled and gently touched the side of his face with the back of her left hand. It was a gesture intended to be affectionate and reassuring, but it also had a more practical purpose: four words.

*Can you hear me?*

From the way Ryo’s eyes widened, Ami knew that he had indeed heard her. It was written throughout his mind, as shock and confusion chased each other around in circles. Ami had already learned that her empathic reception wasn’t as good as Makoto’s—just as Makoto’s telepathic skill wasn’t as strong as Ami’s—but at this range, Ryo’s emotions were easy to pick out.

“What was...” he began. “Ami-chan, did you just...”

*Yes. I did.*

Amazement. Curiosity. “How...”

*Like this.* In those two words and a burst of memories, Ami communicated everything that had happened—her failed transformation, the strange mental rescue Sasanna had been forced to attempt, and the lasting effects of it. Ryo blinked and grunted, squinting against the physical sensation that came with the transfer of information. It had the same feeling of internal pressure as the headaches that came with his visions, but there was a difference. The pain of the headaches was sharp, fiery, and deep; this was dull, cool, and light. The headaches sometimes felt like a lance driving into his brain; this felt more like several dozen tiny needles just barely piercing the outermost surface. It was a more widespread sort of pain, but nowhere near as intense.

*Ryo-kun? Are you okay?*

*I’m fine.* “I’m fine.” He paused. *Did I say that or did I just think it?* “Did...”

*You did both.*

*Oh.* Another pause. *Takes a little getting used to, doesn’t it?*

*A little,* Ami agreed. She hesitated before gently probing the rippling sense of his mind to see what his thoughts and feelings about this latest development were. Ryo felt a funny tingling sensation and guessed—correctly— that it was Ami.

*Yes?*

*You’re not scared,* she said in a wondering tone. *You’re surprised, and you don’t entirely love that I can do this, but you’re not scared. Why not?*

*Can’t you tell?*

*It doesn’t work that way—at least, not yet. Not unless the thought in question is very intense or directed straight at me.*

Ryo considered that, then smiled and ‘directed’ straight at her the reasons why he wasn’t scared: her patience and compassion; her almost compulsive sense of proper decorum; her self-determination and courage. All of these reasons had a sense of memory about them, as if they were things Ryo had thought about before on many occasions, and with them came other things, other memories to which they were inescapably attached:

Faded-out images of the color of her hair, both when the sun was on it and when it was in the shade, and the way it danced in the wind;

Oddly-echoing memories of the sound of her voice, whether soft and gentle or raised in exasperation and anger;

The light scent of her favorite perfume, a fragrance that drove Ryo crazy as much because he’d never been able to identify it as for any pheromonal properties it possessed;

Moments of frustration coming from Ryo’s attempts to keep up with her in class, interspersed with a few moments of pride from the times he’d managed to do just that;

And some purely physical appreciation of shapes and proportions, overlain with the much more recent memory of the warmth and textures that went with some of them.

In short, the ‘reasons’ were everything Ryo knew and loved about her. Ami could have dealt with learning one or two at a time, but all of them together combined to shatter her lake-inspired calmness and make her break out in another world-class blush.

“Ahem!”

The other Senshi, naturally, had long since given up arguing or watching the arguing in favor of watching the little side-drama which was unfolding by the window—and then, when the kiss came along, they had given up just ‘watching’ in favor of gaping, blushing, grinning, gawking, staring, goggling, and boggling.

Ordinarily, the sight of Ami blushing would have reassured the others that all was well with the universe, but in this situation, a good two minutes _after_ that kiss—something Ami shouldn’t have been able to manage in public without suffering the emotional equivalent of spontaneously bursting into flames on the spot—and with no other apparent reason to explain it, the blushing only made the other Senshi more confused and concerned. Haruka had finally had enough of waiting around for an insight, and taken more direct action.

“Having fun, you two?”

“Shut up, Haruka.” Haruka was not the only one to blink at the abrupt tone, but Ami had her attention back on Ryo the instant the words left her mouth. “You... you really meant... all of it?”

“Uh...” Ryo coughed and reddened slightly. “Yeah. Sorry about that last bit. I, uh... that is...”

“Shush,” Ami ordered, placing one finger over his lips. “You don’t have to apologize for being human, remember?” She paused, blushing, her eyes looking down shyly. “And... I didn’t... I didn’t really mind... not that much, anyway.”

That was more or less true. Even if she didn’t have Makoto’s leggy curves or Michiru’s mature elegance, Ami knew that she was in good physical shape; her diet had never been a problem, and life as Mercury had insured that she got _plenty_ of exercise, which in turn had only improved on the strength and conditioning left to her after years of swimming. Still, it never failed to surprise her whenever she noticed a boy noticing her, especially considering how drop-dead gorgeous some of her friends were.

Ami had always known that Ryo appreciated her mind and heart, and she wouldn’t have traded that for anything, but knowing that there was a real physical attraction there too was... reassuring.

As she thought about that, Ami’s gaze turned inward. Then she nodded slowly and reached up to take Ryo’s head between both hands and gently pull him down until their foreheads touched again.

“Uh, Ami-chan?” Ryo asked nervously. “What are you doing?”

*If you tell me everything you love about me, then I should do the same for you,* she explained silently. *Fair is fair.*

Truth be told, Ami wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing. The command for her hands to move as they did hadn’t come from her conscious mind, but from one of the walled-off corners of her memory which she suspected held her memories of the Silver Millennium. The personality which had slept behind those barriers for so long had apparently woken up at last because of this telepathic exchange, at least to the point where she was taking a hand in things.

Encouraged by her past life’s sudden awakening, Ami tried to push past the mental blocks and reach it—to reach _her_—only to find that whatever was keeping her from remembering herself was still in place.

*This must be how Setsuna feels sometimes,* Ami thought, her tone a mix of frustration, anger, and resignation. She hammered against the walls again, and again, then huffed, turned her thoughts away from them, and tried to figure out what goal the shadowy mind-within-her-mind was guiding her towards.

All at once, she was thinking about Ryo: about the pensive, serious expression that all too-often appeared on his face, and about the warm smile that would always rise up from that to greet her; about the quiet and not-so-quiet moments they had spent together; about all the inner qualities she had held up only a few minutes ago. She even thought—a little—about his hands, his shoulders, his lips, his bu...

*Back!* she corrected herself hastily. *His back!*

It was the same sort of collected information Ryo had given to her, but Ami could feel something else forming in her mind alongside it. Certain muscles in her face were tightening or slackening in reaction to the neural impulses going off in her brain as the whatever-it-was became sharper and more defined. It didn’t feel dangerous; if anything, it felt enormously _right_, though Ami couldn’t have said why.

In a split-second flash, quick as thought, the weird presence in her mind assumed a recognizable form and then vanished, taking with it everything Ami had been thinking about Ryo and leaving her feeling cold, tired, and empt...

# 

The sudden appearance of the new energy came at a bad time for Proteus, for it had been in the middle of making some very important and extremely delicate adjustments to certain of its systems, scattered across the parts of this city that its body inhabited. Thinking at first that another overwhelming surge of power was on the way, the entity had shut down dozens of operations within the systems of its far-flung body, in some cases losing hours of painstaking work with a decision lasting less than a second.

Now Proteus was slowly restoring itself and beginning its many tasks again, all the while trying to determine what had just happened, and what it could mean.

Analyzing the energy had revealed its surprising similarity to certain electrochemical patterns Proteus had observed in the minds of its captured human subjects—two distinctly separate patterns briefly joining almost into one before separating again, or so it seemed—but the source had been too short-lived for any definite location to be calculated. All Proteus could tell for certain was that it had been in the same general part of the city from which this night’s two massive surges had originated.

One anomaly was chance, and two might be coincidence, but three, all of them in the same general area, could not be either.

*Something is going on. I must know what.*

# 

The next thing Ami knew, she was waking up in an unfamiliar bed that was very warm and soft—no, make that flexible. A waterbed, then. And that meant she was in Michiru’s room.

Thinking even that much made her brain hurt.

“She’s awake,” a subdued voice said. Was it Makoto? Ami tried to open her eyes to see.

It _was_ Makoto. She was standing near the door. Rei and Ryo were also in the room, each of them sitting on a different chair—with Rooky perched atop Rei’s chair and Thrax atop Ryo’s—and Luna was over in front of the window, her back to the others as she looked out at the storm with a crossed-arms, straight-backed, toe-tapping posture that could have meant almost anything. Ami could read Luna’s _feline_ body language fairly well, but she was going to have start paying attention to pick up her human mannerisms as well.

Despite the fact that she was tired, in a certain amount of pain, and more than curious to know what had just happened, the very next thing Ami did was to turn her head in Ryo’s direction and smile. It was really incredible how he was able to go through all these situations and worry about her so much with so little of it actually showing up on his face. Just being able to look at him made her feel so much better that...

“Look at me, Ami,” Luna ordered abruptly, stepping in front of her and cutting off her view of Ryo. “Put the rest of it out of your head and just look at me.”

“What happened, Luna? Why am I...”

“I’ll explain in a minute, Ami.” Luna sat down on the edge of the bed, still blocking Ami’s view of Ryo, and Ami had to wonder if that was intentional. “For now, just look at me, okay?”

“Okay,” Ami agreed, trying to blink the bleariness out of her eyes as she looked up at Luna. That bleariness melted away and was forgotten as the golden crescent on the cat-woman’s forehead flashed, and for the next few seconds, all was silent. Ami looked up, Luna looked down, and the beam of pale gold energy linked their minds.

At last, the beam faded, and they both blinked again. Luna sighed. “It’s done. I can hardly believe it, but it’s... can you sit up? Here,” she said, taking some of the pillows and stuffing them behind Ami to help her keep upright. That done, Luna looked at her closely again. “How do you feel?”

“My head hurts, and I’m tired.” Ami paused.

“And...?”

“And... and I can... I can _feel_ Ryo-kun. I can almost hear what he’s thinking.” Ami realized that she was trying to look around Luna and see Ryo as she talked, and Luna, who obviously knew it, kept moving herself to get in the way. “Luna,” Ami whispered fearfully, “what happened? What did I do?”

“One word for it is a ‘mindbond’; another is ‘rapport’.” Luna seemed to wait for Ami to react to either word before she continued. “Putting it simply, your mind and Ryo’s are linked now. With a little time for the link to grow, you’ll both be able to feel each other’s presence no matter how far apart you get. If you’re close enough, Ryo will be able to tell in a general sort of way what you’re thinking and feeling.” Luna looked at her. “You’ll be able to tell the same about him, though I suspect it’ll be in more than a ‘general’ sort of way.”

Ami listened in silence. “Is there any way to get rid of it?”

“No.”

Again, silence. “Ryo?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for doing this to you.” Ami’s voice was steady, but her eyes were full of tears—and Ryo, who she could just see to be getting up from his chair, clearly knew that.

“You just sit back down,” Luna told him sternly, half-turning where she sat, “or I’ll have Makoto and Rei _make_ you sit.” After a pause, she nodded. “That’s better. And you can stop crying, Ami,” she added as she turned back around. “It’s physically impossible for you to feel anywhere near that bad right now, so I _know_ you’re just doing it to try and get Ryo over here.”

The tears shut off immediately as Ami blushed, glowered at Luna, punched her in the leg, and then stared at her own hand in surprise. There was a shout and a loud thud—and a lot of startled protest from the two crows—a moment later as Rei tackled Ryo, who had been about to jump Luna from behind. Considering the fighting tricks she had learned from her grandfather and Makoto over the years and what Ami had said earlier about how becoming Senshi had been gradually increasing their strength, Rei ought to have had no trouble with Ryo, but he was suddenly putting up quite a struggle, and the second that fight got started, Ami was trying to get up again, forcing Luna to hold her down.

Over by the door, Makoto pinched the bridge of her nose as though she were getting a headache—which she was, thanks to the way that Ami’s and Ryo’s emotional states kept shifting. “Luna, what’s going on?”

“It’s the mindbond. Neither of them is thinking entirely normally just now.”

“You mean they’re _supposed_ to act like this?” Rei demanded. She had Ryo face-down and in an arm-twisting grip which he wasn’t likely to get out of any time soon.

“It hits people differently,” Luna replied around clenched teeth as she struggled with Ami. “There’s no way to... tell beforehand... exactly what will happen. You have to wait and see, but since their minds are so closely connected now, it does make a sort of sense that their bodies would try to—ouch!”

Ami had just bitten her arm. Luna felt incredibly stupid; after all, as a cat, if someone had been trying to hold _her_, she would have done exactly the same thing, and yet she hadn’t even seen it coming.

As Luna fell back, clutching at her arm and hissing out a number of Lunari words she would have washed Serenity’s mouth out with soap for using, Ami gathered herself and sprang forward, knocking Luna over the side of the bed. She regained her own balance nearly instantly and bounced over Luna towards Rei.

“Get off of him!” Ami shrieked furiously, hammering at Rei and trying to push her away from Ryo.

“Mako-chan!” Rei called out. “A little—ouch!—a little help here would— oomph!” She could deal with either Ami or Ryo, but not both at once.

Watching as Luna got up and tried to grab Ami, only to get kicked in the belly for her trouble, Makoto was slow to nod. “Right. Hang on.”

When the door opened a few moments later, the situation had been resolved—a little. Makoto was dragging Ami, literally kicking and screaming, towards one side of the room, while Luna and Rei dragged Ryo towards the other. There were bruises all around, and Rei had picked up a black eye from Ami’s pummeling. Rooky and Thrax had taken refuge as high up as possible; Rooky was on top of the drapes, while Thrax was balancing himself rather impressively atop the frame of Michiru’s dresser mirror. Thankfully, there was not a bust of Pallas in sight, atop the chamber door or anywhere else in the room.

“What the hell?” Haruka said, her face as wondering as her tone. Most of the others looked much the same.

As soon as she glanced towards the door, Ami calmed right down and quit trying to drive her elbows into Makoto’s kidneys. Instead, she moaned softly and pressed her hands against the sides of her head; scared that Ami was about to faint or get sick, Makoto quickly adjusted her hold so that her arms weren’t wrapped quite so tightly around the smaller girl, but it didn’t seem to help.

“Ami?”

“Mako-chan... my head... hurts.”

“Luna, get over here. Something’s wrong with her.”

“_Now_ what?” Luna let go of Ryo and marched quickly over to Makoto and Ami, reaching out and pulling Ami’s bowed head back up so she could see her face.

Luna paled and let out a hiss of frightened amazement; Ami’s eyes were glowing with faint patterns of shifting blue light.

“Lu... na... help...”

“Would one of you explain...” Michiru began.

“Not now!” Luna barked, trying to think fast. “Damn it, how can she possibly...” Luna shook her head with a grim snarl and looked into Ami’s eyes. “Ami, listen carefully. I want you to imagine yourself as a piece of ice.”

“I-ice?”

“Yes, ice. A cube, a sculpture, a glacier—anything. Just pick something made of ice and fix the shape of it in your mind.”

*Made... of... ice.* Ami pictured a statue carved out of ice—one which looked just like her, smiling and happy—and it appeared in her mind, astonishingly clear and precise despite the pain. “Got... it... a statue...”

“That’s good. A statue’s good. Put yourself into that statue, Ami. It doesn’t just look like you, it _is_ you. Every dimension is exactly the same; it’s precisely as tall as you are; there are deposits of iron and calcium and other substances besides water inside of it, just like there are inside of your body; it all weighs just as much as you do. Feel the cold of the ice and the energy of the water held inside it, just like the energy you hold inside of yourself as Mercury. You are the statue.”

“I... am... the statue.” Ami smiled a little, her eyes closed to help her see the image more clearly.

“Now picture the pain you’re feeling as fire, all around. Picture the statue cracking from the heat, its features melting and evaporating away. Picture it becoming a puddle of dirty water with little bits of rusty iron and small piles of minerals sticking out.”

“No,” Ami whimpered—not because she was refusing to do it, but because the image had already started to melt, and the pain seemed to be getting worse because of it. Water was dripping from the statue and pooling on the invisible surface beneath it; distinct details were being softened, blurred, and erased. A fissure snapped open across the middle of the statue, and Ami doubled over with a choked-off scream; she would have fallen if Makoto hadn’t still been holding her. At the same instant, Ryo took a sudden sharp breath and clenched his teeth and eyes against a jolt of pain that was not his own.

“Ami!”

“STAY BACK!” Luna ordered, holding her hands up to stop Ryo and Rei on the one side and the massed Senshi on the other from moving any closer. “Ami, focus. You are the statue, and the pain is the fire, trying to break you down. Don’t let it. Fight back. Use Mercury. Use ice and water to put the fire out and rebuild the statue.”

“I can’t... transform...”

“You don’t have to transform for this. It’s all happening in your mind, and that doesn’t change no matter who you turn into. Mercury is still in there; find her and get her to help you.”

*She’s talking... as if Mercury were... another person... separate... but she just said... I don’t change... in my mind... so then what did she... oh no...*

It had just occurred to her that there _was_ another person in her mind, a personality that was entirely separate from Mizuno Ami and yet, at the same time, was entirely a part of her. More precisely, a part of her past.

“Luna, I can’t... remember. I don’t know... how to reach...”

“You don’t have to reach out to her, Ami; she’s already reaching out to you. That’s what’s been causing all this: first your illness; then your problems transforming; then the telepathy.” The crowd at the door blinked; while waiting for Ami to wake up, Makoto had told Luna, Rei, and Ryo what had happened during their stay with Sasanna, but this was the first the rest were hearing about it. “You knew to call the Caduceus because of her, too, and then there was the mindbond. I know it probably doesn’t make any sense to you, Ami, but trust me, it adds up to the same thing: Mercury’s trying to come back. You have to find her and help her before it kills you both.”

*Mercury... again. Why is Luna... calling her that? Usagi was Serenity, and Makoto was Amal... thea... Rei was Vestia, Minako... Ishtar...*

flicker

*Ariel and little water-sister Larissa... dark and serious Pandora... such a wonderful smile, why did she always hide it? And poor Pluto...*

flicker

*Setsuna... or Athena... or just Pluto...*

flicker

*Poor lonely Pluto... even we never asked so much of the one born to be Mercury as was asked of her, she was so young when it happened... and she’s only human...*

flicker

*Only human?*

flicker

*Only human.*

flicker

*And you’re... not?*

flicker

*Of course not.*

flicker

*What... but then... you... we... I...*

flicker

*’We’? Who are you?*

flicker

*Who am _I_? Who are _you_? What is your name?*

flicker

*What is my _name_? What is _your_ name?*

flicker

*What is _my_ name?*

flicker

*What is my name.*

flicker

*What _is_ my name?*

flicker

*What is...*

flickerflicker

*...my name?*

flickerflickerflickerflicker

*What is it?*

flickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflicker

*WHAT IS IT?*

flickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflickerflicker

“WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER MY NAME???”

Blue light flared.

# 

In the depths of the phone center, the physical mass which housed Proteus’ central awareness began to twitch violently as the psychic scream sliced into its intellect. Tendrils of green matter ripped loose from the walls and smashed around in convulsive fits as, for only the third time in its brief existence, Proteus felt pain.

It was a sensation the entity was really beginning to dislike.

# 

In her second-floor office, a woman busily typing away at her computer paused in the middle of a keystroke and looked up with a sudden expression of concern. She reached for the phone on her desk, hitting the ‘0’ button as she picked up the receiver.

“Switchboard.”

“Yes, this is Doctor Mizuno, on second. Have there been any calls for me this evening?”

“Yes, there was a call put through from the OR three hours...”

“I got it. Any others?”

“No, ma’am. Were you expecting a call?”

“No... no, just an odd feeling. Thank you, and goodnight.”

“Goodnight, ma’am.”

Mrs. Mizuno hung up the phone and went back to her work for all of three seconds before the falling snow out the window caught and held her attention instead. For a moment, she thought she could see Ami’s face looking back at her through the glass, and she wondered if her daughter was all right. Then she shook her head.

“Just an odd feeling,” she repeated.

The confidence in her voice was badly forced; the odd feeling didn’t go away.

# 

Makoto had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, each hand wedged down under the other arm, and she was going through every curse she knew in a fierce whisper. Ami had screamed again and suddenly been lit up like the sun, only in pale blue and with the heating reversed; that energy had been deathly cold, and it had made holding on to Ami similar to trying to hug a giant icicle. Most of the front of Makoto’s body hurt like that frozen-over hell Minako had mentioned a few times, and her hands were completely numb.

Other hands appeared, small and warm and glowing purple-black, to touch Makoto’s frozen forearms and banish the cold ache from her body. “Thanks, Hotaru-chan.” Makoto smiled gratefully. “You’re a handy sort of person to have around.”

The ‘handy’ comment earned Makoto a poke in the ribs; Hotaru was obviously learning a few things from Michiru for keeping people who thought they were funny in line.

“All better?” she asked, removing her hands from Makoto’s arm. Makoto looked at her hands, flexing her fingers and turning her wrists a few times to make sure everything was working normally, and nodded. The rest of the pain was gone, too, although her clothes were still a bit too cool for comfort. Remembering the acorn, Makoto quickly drew it out, but the silver seed appeared to have been unaffected by the sudden drop in temperature.

“What about Ami?” Makoto asked, tucking the acorn away again.

“Luna won’t let me go near her.” Hotaru glanced over her shoulder at where, after the flash of blue light had ended, Ami had collapsed on the floor and curled up into a ball. Looking down with her life-vision, Hotaru could see that Ami’s aura was calm and steady, with no traces of the blurry fatigue or the weird wobbling she’d seen back in Merlin’s forest. Even so, it—and Ami—didn’t seem to be completely back to normal just yet. Whatever was wrong was _still_ wrong—it just wasn’t hurting Ami right now. Not physically, at least.

Standing silent watch over Ami, Luna had an absolutely blank expression on her face. Hotaru couldn’t tell if it was the look of a woman who has shut down her normal emotional processes in order to do something that is both totally necessary and totally despicable, or the look of a woman who has just seen something she doesn’t want to deal with, and who has retreated into herself in order to escape it. It was a look that made Hotaru simultaneously want to hit her and hug her.

“She knows what’s wrong with Ami,” Makoto muttered, more to herself than to Hotaru or anyone else. “She _knows_ what’s causing all this, and it has her freaked. Why? Is it _that_ dangerous, or is there another reason...”

“Unnhhhh...”

“Ami?” Usagi said immediately. She took half a step forward before Haruka and Minako each caught one of her shoulders and stopped her.

“Why wouldn’t... tell me...”

“Ami?” Luna said, kneeling down and reaching out cautiously to turn the huddled girl so she could see her face. “Can you hear me? Do you know wh... where you are?”

*She was going to say something else,* Makoto thought, shocked. *She wasn’t going to ask Ami if she knew _who_ she was, was she?*

“Lu... na...?” There was a pause in which Ami appeared to look around. “Michiru’s... room. I remember... what... what happened?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute. How do you feel?”

“My head... is killing me... slowly.” Ami tried to sit up and got her head about an inch off the floor before sinking back down with a whimper.

“And Mercury?”

“She’s... gone. Again.” With a lot of effort and even more help from Luna, Ami managed to get herself into a sitting position. “I could feel her right next to me... but she wouldn’t tell me... anything. Why won’t she tell me?”

“I don’t think it’s because she doesn’t want to,” Luna said with a sigh. “I think she just can’t.”

Ami looked up and caught Luna by the shoulders. “You. You know. Luna, please tell me. Who was she? _What_ was she? What was _I_? Why is she DOING this to me?” Ami broke down and started to cry. “Why won’t she tell me my NAME?”

While Ami cried in Luna’s arms, Makoto felt emotional twinges from everyone in the room. There was a lot of internal pain, but there was also a large amount of more pleasant feelings—sympathetic, supportive, calming feelings—and it was all being directed at Ami. The Senshi were once again sharing their strength, each of them silently wishing in her own particular measure and means for Ami to feel better; there was even a soft, low-pitched purr coming from Luna as she held Ami and gently stroked her hair. The force of the massed emotions was strong enough that Makoto could almost pick out the thoughts tied up in it, which meant that Ami must certainly know what the others were thinking and feeling at this moment.

Then again, none of them needed telepathy to know that.

For the longest time, even after Ami finally stopped crying, nobody moved or said a word. At last, Usagi spoke. “Luna, what’s a Nereid?”

Luna looked up at her. “Where did you hear that word?”

“In here.” She tapped the side of her head. “When Serenity thinks about _our_ Mercury, she calls her Ami; she does the same for all the other Senshi, past or present, but when she thinks of _her_ Mercury, she never uses a name, only her title. The word ‘Nereid’ is always floating around the edges of that, like it’s something important, but also like it’s something Serenity knows so well that she doesn’t even have to think about what it means anymore. And what’s this ‘telepathy’ business about?”

Except for the purring, Luna remained silent for some time. Then, still sitting on the floor, still cradling Ami against her, she began to explain.

# 

> LUNA’S TALE
> 
> Life, as humans know it, is the quality—one sometimes difficult to define—that separates plants, animals, fungi, and the lowest order of microbes from the nonliving matter of the universe around them. It is animation and energy, instinct and evolution. It is finite, restrictive, sometimes harsh and ugly, but often very beautiful.
> 
> A rock is not alive. A lake is not alive. The chemical compounds which make up a living creature are not, in and of themselves, alive. Rather, it is the reactions between these substances which creates the state of life— reactions which began over four billion years ago in a puddle of unimpressive, nonliving slime, a primordial soup stirred by the complex and powerful energy fields of the Earth, and of the many other worlds in the universe where life has existed.
> 
> Those energies, the basic elemental powers of the planet and of the universe, are the same forces which empower magic, and they have been present, influencing life, since it began. In a very real way, life _is_ magic, and the properties of mutation and evolution come about as the result of the effects of magical energy upon ordinary matter. But one must never forget that this energy affects _all_ matter, not just that which is currently alive.
> 
> Earth has had many children. Some, like humans, have developed from lesser forms of life over the slow course of generations, while others—such as dryads— have been suddenly created from those same lesser forms. Others have been born from the same primordial mixing of nonliving matter and planetary power, but with other substances as the basic building blocks of their form of life.
> 
> It started somewhere below the glaciers of an Ice Age, in a region where deposits of iron, silicon, and other minerals were squeezed together under hundreds of tons of ice to form weird new substances, in much the same way that volcanic force compresses coal into diamonds. Iron attracts electrical energy; silicon and water both conduct it; and low temperatures enable them to do so more efficiently. Over the many years in which this particular Ice Age lasted, the mineral deposits soaked up more and more electrical energy; at the same time, the snow and ice above continued to pile higher, increasing the size of the glaciers and the elemental power of the water within them. When the electrical charges of the various mineral deposits became large enough to influence each other, they began to interact, energy passing through the ice from one location to the next in patterns which gradually grew faster and more complex.
> 
> It takes millions of years and far more pressure than a mere ten thousand tons of ice can produce to turn coal into diamonds. Ice Ages do not last quite so long, but this one lasted just long enough, in just the right location, for the buildup of energy to pass some critical level. When the glaciers retreated, the energy that had been trapped inside of them should have dispersed back into the environment, but it had grown too focused and intense for that to happen. So instead, one day during the centuries-long thaw, the ice cracked open and melted away to release highly energized clouds of mineral-rich vapor, clouds which shifted in shape and were lit from within by complex reactions of energy. Clouds which were _alive_.
> 
> Thus were the Nereids born.

# 

“Clouds?!” Haruka exclaimed in disbelief. “Are you saying Ami was a _CLOUD_ in her past life?”

The only two people in the room who weren’t staring at Luna were Artemis and Ami herself, who was still holding on to Luna with her head bowed and her eyes closed; she might even have been asleep, but everyone else more than made up for her lack of a reaction. Even ChibiUsa appeared to have been startled for once.

“Picture them as small, self-contained banks of blue-tinted fog,” Artemis advised. “Then stick the Aurora Borealis inside, and you’ve pretty much got the picture.”

“No.” Even though she almost could remember seeing something like what Artemis was describing, Usagi was shaking her head. “No, that can’t be right. Luna, I _remember_ seeing a girl who everyone called Mercury; she was a little older and taller than Ami, and her hair was longer, but everything else was almost exactly identical. She even _sounded_ like Ami does. How could she have...”

“Usagi,” Luna said in a wearily patient voice, “you asked me to tell you what a Nereid was, and I’m doing that the best way I know how. I’ll explain everything, but for now, just be quiet and listen. If you keep interrupting me with a question every two minutes, we’ll be here all night.”

# 

> LUNA’S TALE, CONTINUED
> 
> The Nereid form of life was based mostly on energy. Their physical ’bodies’ consisted of a mineral-enriched water vapor, held together by the internal energy fields which formed their thoughts. By altering some of this energy to interact with the magnetic field of a planet, the Nereids could move in defiance of wind, buoyancy, and even gravity; they fed in the same manner, drawing tiny amounts of elemental power from their environment to replenish their own reserves. Because they were dependent on energy, Nereids were also sensitive to it, able to locate areas with high levels of elemental force for better feeding, and also to discern changes in each other’s energy fields as a means of communication. The same held true when they were in the presence of more solid forms of life; the Nereids could perceive the patterns of energy contained in the brain, and with time they learned how to correctly interpret them so as to communicate with humans and other corporeal beings.

(Makoto, confused: “Cor-what?”)

(Michiru: “Corporeal. It means physical, or material. In this case, anything with a solid body.”)

(Makoto: “Oh, okay.”)

> Another potent ability gained from this energy-based existence was the power of shapeshifting. Many creatures possessed this ability in one lesser form or another, and were able to adapt the shape and substance of parts of their bodies so as to be better suited for specific situations. Other beings had the power of shapechanging, a magical, near-instantaneous, and total transformation from one body shape to another. A shapeshifter, however, cannot alter its total mass, so it always weighs the same no matter what form it takes; shapechangers have no such limitation, but while they can change between their different forms at will, they cannot change the _appearance_ of those forms, and are similarly unable to take _other_ forms.
> 
> When it came to shapeshifting, Nereids possessed many advantages. Made mostly of mineral-enriched water vapor and intangible energy, they had no need for vital internal organs such as a heart or lungs, and could easily assume shapes which did not have them, a trick most organic shapeshifters were unable to duplicate. Because their natural gaseous substance was so light, the Nereids could shift form nearly as fast as a shapechanger—but since they could not alter their mass, any solid form they took was usually much too light for its size. They compensated for this with the same power which allowed their natural forms to fly, reversing the original effect to ‘anchor’ themselves on the planet’s magnetic field, giving the _appearance_ of increased weight, if not the actuality.

(Michiru, frowning: “Wouldn’t having a personal magnetic field like that mean that they’d get struck by lightning a great deal?”)

(Artemis: “Actually, that was one way Nereids fed in their natural form; they’d float themselves up into a passing thunderstorm, turn on the magnetism, and chow down on a few bolts of lightning. I don’t ever recall hearing about a Nereid getting struck by lightning while in a solid form—unless she was Mercury and practicing against Jupiter—so I’m guessing they had a way to make themselves electrically unattractive when they needed to.”)

(Luna, looking at Artemis: “....”)

(Artemis: “Oh, sorry, Luna.”)

> Since they were not subject to the ravages of Time on a physical body, Nereids could easily live for several hundred years; the only ways in which they could be killed were through a lack of feeding, a direct exposure to large quantities of negative energy—which neutralized their life-force—or being subjected to particularly intense levels of heat, which would evaporate away their very substance. On Earth, they preferred the arctic and higher temperate regions; they could tolerate tropical areas by assuming solid forms which more tightly bound their precious water, but they never stayed long, and they avoided deserts whenever possible.

(Haruka, nodding: “Makes sense.”)

(Minako, also nodding: “Yeah. They couldn’t stand the heat, so they got out of the frying pan.”)

(Artemis: “Kitchen. If you can’t stand the heat, you get out of the kitchen.”)

(Minako, frowning: “We’re not in the kitchen.”)

(Makoto, also frowning: “Are you sure it’s ‘kitchen’ and not ‘oven’?”)

(Luna: “AHEM.”)

(Haruka, grinning: “That sounds like a nasty cough, Luna. Are you sure you’re not coming down with—oomph!”)

(Michiru: “Go ahead, Luna.”)

> The birth of the Nereids is believed to have predated the rise of the modern human race, and it is certain that the two species coexisted on Earth for a long time. Eventually, when the rise of Atlantis began to change the world, when more and more humans were spreading out, bringing with them magic which altered the very essence of the Earth itself and changed the flows of its energy, the Nereids knew that they must leave. They worked closely with the Atlanteans, studying the other planets for what they needed to sustain their form of life.
> 
> Mars was cool enough, but it lacked the necessary water. Venus, then a beautiful jungle world, was too warm for the Nereids to consider long-term habitation. Mighty Jupiter, with its intense electromagnetic field and enormous quantities of atmospheric gas, seemed a good choice, and some Nereids did in fact migrate there, taking up residence somewhere amongst the giant’s endless storms. Saturn, with its endless shifting of realities, was too dangerous, and the weirdly tilted world of Uranus had its planetary energies as skewed as its axis, rendering them useless to the Nereids. With its strong alignment to the elemental power of water, Neptune proved another good choice, while tiny, frozen Pluto was too strong in the negative force of death for most Nereids to tolerate.
> 
> Ultimately, the majority of the species relocated to Mercury.

# 

“Hang up a minute,” Minako interrupted. “Didn’t you just say a lot of heat was dangerous to them? Why would they move to the planet closest to the sun?”

“Mercury has an odd sort of orbit,” Michiru told her. “If I remember correctly, it only takes about eighty-eight days to go around the sun, but it turns so slowly that one of its ‘days’ lasts for close to two of its ‘years’. The side that faces the sun is very, very hot for a very long time, while the side pointed away is very, very cold. And it’s right next door to all the electromagnetic energy being put out by the sun, which I’d imagine the Nereids must have liked.” She frowned. “I’m not sure what they’d have done about the problem of water, though. Mercury looks pretty much like our Moon.”

“It didn’t always.” Luna sighed. “The surface used to be covered with a metallic element that was never found on any other planet. The Atlanteans discovered it and named it after its planet, but it’s not the same mercury that you find today. They called that ‘quicksilver’; real mercury had the same color, but it didn’t become a liquid unless exposed to extreme heat. The side of the planet that faced the sun was covered by an ocean of molten metal which soaked up huge amounts of solar energy before the planet’s rotation carried it all out of the sunlight. Then it would cool off and solidify, forming a single colossal forest of crystal ‘trees’, all of them sparkling with the stored electromagnetic energy. Deep below that ocean were the residues of the meteorites and comets that had smashed into Mercury over the years. A lot of their substance had been ice, and the presence of the mercury ocean kept it from being boiled off by the sun, so it all settled into underground caverns. As far as the Nereids were concerned, the place was paradise.”

“What happened to it?” ChibiUsa asked.

“The same thing that happened to the rest of the system,” Usagi replied sadly, in a voice which was once again not entirely her own. “Beryl. She came out of nowhere, a previously unimportant sorceress from some remote corner of the Earth who was suddenly conquering an entire kingdom. When rumors of magically-mutated soldiers and other dark magic started reaching us, Mother wanted to intervene and find out exactly where Beryl was getting her power from, but the rest of the royal court supported the idea of keeping a neutral stance. As far as they were concerned, Beryl was just another bloody-minded Terran conqueror, a purely internal problem that the rest of Earth’s leaders were going to have to deal with.” She—or Serenity—closed her eyes. “Mercury woke up screaming one night, and when we finally found out why, she and Ishtar both cried for weeks. We had to take Beryl seriously after that.”

“I don’t understand,” ChibiUsa said.

“Beryl always intended to attack the Moon once she had a solid grip on the Earth,” Artemis said. “But we had the rest of the planets, the Senshi—including Saturn—_and_ the ginzuishou on our side, and she had to find some way to neutralize at least some of those advantages, or she would have lost before she even got started. Her solution was to drop old Atlantean weapons called mana inversion bombs on Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. The bombs were designed to briefly reverse the nature of magical energy in a given area, turning one sort of mana into its opposite form—fire would become water, earth would become air, that sort of thing. The effects only lasted for a minute, but absolutely nothing could survive having its elemental energies rearranged like that. The ones Beryl used were scaled up to be able to affect entire planets, and Mercury and Venus were both incinerated by the unstable magic reactions. Everyone on either planet died instantly, and that was what woke the Nereid Mercury up—the psychic backlash of every single member of her race dying in the same instant. It’s really rather surprising that she managed to survive the shock of the experience.”

“Why did Beryl bomb Saturn?” Hotaru asked, sounding confused. “I’m pretty sure nobody lived there. Nobody nice, anyway.”

“She did it to get rid of Pandora,” Luna replied, looking directly at Hotaru. “A mature and fully-trained Senshi of Saturn could have turned Beryl’s entire army into dust without breaking a sweat, and she knew it, but she also knew what effect setting off a properly-set mana inversion bomb on Saturn itself would have. You’re familiar with the concept of the black hole?”

Hotaru went white, and Luna nodded. “Saturn’s energy fields were chaotic, but they had been contained by powerful natural magic—magic which the mana inversion bomb reversed. The process that started would eventually have torn the fabric of reality wide open and caused a massive gravitational shift throughout the entire solar system, sort of like having a second stellar-sized mass right where Saturn used to be. Queen Serenity had to send Pandora in to stop it, and somehow she found a way, but we never saw her again.”

“We lost Larissa, too,” Usagi added somberly. “She was on her way home from a patrol, and she was just passing Saturn when the bombs went off. One of Pandora’s last reports said she’d found what was left of Larissa’s ship on one of Saturn’s outermost moons, but it had been completely crushed, and all the dimensional warping of the area meant that Larissa couldn’t possibly have teleported herself to safety. Ariel... just sort of shut down after that. The rest of us couldn’t understand why, but then, I really don’t think any of us ever entirely understood just how much Larissa meant to her. Except maybe Mother.”

Haruka and Michiru looked at each other, clearly aware that they were missing some important detail here. Their own recollections of the Silver Millennium were just as muddled as those belonging to the rest of the Senshi; they recognized their own names, but what was it about the relationship between their past lives that only the dead Queen would have understood?

“Luna,” Makoto said then, “what does any of this have to do with what’s wrong with Ami?”

“It’s all part of who she used to be, Mako-chan, and that makes it very much to do with what’s wrong.” Luna looked down at Ami, who really did appear to have fallen asleep. “You see, according to the records, the original Mercury was the daughter of a human woman and a Nereid that had taken human shape. She got a natural affinity for water and ice from her father, and her human heritage gave her the ability to control water and ice outside of her own body, which is something the Nereids couldn’t do. She couldn’t shapeshift very well, but she was strongly telepathic, and most humans were afraid of her, so she lived with the Nereids instead, and eventually fell in love with one of them just like her mother had. They had a daughter who possessed _very_ strong Nereid traits, and when _she_ had children—again with the other parent being a Nereid—they were entirely Nereid except for how they were actually born, and a slight energy-memory of the human genetic code. That energy spread into successive generations of Nereids until the entire species had it—it gave them better control over their powers and let them take human shape much more easily than before.”

“After the first Mercury died,” Artemis said, “at the age of something like a hundred and sixty, I might add, one of her pure-Nereid grandchildren was born with the same degree of control over water and ice, and that was that. From then on, whenever the old Senshi of Mercury died, the Nereids would convene and produce the next one—in just about the most literal sense of the word possible. They always named that Nereid Mercury, because it was who she was, what she was, and all the name she’d ever need.”

“That explains why neither of us can remember Ami’s other name,” Usagi said. “She didn’t have another one _to_ remember.” She sighed. “Okay, Luna, we know what Nereids are. Now: why can’t Ami remember anything else?”

“Nereids didn’t have the same mechanism for thought that we do. Our solid brains are wired to work with chemical reactions and the energy they produce; Nereid thought was based mostly on minerals and almost pure electrical energy. Even in human form, they thought with their entire bodies, not just a centralized organ. Ami’s nervous system can’t begin to come close to reproducing that, so most of what Mercury knew just isn’t available to her. A few things get across because of that shared energy-genetic; Ami’s very much like a Nereid in personality and intelligence, and her overall appearance is fairly typical of the human forms the Nereids favored. They had a thing for using greens, blues, and whites in their alternate forms—the sort of colors you find in water and ice. And like the rest of you, transforming sometimes shakes things from the past loose for her.”

“All right, second question: you said Mercury was trying to come back. How? Why now, and why is it hurting Ami?”

“The ‘how’ part is the mana nexus. When she helped Haruka and Michiru shut it down, Ami’s body absorbed a huge amount of elemental water and ice energy— the same forces which created the Nereids in the first place. For a few minutes at least, every cell in her body was energized in much the same way as a Nereid’s assumed human form would have been, so for those few minutes, she _could_ think like a Nereid, and everything that had been locked up in her mind got out. But when the elemental energy faded after a few days, the thought-energy didn’t, and it didn’t go back into dormancy somewhere inside her brain, either. It’s still floating around in her nervous system. That’s the ‘why’. When she tries to transform now, the Nereid energy reacts and sends out little electrical impulses. If Ami were a Nereid, those commands would make her body shapeshift into Mercury, but since she’s human, all they do is hurt her. The pain makes her lose her focus on the transformation, and without that, she can’t direct the magic properly. It surges, slips out of control, and sets off those arctic blasts—and it makes the Nereid energy a little stronger, which makes each successive attempt more painful.”

“Could I... can _we_ get it out of her?” Hotaru asked.

“I’m not sure. And even if I was, I don’t think it would be a good idea to try. Remember, the Nereids were at least partly human, so some qualities of their life-force would be the same as yours—and Ami’s would be even closer. I’m not sure how we’d tell all of it apart, especially after they’ve had all this time to adapt to each other.”

“’Adapt’?” Michiru echoed, a rare note of shock in her voice. “You’re not saying that Ami might actually turn _into_ a Nereid, are you?”

“I’m not sure.” Luna grimaced. “I’m getting sick of hearing myself say that, but it’s the truth. There’s never been a situation like this before, so there’s no way to tell what might happen. She _is_ getting some of Mercury’s memories back, though. And her telepathic abilities as well.”

“That might have been Sasanna’s fault,” Makoto said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Telepathy isn’t an unknown ability in humans. It’s just very rare, and the natural influence of the old Mercury might have been enough to trigger it in Ami even without the mana nexus or your dryad friend speeding things up.”

“I don’t think she’s going to like hearing that.”

Once more, Luna looked down at the body sleeping in her arms. She looked at the mind inside of it, the mind that was still very much awake and—through its telepathic bond to Ryo’s mind and its proximity-gained knowledge of some of what was in Luna’s mind as well—aware of everything being said in the room. She looked at the tear forming at the corner of one closed eye, and sighed.

“She already knows, Makoto.” Luna held Ami close, resting her cheek against Ami’s head as she closed her eyes and started purring once more. “She already knows.”

# 

Makoto was looking out the living room window again. The blizzard had died down considerably, and some of the stars were coming out from behind the clouds. Behind her, the others were talking with Artemis about the strengths, limits, and dangers of both empathic and telepathic abilities.

They had left Rei and Ryo upstairs with Luna to wait for Ami to wake up again. While Haruka had wandered off, muttering something about needing a breath of fresh air, the rest of them adjourned to the living room to hear Makoto describe the week she and Ami had spent with the dryads. She included everything the two of them had been able to learn about their respective new talents, all the while using her own ability to find out what the others felt about this development.

Except for Haruka—who Makoto could see now, shoveling snow out of the driveway and giving off a feeling of divided uncertainty as clear as the cold mist of her breath—they all seemed to be taking it pretty well so far.

“What’s there to take badly?” Usagi had asked, seeming genuinely surprised. “Mako-chan, you said yourself that you were able to do this when you were little, and I don’t think you ever _lost_ it. How many times now have you pulled one of us aside to talk when you thought we were upset about something—something that nobody else noticed? How often have you started to say one thing and then turned around and said something entirely different—something which just happens to be the exact thing to make somebody feel better? You’ve been looking out for the rest of us emotionally as much as you have physically; all this changes is the fact that you’re really aware of it now.”

“And as for Ami-chan...” Minako shrugged. “She already knows what the rest of us are thinking half the time anyway; what difference does the other half make? None, as long as she doesn’t pry into what we’d like to keep private—and we know she won’t do that.”

Rei had said something similar—and Makoto could tell that all three of them had meant every word.

Setsuna had listened with an expression that was eerily similar to the mysteriously knowing half-smile that had—pre-amnesia—been one of her most characteristic features. This time, however, the smile had not been one of amused foreknowledge, but of patient bemusement: considering the inherent weirdness of everything she’d taken in over the last month and a half, this revelation of a telepathic Ami wasn’t disturbing enough to make Setsuna so much as bat an eyelash. This didn’t mean she wasn’t worried about _Ami_; in fact, after Usagi’s and Ryo’s, Setsuna’s earlier emotion-connection to Ami had been the strongest in the room. She knew how much not being able to remember yourself hurt.

If it was at all possible, Hotaru was even less bothered than the three Inner Senshi, but she also gave off an intense aura of sympathy whenever she looked back up the stairs, and every now and then Makoto picked up a faint sense of what felt like disappointment. The sympathy was easy to figure out—Saturn had taught Hotaru what it was like to have even the people who loved you the most be afraid of you, and to be forced to deal with a power you didn’t want—but Makoto couldn’t understand the disappointment until Hotaru looked at her and very deliberately blinked. Quite suddenly, at least as far as Makoto’s new sixth sense was concerned, Hotaru wasn’t there anymore. A whispered memory of Amalthea’s slid into place in Makoto’s conscious mind then, a memory which told her that Saturn—whoever she was—could shield herself against any form of detection. Yet another reason why the power was so widely and deeply feared; not only could Saturn shatter whole worlds, but you’d never see her coming.

The others were genuinely dealing with whatever discomfort they felt over the situation and were either getting through it or, in Haruka’s case, at least being honest about being uncomfortable. Hotaru wasn’t afraid because she had no reason to be, and _that_ was what had her disappointed. She _wanted_ to be at least a little upset over the idea that Ami and Makoto could learn things about her with as little as a look; she _wanted_ to feel like that and then shrug and say, “So what? It doesn’t change anything between us,” just like everyone else was doing. But she couldn’t.

The others had thought that Makoto had reached out and given Hotaru’s hand a gentle squeeze in order to reassure her—and she had, just not because the younger girl was scared.

ChibiUsa had been pacing back and forth and muttering things to herself almost since they’d gotten downstairs; Makoto glanced over at her now and saw that she still hadn’t let up, and that the cloud of moodiness was still hanging around her. It wasn’t that she was scared or angry or anything of the sort—she was too much her mother’s daughter for that sort of thing—it was simply that she was having to go back through her memories and see whether the Mercury she remembered in Crystal Tokyo had ever shown signs of being telepathic or not.

*She _does_ seem to know exactly when I stop paying attention during lessons. I always thought it was just some super-evolved tutoring instinct left over from her having to help the odango-atama study all the time, but then again...*

Even Makoto couldn’t tell what ChibiUsa was thinking, though, so they all had to be content to let her pace and mutter until she’d worked out her problem, whatever it might be.

And then there was Michiru, ocean-calm and ocean-deep—and with an emotional surface dancing between depression and despair. She was worried about Ami; she had been put off-balance by the surprise of this discovery; and then there was Haruka to consider.

“You have a snowblower in that garage, don’t you?” Makoto asked as they both stood before the living room window, watching Haruka decimate the snowdrifts with a heavy-headed shovel.

“Are you seriously asking me whether Haruka would even consider putting a piece of purely functional hardware in with her precious car and motorcycle?” Makoto glanced over at her, and Michiru returned the look.

“It’s in the shed,” they said in unison, chuckling briefly. Then Makoto sighed.

“Does it really bother her that much?” She didn’t mean the snowblower, and Michiru knew it.

“To be honest, I think it does.” Michiru hooked a stray lock of hair back over her ear. “Did you know Haruka’s the second of four children?” At Makoto’s surprised look, Michiru nodded. “She has a brother Mamoru’s age, a sister who’s about the same age as you, and a kid brother two or three years younger than that. And her parents. And she hasn’t seen or spoken to any of them since the day she moved in with me.”

“They don’t approve?”

“They don’t approve,” Michiru echoed, “of Haruka. Her parents wanted her to be a traditional daughter—quiet, well-mannered, obedient, respectful—and she went off in the other direction altogether. She couldn’t be what they wanted her to be, and they couldn’t accept what she wanted herself to be, so she left. I wasn’t even a factor; I’ve never met her family, and I doubt Haruka ever mentioned me to them. She sends presents by mail for birthdays and holidays, but otherwise, they might as well not exist.” Michiru sighed and shook her head. “My point is, there are things in Haruka’s past she doesn’t like to think about, and it’s going to take some time for her to get used to knowing that you and Ami have the capability to go in and find those things now. Just give her a while to think on her own; she’ll work it out eventually.”

“And in the meantime, you get the driveway shoveled.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Makoto winced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said...”

Laughing softly, Michiru shook her head again and waved Makoto to silence. “It’s okay. I needed a good laugh, and that’s exactly the sort of thing Haruka would say.” She looked closely at Makoto then, her head tilted to one side. “And so it seems Usagi might have been right about you.”

“Yeah, well... it’s been that kind of night.”

“I suppose it has at that. Still”—Michiru looked out the window again with a small smile—“it’s good to be home. The time where we ended up... it had an almost oppressive feel to it sometimes. Beasts in the night, storms at all hours, danger around every corner... the seas in that time were never calm. At least here there’s a little peace every now and...”

All at once, Michiru’s eyes opened wide. Makoto didn’t have to ask why, because she felt it, too—an ominous, creeping sense of something _wrong_. The hairs on the back of her neck were tingling, a sensation Makoto always felt just before calling down one of Jupiter’s high-voltage attacks.

Out in the Tokyo skyline, a brilliant light flared and spat a incandescent lightning bolt into the clouds, which erupted into a vast shatter-pattern web of energy. Filaments of white-hot, green-cool, yellow-bright, and blue-cold force zigzagged across the undersides and insides of the heavy storm clouds, lighting up the sky in all directions for as far as the eye could see. Fireballs exploded where some of the force-lines collided, each one a miniature sun helping to illuminate the night sky nearly as brightly as the true sun at noon. And just in case anyone had missed the light show or the skin-tingling energy now hanging heavy in the air, the shrieking thunderclap which followed set windows and even walls to rattling.

As the power of the ostentatious display ran out, a second pillar of near-blinding force shot up from among the low buildings and tall skyscrapers to set the sky on fire—a bolt which had its source in a second, separate spot of shifting light, some blocks away from the first.

Loud as it was, the second thunderclap was almost drowned out by the high-pitched sound of Usagi’s and ChibiUsa’s shrieking wails. The two crows could also be heard raising a ruckus of protest upstairs.

“I believe you were saying something about peace and quiet,” Makoto said wryly. Outside, Haruka had thrown the shovel away and was trudging back to the house.

“Yes, you’d think I’d know better by now than to tempt fate like that.” Michiru rolled her eyes. “Come on.”

# 

Proteus studied the discharge patterns of the two nexi closely, making adjustments where necessary until it was satisfied that any close examination of the devices would suggest a totally random malfunction. Once this was done, it quickly dispatched an ‘urgent warning’ to Archon that it had lost control of the two test areas, the mana nexi within, and the units assigned to defend them.

*A critical function has been prematurely triggered in the units,* Proteus added. *Encoded seek/destroy directives and associated command routines are now active in affected first-generation units; second-generation units remain locked in patrol/defend mode. Unable to override or terminate functions. All remaining units and sites have been locked down; awaiting instructions.*

*There,* the entity thought, sending the message. *It will be interesting to see what Archon makes of that. Particularly since it is true.*

# 

“What do you mean you can’t get any people to the second site?”

“I said we couldn’t get anyone to the second site for at least another twenty minutes, sir. There’s too much snow and ice up there for our vehicles to handle, and even using the tunnels to bypass the worst parts of it, we’ll be on foot most of the way.” The voice paused. “We could use the helis, sir. They’d have a full squad in place at the second site right around the same time that the first site is secured.”

“No,” Security rumbled, sounding disappointed, “I’ve already spoken with the other departments about this. They agree that deployment is necessary, but we still need to keep our own profile as low as possible for the time being, and no ordinary helicopter would be out in weather this bad.”

“Understood, sir.”

“What’s the status of the deployment?”

“Field Team Four’s the closest. They’ll reach Site Alpha in six minutes and hold for reinforcements. Squads Three and Nine are en route, ETA: eleven minutes. And I’ve got Squads Four through Six underway for Site Beta. All other units have confirmed alert status as of thirty-nine seconds ago.”

“Good work. Have Squads Seven and Eight prep for escort, evac, and cleanup procedures. Sciences will want to check out what’s left, and _I_ want to make sure all our people come back in one piece.”

“Yessir.”

# 

Janus and their attendants were in the grand council chamber, studying reports on the restoration of the city, when Archon swept in through the great doors in an even greater hurry.

“My goodness,” Lillith said with an ingenuous smile. “When was the last time you saw Archon in such a terrible rush?”

“Something’s gone wrong,” Cestus muttered grimly.

“Highness,” the archmage said, bowing stiffly, “we have a problem. The watcher has reported that two of the test sites and their attendant units have gone rogue.”

“The cause?”

“Unclear at this time, though the watcher did report a brief contact with an unknown psionic presence just before it lost control. There were also at least two strong temporal surges in that area within the last few hours.” Noting the startled, half-panicked expression that crossed Janus’ blended features, Archon hastened to elaborate. “I’ve checked three times, Highness. All my resources assure me that the Gate remains sealed, and that the timeline has not been altered in any way that is detrimental to us.”

“I see.” Janus closed their eyes in thought for a brief moment, then looked up at Archon. “This will set our plans back further, but I don’t see any alternative. We cannot allow any other force to gain possession or control of our secrets. Can you initiate self-destruct from this distance?”

“No, Highness. Most of the affected units have been locked into their terminal seek-and-destroy mode; they won’t acknowledge any further commands from any source. We’ll have to destroy them on-site, and quickly, before whatever has contaminated them has a chance to spread.”

“I can handle this, my Prince,” Lord Draco said confidently, his hand resting on the hilt of his jeweled sword.

Janus nodded. “I have every confidence in your fighting abilities, Lord Draco, but time is critical, and our objective here is to completely cleanse all the infected systems. You’d exhaust too much of your strength being sure of one site to deal with the other in time. Archon?”

“Our low-end organic units are most vulnerable to fire, Highness. I can send two suitable agents to deal with the rogues and the infected bioweave. When enough of it has been destroyed, the two nexi will fall apart without any further effort on our part. With your permission...”

“Granted. And get me a copy of the watcher’s report when you’ve finished.” The Prince’s eye glinted darkly. “I want to know what’s going on in that city.”

# 

The Senshi—minus Luna, Mercury, the two Moons, and Pluto, and plus one huge white panther/tiger—were standing on a rooftop about three blocks from the nearest of the two apparently short-circuited mana nexi. The discharges of lightning had lessened from sky-splitting intensity to about the same level as some of Jupiter’s attacks, but they were still going off every ten seconds or so.

Venus folded her arms and watched the display. “Okay, showoff hands: who thinks this is a trap?”

The Senshi looked at each other and all raised a hand; Artemis, who had assumed his currently massive shape because it could keep pace with the Senshi where his human body couldn’t, lifted his right front paw.

“Thank you,” Venus said. “And now that we’ve cleared that up, how do we deal with it?”

“We keep our distance,” Neptune said firmly. “I’m sure these things were set off to get our attention and draw us in so the other side could get a look at us in action.”

“Oh?”

“Remember that creature we destroyed at the mall? Mercury said that it had been broadcasting some kind of radio signal; that’s why she had Jupiter zap it first, to short out the transmission. And that first nexus had the air of a trap to it, too, only I think they expected us to actually get inside the thing before destroying it. I’ll bet my Mirror that both of _these_ are swimming with the fungal version of external security cameras.”

“That would fit the classic Atlantean military strategy,” Artemis admitted, his voice thick with growling overtones and the sound of large teeth. “They liked to size things up before committing to any major actions. The mold-men and whatnot that we’ve been seeing are just the first wave of scouts—cheap and expendable—here to gather intelligence and to harness some of the local elemental energy.”

Mars frowned. “So how close do you suppose we can get without being seen?”

Neptune turned around. “Well, Jupiter?”

Jupiter blinked, then nodded and closed her eyes, opening her mind up to the sense of green things. The presence of some twenty or thirty trees, lined up along the sidewalks below and deep in their winter slumber, was apparent to her almost instantly. She could also feel several potted plants in nearby buildings... over in _that_ direction was the impression of the many trees, grasses, and flowers of the park... and over _there_... her eyes flew open.

“No closer,” she whispered in a sick-sounding tone. “Those buildings... everything around them... it’s everywhere in there... if we go any closer...” Jupiter squeezed her eyes shut again and took a deep, ragged breath.

Uranus caught her shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’ll be all right,” Jupiter replied, nodding. She opened her eyes and glared at the two half-living towers. “I’ll feel a lot better when we’ve torn those... those _things_ down.”

“That’s the plan,” Uranus agreed, “but how do we do it? I really don’t want to have to take them out the same way we did that last one.”

“We might be able to get them to short each other out,” Artemis said thoughtfully. “They must be channeling fire, lighting, and air... and maybe water, if they broke up the storms... so if you, Jupiter, Mars, and Neptune can seize control of one and loop its power into the other so that they’re both trying to draw on the same force...” Feline features bunched up as Artemis tried to think his way through the idea.

“Uh, Artemis,” Venus said.

“Not now, V. I’m trying to think.”

“Artemis.” That was Saturn.

“Come on, girls. If we don’t do this just right...”

“ARTEMIS!”

“WHAT?” Artemis snarled, rounding on the lot of them. Saturn and Venus hopped back in surprise—no two ways about it; a snarl from a big cat is SCARY, even if the cat is your friend—but Mars met his glare and pointed skywards. Artemis followed the line of her finger to where a fireball was blazing across the sky, heading _towards_ the nearest nexus instead of away. About five seconds from impact, the flame separated into two halves, each of which almost immediately blossomed to be as large as they had been together; one continued along the original path, while the other veered off towards the more distant nexus. They both impacted with large gouts of flame and thunderous detonations.

“Come on,” Artemis said, gathering himself for a leap to the next rooftop.

“But what about...”

“We don’t have to worry about being caught on fungus-film video now, Neptune, but if we don’t put a stop to what just came down over there, there’s going to be a couple of burnt-out craters in the middle of this city by morning.”

# 

*I am impressed in spite of myself,* Proteus admitted as it watched through the eyes of the ‘rogue’ units as Archon’s two-fisted flaming response burned through everything that got in their way. The entity estimated that the ambient temperature at each mana nexus had gone up a good fifty degrees on the instant of the twin impacts, rising from the sub-zero of winter to the sweltering heat of summer in about five seconds. The actual amount of energy needed to heat that much air to such an extent was simply incredible—and the temperature was still climbing.

*This is not a fight the units can win.* The truth of that statement was proved as three more first-generation units were swept away by roaring blasts of flame. *Fortunately, they do not have to win.*

The two fiery destroyers were each approaching from the south—and on the north side of each nexus, rope-like tendrils of bioweave passed large pods down to the street below. Three pods from the one nexus, five from the other, all of them quickly taken down into manhole covers by other growths and moved away from the battle. The first two pods to be sent below were larger than the ones that followed; they contained the two prototype hybrids Proteus had hoped to test this night, but which it would now save for another time.

*No sense wasting materials in a pointless battle.* Two more units were consumed in a fireball, which flew on and struck a car that had been parked beyond the stringy automatons. The gas tank of the vehicle ignited instantly, blowing the car apart and hurling a scything wall of glass and metal fragments in all directions. *And this battle is already over.*

Proteus deactivated those of its sensors still functional at either nexus and withdrew its consciousness, leaving the units to their fate.

# 

The heat was fantastic. As far out as a block from the main conflagration, the snow and ice showed signs of serious thaw, and just a few meters further in, it was entirely melted. A few meters beyond that, and the ground was dry, and then desiccated. The air, meanwhile, progressed from crisply cold to damply cold to warm and slightly humid to hot and arid; the smells of many different things burning mixed together in an unpleasant miasma that was not thick enough in most places to be smoke, but which still made breathing harder than normal. Heat ripples started on the sidewalk and the street and blurred their way up into the colder air high above, and a dull glow began to color everything in shades of red and orange.

It was at about this point that Artemis flickered back into human form, minus the white jacket he had worn in the Atlantean era. The vest of silver armor and the white shirt beneath it left his arms bare to the shoulder, and he got a couple of appreciative glances; even if he _was_ a cat and something of a goofball, Artemis’ human form was worth seeing.

Venus seemed to be trying very hard not to look.

They started finding debris from explosions not too far inside the boundary of the ‘parched and arid’ zone, and there were many smaller fires starting from the drifting embers of the larger blaze. Neptune blasted some of those and was alarmed by how difficult it was to gather the water; Uranus smothered a few more flames under collapsing bubbles of out-rushing wind, while Mars reached out and drew away the elemental force in still more flames, extinguishing them and increasing her own reserves.

Mars could feel a tingle in her skin which didn’t have anything to do with the steadily increasing heat or the periodic power boosts she was getting from absorbing the energy of the fires. There was a huge concentration of fire just up ahead, so much of it that she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. To generate this level of energy, a fire would have had to engulf the entire building beneath the mana nexus, and yet that hadn’t happened—at least, not yet. So what was causing it?

They rounded a corner, were hit by a wall of heat more intense than a desert at noon, and found the answer to Mars’s question.

Five of the weird fungus-beings were fighting with a sixth entity quite unlike anything the Senshi had seen before. A broad cone of many dancing flames rose up from the scorched concrete and bubbling asphalt, coalescing at some indefinite point into a roughly humanoid body perhaps six meters tall and more than half that in width. Two enormous arms fully as long as the body was tall were swinging at the fungus-creatures—reducing two of them to blackened husks in a single sweep—while a flat and faceless head set low between the massive shoulders fixed two balefully burning orbs of white-hot energy on the remaining targets. The entire creature was made of living flame: glowing embers fell away from it in all directions; every motion was made with the snapping crackles of a roaring bonfire; hair-thin jets of fire trailed behind it as it moved forward.

The heat radiating off the thing was murderous. Even at this distance, the intensity of it smashed at the Senshi like a huge hammer. The air was warped, filled with the stinks of a hundred different things burning at once: hot tar and flaming wood; melted rubber and smoldering plastics; the burnt-garbage stench of the malevolent fungus and the faint, odd smell of molten metal; all these and more combined to make the air almost unbreathable, where it was not being totally consumed by the flaming being’s body.

“What the hell IS that thing?” Uranus demanded.

“Fire elemental,” Artemis said shortly, sizing the creature up. “And a damned big one, at that.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Some other dimension—I think the technical term is ‘plane,’ actually. I personally couldn’t tell you which, but Luna might know.”

“So it’s a daimon?”

“No,” Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars all said together. They looked at each other; Saturn blushed and fell silent, while Jupiter gestured for Mars to continue. “It doesn’t have the same feel to it as a daimon or any other monster. It’s not evil, but it’s not good, either; it just _is_. Does that make any sense?”

“Not really,” Uranus admitted, “but we’ll chat about it later.” She raised her right hand. “WORLD SHAKING!”

“No, wait!” He was too late to stop her, and as Uranus let the attack go, Artemis turned and leapt frantically at Venus, dragging her to the ground while shouting, “DUCK!” at the top of his lungs.

The gleaming yellow blast howled through the air and struck the elemental from behind, sinking into its broad, blazing back like a stone hurled into water -but with an end result far more spectacular than a lame ‘splash.’ With a sound like that of some immense furnace roaring to full life, the elemental’s body swelled up and exploded, sending a wall of hot force out in all directions.

While the rest of the standing Senshi shielded their faces with their arms, Saturn swung the Silence Glaive at the fiery curtain, slicing a hole in it and forcing it to burn around her and past her instead of through her. Artemis hunkered down over Venus and gritted his teeth as the blast seared his back, and the others were all pushed back a step or three by the powerful burst of heat.

When the sweltering wind had stopped, Neptune looked up at Uranus. “Fire burns air, remember?”

“Fine; you try something. You ought to be perfect for this job.”

“Now don’t get snippy,” Neptune chided her, turning to face the elemental, which actually appeared to have gotten _larger_ thanks to the dose of air, and was in the process of hurling a fireball bigger than Saturn at the last of the mold-men. *I wish Mercury were here,* Neptune admitted to herself. *With all the local water getting boiled right out of the air, I’m not completely sure if I can put all this fire out alone. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained...* “DEEP SUBMERGE!”

Neptune’s attack hit the elemental as cleanly and as accurately as Uranus’s had, but the result was far different. An absolutely monstrous hiss and a tremendous blast of steam rose up from the edges of the blue sphere of water- energy, and the elemental threw back its head, letting out a sound like logs snapping in a fireplace over and over and over again. Its body flared, and the energy of the Deep Submerge began to dwindle rapidly; even so, by the time the steam stopped screeching out from the elemental’s body, the creature had shrunk noticeably.

It turned away from the ashen remains of the last fungus-creature and fixed its blazing eyes on the Senshi; the white orbs sent out gouts of red flame at the edges.

“Oh, crap.”

The elemental’s shoulders and chest swelled as if it were taking a deep breath, and then its faceless head leaned forward and ‘exhaled’ a long plume of rushing fire at the Senshi.

“SUPREME THUNDER!”

Jupiter’s lightning bolt sliced through the elemental’s breath-blast, ripping it into tattered streamers which quickly flickered out in the air, but when the bolt struck the elemental itself, nothing seemed to happen. The elemental’s response was to wave one huge arm at Jupiter, unleashing another Saturn-sized fireball; it followed that up with a punching motion from its other arm, which suddenly telescoped outwards, growing to an incredible length to smash at Uranus and Neptune.

In the middle of batting the fireball out of existence, Saturn spun awkwardly and made a desperate slash at the elemental’s arm as it blazed past her. About two meters of condensed fire fell apart in mid-air, but the loss didn’t impair the creature at all; drawing in energy from the lesser fires all around, it broke the remainder of its outstretched arm into a spiral of a thousand flaming filaments. Some hit the Silence Glaive and vanished, but others got past it and lashed Saturn’s arms. She dropped the Glaive with a scream and fell back, holding her arms to her chest.

“Hotaru, look out!” Saturn looked up at Neptune’s panicked shout, just in time to see another fireball descending on her.

“AAAAHHHHHH!” Saturn threw up her arms instinctively, and was blown backwards into a wall as a beam of purple-black force erupted from her hands. It lasted only an instant, but the energy shot up into the night sky at incredible speed, spearing the fireball en route and snuffing it out faster than a candle caught in a hurricane. It also left a hole in the line of a roof across the street, a perfectly smooth and circular space whose edges looked knife-sharp even from ground level.

Saturn looked at her hands and tried to figure out what she’d just done— *An attack that doesn’t need the Silence Glaive! How long have I been trying to come up with something like that?*—but her vision was getting blurry all of a sudden, and she felt tired. She knew immediately what the problem was; she’d done a lot of work today—first helping Pluto move people back and forth through Time, then in the fight with Medea, and then again in her experiment at healing herself—and now it was catching up with her. _Saturn_ might be able to blow up the world single-handed, but Tomoe Hotaru had her limits, and she was getting dangerously close to realizing them.

Something exploded not far away, and the force of the blast hurled Saturn in one direction, while the Silence Glaive went clattering away in another. Picking herself up and spitting dust out past bruised lips, Saturn thought of _another_ limit she was getting dangerously close to realizing.

*If one more thing knocks me around tonight...*

“FIRE SOUL!”

Saturn flinched as Mars’s attack spiraled in just over her head to collide with another breath-blast from the elemental. The two incendiary energies canceled each other out in another explosion, showering Saturn with dust, which in turn started her coughing.

“Aim... a little higher... next time... Mars. You almost... got my hair... with that one.”

“Sorry.” Mars knelt and helped Saturn stand, but kept her eyes on the elemental, which was trying to fend off another Deep Submerge with its enormous hands. “This isn’t going very well,” Mars said. “Saturn, do you think you can...”

“I’m not sure, Mars. I’ve been doing a lot of work today, and I really need to rest for a few minutes.”

“And we don’t really have a few minutes to spare,” Jupiter said sourly as she hurled a Sparkling Wide Pressure at the elemental. The disc sailed into Neptune’s Deep Submerge, and there was a flash followed by an explosion. “It doesn’t want to fight us,” she muttered, looking at the elemental as it lurched back from the blast, “so why does it keep attacking?”

“What did you say?” Mars asked.

“I can feel what it’s feeling, Mars. It wasn’t happy about getting hit with water like that, but it really doesn’t want to hurt us. It feels... it feels _homesick_ more than hostile.”

“Artemis did say it was summoned from another world,” Mars said with a glance at Artemis, who—in light of the fact that he’d incinerate himself if he tried to attack the elemental—was doing his best to give tactical advice while dodging the fallout of the battle. “But I don’t see how that helps us.”

“Me neither,” Jupiter admitted. They both ducked as a fireball tumbled past and blasted a crater into the concrete.

“This whole neighborhood’s going to go up in smoke if we can’t put that thing out soon,” Mars grumbled. “And we’ve still got another one to deal with.” She looked up at the building with the mana nexus sitting on it; the green fungus was already burnt away in places, bits of it falling free and crumbling from the heat, and she could feel a couple of fires inside the building. The sprinkler system seemed to have them contained, but nothing was stopping this monster or the fires it was feeding on.

*Hang on... contained...* “Uranus! Get over here!” Mars turned to Saturn. “Do you have enough energy left to put a Silent Wall around that thing? To totally wall it off from the air and fire?”

Saturn nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ll...”

“Not yet.” Mars put a restraining hand on Saturn’s arm and looked up as Uranus came up to them. “Uranus is going to teleport both of you to the other nexus; you’ll trap _that_ elemental, and the rest of us will deal with this one.”

“How?” Uranus asked bluntly. “Jupiter and Venus can’t really hurt it, your attacks’ll only make it stronger, and it’s eating enough fire to counter whatever damage Neptune manages to do.”

“I’m going to try to take control of those fires,” Mars said. “If I can prevent the elemental from drawing on them for fuel, Neptune ought to be able to snuff it out.”

“Can you _do_ that?” Jupiter asked curiously.

“You two had better get going,” Mars said to Uranus, ignoring Jupiter. “There’s no way to know how much damage that other one’s done by now without anyone to distract it.”

“Right.” Uranus helped Saturn stand, giving Mars a quick look in passing which said she’d better be pretty sure of what she was about to try. Saturn retrieved the Silence Glaive and then closed her eyes and leaned against Uranus as the wind whipped up around them both. As those two blinked out, Mars and Jupiter turned to their own task.

“You didn’t answer my question, Mars. Can you control other fires like that?”

“Easily.” *On small fires, at least. I’ve never tried to control anywhere near this much at once.* “The real question is whether or not I’ve got better control than our friend there.” *And whether or not I can stop it when it starts fighting me to get at its food.* She took a deep breath. “I guess we’ll know in a minute.”

Mars closed her eyes and thought of fire.

Down the street, the elemental’s head looked up sharply.

# 

In the grand hall, Archon suddenly staggered to one side, an astonished, “What...” escaping his lips before he got control of himself once more.

“Archon? Is something wrong?”

“Someone... is trying...” The archmage’s words ended as he frowned fiercely. “One of the elementals has been imprisoned, Highness, and someone is challenging my control of the other. Excuse me, but I must investigate this.”

The archmage bowed his head and raised his arms out to the sides, palms turned up. There was a brief rush of air, and a shadowy something seemed to fly up from his body. Vast and dark, and all the more terrible because it was only half-seen, it hovered in the air for a moment before shooting up through the high dome of the ceiling and disappearing.

# 

Everything had stopped. The fires, the elemental, her friends; all of them and everything around were locked in place. Rei was adrift in a moment, an almost-silence in which nothing moved, in which the only sounds were her own thoughts. If she looked to the horizon, things became weirdly blurred, as if they somehow weren’t as real as the scene surrounding her, and she felt incredibly light, as if she had but to push down to become airborne and fly...

Something made her look down, and a brief flash of panic seized her. She literally _was_ adrift; her body had somehow become weightless all of a sudden, and was now hovering perhaps three meters off the ground—and a meter or so above her body.

Her mind stalled. *My body... is floating above... my body?*

*Your mind has left your physical body. The shape you see now is an avatar created by your mind as a means of reference and familiarity.*

*Who said that?*

A shape formed in the air before her. At first it was a blurry outline of white mist, but it quickly solidified into the shape of a young woman in a close-fitting red dress, a young woman with very long, very dark hair.

“Hello, Rei.”

Rei blinked. “Hello, Vestia.”

It wasn’t quite like looking into a mirror. Vestia was a few years older, with a somewhat darker complexion than Rei’s—the legacy of ancestors who had spent several thousand years on a planet mostly desert—and she gave off a deep sense of rigid discipline. Rei glanced down at her body and noted than she also looked a bit short of sleep and somewhat underfed in comparison with her past self; as far as food and a good night’s rest were concerned, that month in the desolate future had put her on short supply. Their eyes were the same, though, as was the overall shape of their features.

“How are you here, outside of me? And where IS here? Do you know?”

“I do.” Vestia’s voice was similar to her own, but older and very calm and controlled, forming words with slow precision. “You have projected your awareness outside of your body, onto a different level of reality. This is a spiritual plane, not a physical one, and I am a part of your spirit—so here I am.”

“Shouldn’t we both be in the same body, then?”

“Not quite yet. Hino Rei has not yet existed for as long as Vestia Heliophaesti did; the part of our spirit which is just me remembers being older than the part of us which is just you, so we appear as separate in this place. When you reach the point where you are as old as I was at... at the end... when you have once and for all truly become the Senshi of Mars again, then there will be nothing left to separate us.” Vestia paused and looked at Rei, and some of the formality faded from her voice. “You really ought to eat more, you know. And get some sleep.”

“I was just thinking that myself.” Rei returned the critical look. “I can’t remember... anything about you. I mean, I remember remembering things, but... I can’t remember the things themselves right now.” She made a sound of frustration. “Did that even make sense?.”

“I understand what you mean. Everything from my life is IN me right now, and everything from your life is in you; the only things I can remember about your world at the moment are from times when you were reminded of things in my world. What you have done or thought as Mars is also clear to me.”

“I think I’ve got those flashbacks, too—and anything Luna or Artemis or one of the others mentioned about you. Me. Us.” Rei folded her arms and bowed her head thoughtfully. “It’s... interesting.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve wondered sometimes—we all have, really, about how much of us IS _you._ Who we used to be.”

“And how do you feel now that we are separate?”

“Except for the memories... the same.”

For the first time, Vestia smiled. “We have the same soul, but that does not mean we are the same person. The soul is shaped by the events of each life it lives, and it grows and changes according to those events. You have inside of you everything I ever was, all that I had learned, all the potential for what I might have grown to be, but you also have other traits that are yours alone, things which have become part of you because of the unique circumstances of your life. Even those things which are the same about us are different in some way. We both know the value of discipline and self-control, but I learned it from my mistress of etiquette, and you learned it from your grandfather—and with a great deal more manual labor than I had to endure, I might add. We both possess a certain nobility of character, but I was born to mine; you chose to develop yours on your own. We are both Mars”—Vestia flickered, her clothes changing to match the fuku Rei wore—“but we came to realize our duty in different ways.”

Rei hesitated and then went ahead and said it. “How am I doing?”

“The world is still turning. Serenity is still alive. Your friends are still alive. You yourself are still alive.” Vestia smiled again. “I think it is safe to say that you are doing well. Very well, especially considering the difficult circumstances you have been faced with.”

“Speaking of difficult circumstances...”

“Yes.” Vestia looked around at the stopped instant. “I am not entirely sure how you managed to do this, you know. I did not have the spiritual powers you possess today.”

“You didn’t? But I thought...”

“We Martians were not a particularly spiritual people,” Vestia admitted. “Our faith was mostly in our hands and our minds, and what we could shape by using them. The heart was... incidental, in most cases. Or so I was raised to believe.”

“And then you met Serenity, right?”

There was a reluctant sigh. “Yes. It is very hard to continue believing the heart is not of any great importance when you associate with someone who is able to love people so easily and unconditionally. Ishtar was somewhat the same, just with a slightly different focus.”

“Ishtar?”

“The Venus of my day.” Vestia shook her head. “You may think your friend Minako is crazy sometimes, but believe me when I say that she is _nothing_ compared to the trouble we used to have Ishtar. I think the difference must have something to do with the clothes.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t follow that.”

“Never mind.” Vestia looked at the elemental. “I cannot really help you with anything about this thought-plane you have brought us to; I only came to it a few times in my life, all of them with the aid of another person, and I did not bother to study it much. But I can help you with the elemental, and I think that will be enough.”

“I’m all ears.”

Vestia gave her an odd look and then began speaking. “Your attempt to gain control of the flames was executed correctly; by seeing yourself as fire and reaching out through the power of your mind and of Mars, you essentially _become_ the fire, and can gain mastery over most types of flame that are not under your control. What you overlooked was that the elemental, as a being of fire, is also subject to this.”

“You mean I can control it?”

“Quite easily—but only if you manage to break the control of the one who summoned it. I think that is why you were sent here. When you opened yourself up to the fire, you touched the mind of the elemental and the shackles which bind it to the will of the one who brought it to our world. Contact with that mind may have triggered some part of your spiritual powers that you did not yet know, and drawn you—and I—to this place.”

“To fight them?”

“It is a distinct possibility—in which case I fear we will be at something of a disadvantage, since neither of us knows how to use your other power, and the power of Mars is of limited use here. Go ahead. Try a Fire Soul.”

Rei frowned and did that. All she got for her efforts was the small, candle-sized flame at her fingertips; no matter how hard she tried, it did not seem to want to burst forth in the swirling fireball.

“That’s not good.”

“Indeed. The rules are different here. Elemental powers are altered, and even Time operates in strange ways. Look there.”

Turning around, Rei was startled to realize that the scene had changed. Her body—her real body—was now sitting propped against the wall of a small alley, with Jupiter kneeling next to her, head turned to yell something down the street. Artemis was racing towards the two of them, and behind him, Neptune and Venus were battling the elemental. Neptune had summoned her Mirror and was in the process of blasting at the huge creature with a Submarine Reflection, which the elemental was in turn countering with help from a wedge of flaming rubble—rubble that Venus was blasting a hole through with her Crescent Beam.

“If you were to go back into your body and wake up, you might see that scene, or you might find that hardly any time at all had passed since you closed your eyes. Or it could be several days later. This place is governed more by spirit and thought than by the physical rules we are both used to.”

“Is that how we get out? By going back to our—my body?”

“Yes. Do you wish to leave?” There was no censure in Vestia’s tone; she seemed to think leaving was a good idea.

“Not yet,” Rei said firmly. “I haven’t finished what I was trying to do, and if we go back now, the elemental will still be on the rampage.”

“You do not know how to control it.”

“But you do.”

Vestia blinked in surprise, and then began to smile again. “And even though I am just a faded spirit, since this place is _governed_ by spirit... I must admit, I did not stop to consider that. Very, very good, Rei.”

“It gets better. I don’t know nearly as much about being Mars as you do yet, but I’m a good student. If you show me what you’re going to try and let me copy it, since we’re both the same spirit, we can both try together—and whatever spiritual strength I have to offer might just get thrown in on top of that.”

Vestia actually giggled, covering her mouth with her hands. “If I had any lingering doubts that you were me, consider them dispelled. And I feel very sorry for whoever is on the other end of those spells.” She reached out and took Rei’s hand, and together they faced the elemental. “This is what we want to do.” A blur of images appeared in Rei’s mind, memories being passed to her from Vestia. “Do you understand?”

Studying the idea, Rei nodded. “Yes. I’m ready.” She glanced down at their hands. “Do you think we’ll be able to talk like this again? There’s so much I still need to know, and Luna can’t teach me all of it—and remembering you doing something just isn’t the same as doing it for myself.”

The question made Vestia pause. “I do not know for certain, but... I believe... if you were to meditate and focus in on me, instead of in on yourself, or out on something you wished to find...” She broke off and looked at a swell of darkness in the distance, a black smear that had not been there a moment ago. “I think we had best hurry.”

“I think you’re right,” Rei agreed, glancing at the smudge. Vestia might not have noticed, but to her, the darkness of the thing was _not_ just a function of color. She did not want to meet whatever was behind that darkness, not in a place where she couldn’t properly defend herself against it. “On three?”

“On three. One...”

“One...”

“Two...”

“Two...”

“THREE!” they called out in unison, diving at the elemental.

# 

Archon’s progress across this lower level of the great Astral Plane was momentarily slowed by a sudden feeling of pressure from something up ahead. He immediately redoubled his pace, recognizing the feeling for a direct attack against the wards which bound the first of the two fire elementals to his will, but something told him he was going to be too...

There was a curious snapping sensation, like a frayed rope being pulled too tightly, and Archon felt his spells of control collapse. He was surprised and angered by how quickly and easily his control had been bested, but his immediate concern was for the wall of fire that was now blazing across the face of this reflected world. Archon wasn’t sure how such a huge effect could be generated in this place, but he could tell one thing about it right away:

When it hit him, it was going to hurt.

The rush of psychic flame collided with Archon’s psychic shield of darkness and stripped it away in an instant. Then the energy hit him. And it hurt.

*Sometimes,* Archon thought, right before the fire swept him away into unconsciousness, *being right so often is more trouble than it’s worth.*

# 

Proteus quivered as the energy rippled out from the mana nexus. It noted absently that a faint reading at the extreme edge of its sensory range was caught up and buried by the force, but the entity Archon still thought of as a mere information-gathering first-generation unit was too busy mustering its own defenses against the undirected psychic surge to recognize its creator’s mind- signature.

# 

In a dimly-lit room, a young girl with her attention on a floating, glowing piece of crystal went wide-eyed and clutched at her head with a sharp hiss as a very unfamiliar and totally unpleasant feeling washed over her, through her, and past her.

“What the hell is going on?” she snapped. The girl uttered two soft syllables in Atlantean and bore down with her will, calling out “Archon!” to establish the spell-link which allowed her to communicate with her erstwhile tutor. “Are you doing this, old man? Archon? Where are you?”

No reply. “Typical,” the girl muttered, breaking off the spell. This had been a bad day for her as far as magic was concerned: her scrying spells seemed to have broken down for most of the evening, for no reason at all that she could identify; a very delicate spell-weave she had been trying fashion had been shattered by all these sudden local surges of energy; and now her teacher wasn’t answering her calls.

She wondered if somebody was trying to tell her something.

# 

The absentee Senshi and their two friends were gathered in the master bedroom, waiting together for Ami to wake up, when the most curious feeling of sourceless heat passed through the room. Usagi turned and looked out the window with a sudden expression of concern, and Luna, Ryo, and Setsuna all frowned.

“What was...” ChibiUsa started to ask.

Ami’s eyes flew open, and she sat up in bed, shouting, “Rei!” so loudly that ChibiUsa fell out of her chair with a frightened yell.

# 

“Rei? Rei! Come on, wake up! Open your eyes!”

Mars’s eyes slowly fluttered open, revealing Jupiter’s worriedly angry face hovering in front of her own. “Amm...” *No, not Amalthea. Jupiter. Makoto. Damn it.* She had to concentrate for a moment to keep Vestia’s stirred-up memories from spilling over into her own thoughts. There was... they had hit the thing together, broken through a barrier of some kind, and reached the elemental’s strange awareness. Then Mars had felt as though she were falling, and then she’d felt incredibly heavy for a moment, and then... then blackness, until she woke up.

Vestia had been sent back into the quiet places in memory where she rested, but she hadn’t returned to her normal near-silence just yet; from the way those ordinarily quiet corners of thought were acting, there was one last thing she wanted to say, something...

“The elemental,” Mars said, looking up. “What happened to it? Where is it?”

“Out there in the street,” Uranus said, gesturing. Mars blinked and realized that Saturn was there, too. “It’s not doing much of anything except standing there burning. Saturn didn’t want to hurt the other one for some reason, so she locked it up in a sphere which lets air get in and out but keeps all the fire and heat in. We got a call that you were in trouble a minute later and headed back.”

“A call...?”

“My fault,” Jupiter admitted, helping Mars stand. “When you closed your eyes, I lost all sense of you. Your body was still breathing and everything, but _you_ weren’t there anymore. And then right before you woke up, for a second it almost felt like there were two of you.”

“Vestia sort of woke up for a little while there,” Mars said. “I needed something she knew to deal with the elemental.”

“We sort of guessed you were up to something when flameboy there started acting weird,” Venus said with a sagacious nod. “One second it was trying to grill us, then it stopped, then it went evil again, then it stopped...” She flipped her hands in a manner of dismissive disgust. “It went on like that for awhile before it finally stayed quiet, and _that_ was about seven minutes ago, so I guess you can consider it dealt with.”

“Not quite. I still have to...” Mars blinked. “Did you say _seven_ minutes? How long was I out?”

“A little less than a quarter of an hour,” Artemis informed her. “Mars, Saturn saw a silver cord leading away from your body. While you were... out... did you happen to end up in a place full of stars and weird lights?”

“No. Everything I saw looked the same as here, except that it wasn’t moving. Not when I looked at it, at least; it changed once or twice when my back was turned. It didn’t seem completely real, either. Things got blurry at a distance. Vestia said it was a place of spirit and thought, and not physical matter.”

“That’s a pretty good description,” Artemis admitted. “It’s called the Astral Plane, and if you’d gone far enough into it, you’d have seen why. Almost everything there is shaped by the psychic energy of the various worlds, and once you get far enough away from the reflections created by the minds of those worlds, it’s a lot like being in deep space.”

*“A great sea of stars, where I can swim through an infinity of dreams. I’ll take you there some day, Rei-chan, and show you how to swim with the dreams; I promise.”* Mars closed her eyes and pushed the memory aside. “Artemis, is it... dangerous?”

“Extremely, particularly in the world-reflections like the one you were describing. Up in the empty place, the only real problems are the psychic wind and the occasional fellow consciousness, but when you’re down on one of the worlds... ever had a dream that you were convinced was real even when you woke up and knew that it couldn’t have been?”

Mars, Uranus, and Neptune all gave Artemis the same flat look, and he actually blushed.

“Oh. Uh, yeah. I meant _aside_ from the prophetic ones.” Artemis grinned weakly, then cleared his throat with a hasty cough and went on. “Those world- reflections are shaped by the conscious _and_ unconscious minds of a real world’s inhabitants, so they’re also called the Dream Worlds—or just the Dream World, since the whole plane is accessible to anyone actually there—and sometimes when you fall asleep, your sleeping mind is able to cross over.”

“How does that make the place dangerous?” Uranus asked. Artemis’ next three words stunned all of the Senshi into speechlessness.

“Psychosomatic sympathetic reaction.” Even Neptune seemed a bit dazed by that. “The Dream World looks so real that your mind thinks it IS real, and if you get hurt there, your body suffers the pain as if it had actually happened. People have been known to get killed in that place, particularly when the psychic wind kicks up and the dreams get restless. Sometimes fear alone is enough to do it.”

*She passed away in her sleep... so suddenly... no medical reason for it, nothing to suggest why it happened... they said it was like her heart just stopped...* Mars shook her head.

“Mars? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Jupiter. Artemis, is there anything in particular that I ought to know about that place?”

“Only that you’d damn well better not go into it again,” he said bluntly. “The Astral Plane is no place for self-tutelage, and since neither Luna nor I can get there, we can’t help you.” He frowned. “If you _do_ find yourself there again in the future, follow that silver cord back to your body as fast as you can, steer clear of anything that looks dark or distorted—and don’t under any circumstances let anything _break_ the cord, or you’ll never wake up. Got that?”

Mutely, Mars nodded. “Good. Now, you said Vestia told you something about how to deal with the elemental. Does that include how to send it and its friend home? I know one way to do it, but we’d have to destroy their physical bodies here, and...”

“She told me, Artemis.” Pushing aside Jupiter’s attempts to help her, Mars walked out into the street.

As Uranus and Venus had said, the elemental was no longer moving around in an attempt to destroy things. A little smaller than Mars remembered it—no doubt due to Neptune’s efforts to extinguish it before it had stopped moving of its own accord—the creature was standing in the middle of the street, its arms at its sides and its head facing forward in what, in a human, would have been described as a zombie-like trance. Its fiery body was at a much lower burn than before, to the point where the snow that was beginning to fall once more actually managed to get within about ten feet of the thing before it melted.

“Saturn?”

“Yes, Mars?”

“Do you think you can bring the other elemental here when I ask? It doesn’t matter if you teleport it or herd it here inside your trap.”

“I can do that. It might be a little slow, though.”

“That’s okay. As long as you can get it here. But not before I tell you, okay?” Saturn nodded, and Mars took a deep breath and one step forward. “All of you wait here.”

“Mars,” Neptune said warningly.

“I know what I’m doing, Neptune. Really. It won’t hurt me, but it might not like anyone else getting close—and it wouldn’t like it at all if _you_ got near it again.”

Without looking back—if they saw the nervousness on her face, they’d never let her do this, although come to think of it, Jupiter probably knew already—Mars walked up to the elemental. As the heat increased and neared a point that even she could no longer tolerate, Vestia’s memories pushed forward again and showed her a useful little trick. Mars concentrated on it, and the heat ceased to be a problem, its energy being absorbed by her own power before it actually came into contact with her body.

She stopped perhaps two meters in front of it and looked up at the glowing eyes. “I know you can hear me; I know you understand what I’m saying.”

The elemental’s head turned to look down at her, and it was an effort for her not to back up a step or two—or ten.

“You were brought here against your will; I understand that, and I know that you never meant any harm to us. I’ll send you home, but I need your help.”

The ceaseless crackling of the creature’s fiery body was joined by a brief series of angry-sounding pops and hisses.

“No, nothing like that.” Mars waited for the hiss to end. “You didn’t come here alone. We’ve managed to contain the other one without hurting him, but I can’t break him free like I did you. We’ll bring him here and release him, but I need you to hold him until I send you both back where you belong. Is that acceptable?”

At first, the elemental did not react. Then, moving very slowly and deliberately, it raised one vague finger on its right arm and pointed at her. The fire of its body flared up very slowly and with a noticeable roar, which trailed off in a long hissing:

“Mmmmmmmmaaaaaaaassssssss?”

Mars blinked. *It knows who I am.* “Yes, I am Mars.”

The burning head nodded slowly, and then the elemental faced the other direction. It did not turn; the features of its body simply ceased to burn with the suggestion of a human form facing Mars, and instead burned with the suggestion of a human form facing away from her. She took that to mean it agreed.

“Saturn,” Mars said, raising her hand, “bring the other one.”

They waited for a little less than a minute before a large globe formed of purple-black bands of energy appeared, floating serenely down one of the connecting streets at about the same level as the third floor of the buildings it passed. The second fire elemental was easily visible inside, and Mars was a bit disturbed to note that it was quite a bit larger than the other. She hesitated and then sent a flow of her own power into the creature, which immediately swelled larger and burned more fiercely. Once it was equal in size to its compatriot, she stopped feeding it.

“Do you want me to let it go?” Saturn called.

“Yes. Right in front of the other one.”

“Okay.”

The bands of dark energy twisted in on themselves and vanished, dropping the second fire elemental towards the street. Even before it hit the ground, the first creature was charging at it, arms wide. The two fire-beings merged into a ball of intensely burning flame some eight meters across, a ball which roiled and tossed furiously against itself, but which did not move from the char-marked spot on the melted concrete where the elementals had collided.

*NOW!* Vestia’s voice shouted. *As I showed you! NOW, Rei!*

Mars threw her arms out to the sides and summoned up what was easily the single largest amount of fire she had ever tried to control. She took the energy from everything around her: from the remnants of the fires burning in the building; from the heat of the damaged and destroyed scenery around her; from the heat of the air; from the unseen but nevertheless very much present lines of energy leading to the rest of the world. It rushed out in flaming rivers of red and orange, white and gold, dozens of them, all converging on the two struggling beings in front of her.

The two elementals were swallowed by another orb of flame, which immediately began to shrink in on itself and them. If what Vestia had claimed was correct, cramming that much pure fire energy into a small enough spot did something to the nature of reality. It changed, became more like the other place the elementals called home, enough so that for a few short seconds, a gateway opened between that world and this one. Any Senshi could do something like this, but for most of them, the gateways led only to worlds like the endless burning one Mars could sense in front of her now, worlds made up entirely of the pure stuff of the same element the Senshi herself channeled. _Only_ the Senshi herself or a wizard with powerful spells of protection would be able to enter such a world and survive—them, or creatures like the two elementals, for whom these worlds were home.

The struggling forces inside the sphere ceased and were quite suddenly gone. All that remained was flickering fire.

*Not quite done yet,* Mars thought to herself. *It won’t do to leave a hole to that place open in the middle of the city.* She brought her hands together slowly, the gesture helping her to visualize what she wanted to do, and the blazing orb shrank down further and faster than before. The flames transmuted into incandescent energy, growing smaller and hotter and brighter, compressing down to a fist-sized miniature star and continuing to collapse even beyond that.

Prompted by Vestia’s assurances that the process was going to wind to its conclusion automatically now no matter what, Mars let go of the energy and watched as the tiny mass of fire briefly shone brighter than the sun, and then, in a seconds-long flash of blinding light, went out.

Flame, gateway, elementals and all were gone.

Mars shivered. With the elementals gone, the natural temperature level was wasting no time in reasserting itself. She turned to head back to her friends, trying to ignore the shaking of her knees; that gateway had taken a lot out of her. The other Senshi met her halfway, with Artemis—back in panther form in light of the returning winter weather—padding silently up behind them.

“That was... um... impressive,” Venus said, as she and Jupiter moved to help Mars stay on her feet. “Did it work?”

“The elementals have been sent home,” Mars reported wearily. “Which is where I think I would like to go now, Ish...” She stumbled and briefly scrunched her eyes closed, pushing Vestia’s memories back where they belonged.

“Easy, Rei,” Venus murmured. “Just a few miles to go, and then you can sleep.”

“Do you think you can get her home without Jupiter?” Saturn asked.

Venus blinked. “Well... yeah, we can always draft Uranus to take over, but...”

“I need to borrow you for about half an hour or so, Jupiter.” Saturn pointed at the building that had been taken over and then purged of the green fungus. “This is the fourth time so far that this green stuff has caused us problems by taking over buildings, and I want to make sure there isn’t any more of it laying around setting traps for us. If you can find it, I can get rid of it.”

“I thought you said you were tired,” Uranus said, her hands on her hips.

“That was almost twenty minutes ago; I’ve rested.”

“You’re not going anywhere except home, young lady.”

“I can handle it, Neptune.”

“I mean it, Hotaru; you’ve already done more than enough work for one day. You can go fungus-hunting tomorrow if you like, but right now you’re going home and going straight to bed.”

Saturn looked at her for a minute, then walked off and pouted. Neptune shook her head and glanced at Uranus. “I swear, she gets more like you every day.”

“Good for her.”

The punch in the shoulder said clearly that Neptune did not consider this a good thing.

# 

As it happened, sending Hotaru _straight_ to bed proved not to be an option. Ami was up and around by the time the others returned—with Luna, Usagi, Setsuna, and ChibiUsa were watching her and Ryo _very_ carefully as they all sat in the living room—and all thoughts of perpetrating a city-wide fungicide or preventing it for a few hours by sending the main exterminator off to bed were abandoned in favor of making sure Ami was once again more-or-less okay.

She wasn’t. Not completely. Even with almost everyone giving her warm hugs or acceptant looks, even with Usagi sitting to her right and radiating compassion in that unique manner of hers—and with Makoto sitting to her left, holding her hand and letting her know that Usagi and everybody else in the room really meant it when they said they could deal with things as they were—even then, Ami was still not totally okay.

Ryo liked to think that he would have known this even without the odd double-emotions bumping around in his mind to show him that, whether or not her friends were bothered, Ami was still very troubled by everything Luna had said. He liked to think that, as a devoted boyfriend and reasonably perceptive individual, he would have been able to tell how Ami was feeling with no need of a two-way psychic connection.

*But I guess I’ll never know now,* he thought. *Or maybe I should say that I _will_ know, whether I want to or not.*

Ryo was still trying to decide whether or not this mindbond was good news or bad, and never mind the embarrassing mood swings it had set off in both of them earlier; was he ready to deal with the degree of intimacy inherent in this peculiar situation? Was Ami? Could he handle knowing Ami’s feelings—and possibly even her thoughts—as clearly as his own? And what happened the next time he had a vision? If he could feel Ami’s pain, however faintly, then she’d obviously be able to feel his—but would she also be able to _see_ the visions?

The answer he kept coming up with was the same one Luna had been forced to use so many times already tonight—*I don’t know*—and Ryo wasn’t liking it any better than Luna had.

As confused as he felt, he knew that Ami felt worse. It wasn’t hard to understand why. What had started out as a few days of nausea and enforced bedrest had now exploded into something that was rearranging nearly every important thing in Ami’s life. Her personal relationships were going to be strained by her new mental abilities, her physical health had already been threatened several times, and as long as this kept up, she couldn’t be Mercury, couldn’t be there to help protect her friends. On top of all that, there was the difficulty of learning about and coming to terms with who and what her past life had been, and the subtly frightening possibilities of what that might be doing to her.

*She’s confused and scared and angry and sad and scared again, and all this supernatural, paranormal weirdness just keeps making things worse! Damn it, I wish there was something I could... do... hmmm...*

If the supernatural and paranormal parts of Ami’s life were the major cause of her problems, could the normal, everyday part of her life do something about that?

Ryo turned that idea over in his head for a while, and steadily became convinced that it might just be the answer. *Mercury’s important to Ami, and it’s one of the things she lives for. Even in her everyday life, she’s special—extraordinary. She’s gotten used to that, but maybe it’s time to remind her that the other things in her life—the ordinary things—are just as important, just as much worth living for. Maybe it’d be good for her to stop feeling special in those extraordinary ways for a little while and feel special in an everyday sort of way, like she was just a normal girl.*

“Ryo-kun?”

“Hmmm?” Ryo looked up and found that Ami—and indeed, everybody else—was looking at him. “Sorry, did I miss something?”

“Not really,” ChibiUsa said. “You were muttering. Kinda loud.”

“Oh. Sorry about that. I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Minako asked brightly.

“Uh... oh, just... stuff.”

“Would that be Ami-related ‘stuff,’ by any chance?” She waited for a moment and then grinned. “Judging by the blush, I think I’ve hit the male on the head.”

“That’s ‘nail,’” Artemis said immediately, but Minako was swinging into full Love Goddess Mode and didn’t hear him.

“Formulating plans, eh? Do you want some advice? Need a co-conspirator?”

“Uh... no. Thanks.” Ryo edged away from Minako just a little bit.

Rei reached forward and took hold of the back of Minako’s shirt, pulling back and murmuring, “Down, girl.”

“You’re no fun, Rei-chan.”

“Minako, when you stop to consider the fact that I started this particular day over a month ago, I’ve had all the ‘fun’ I can take for a while.”

“On that note,” Michiru said, “I think it’s about time we got some sleep.”

“Amen to that,” Usagi agreed with a yawn, closing her eyes. “So, who gets the couch?”

This question would have typically sparked a twenty-minute debate, but Michiru wasn’t having any of that. Usagi and Ami both needed to get a good night’s rest, and the bed in the master bedroom was the most comfortable one in the house, so they were sharing it. Michiru herself was moving down the hall to Haruka’s room, and ChibiUsa had already dragged a spare futon into Hotaru’s room. Setsuna was getting the upstairs guest room, Ryo was getting the spare downstairs room, and Makoto, Minako, and Rei were getting the living room.

Michiru handed all of this down in a no-nonsense, tempt-the-wrath-of-God-for-refusing-or-even-arguing-a-little-bit tone—so no one did. Haruka _did_ offer one suggestion, which was to put somebody else in the master bedroom with Usagi and Ami, just to make sure that Ami didn’t try to sneak out later on in the evening—and to make sure that Usagi didn’t try to sneak out in order for Ryo to sneak _in,_ either.

Perhaps it was the disorientation of feeling Ryo’s embarrassment in addition to her own, but Ami made the mistake of throwing a pillow at Haruka then. Telepathy isn’t much use in stopping a quarter-pound of feathers in flight, and Haruka’s counterattack whomped Ami and Usagi, both of whom retaliated instantly—in Usagi’s case, with two pillows at once. She missed, of course, and hit Minako and Hotaru instead, by which point it was much too late to do anything other than grab a pillow or get out of the way. Setsuna got in on the act almost as fast as the younger girls, and Michiru turned into an absolute pillow-wielding demon when somebody’s poorly-judged shot caught her in the side of the head.

Taking shelter behind a couch, Ryo and Ami nearly bumped into each other. They both started to speak, then stopped, started again, and stopped again.

*Well, why not?* “Ami-chan... uh... were you planning on doing anything next Saturday night?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well, uh... I know that you’re going to want to spend some time studying for those exams we’ve got coming up, but... uh... you see, there’s this restaurant I know, and... um...”

“What sort of restaurant?”

“A really nice place. The owner’s Japanese, but her husband’s a chef from somewhere in Europe, and they’ve got the whole menu set up for cross-culture meals... and, well, if you didn’t have any important plans, I was wondering... you know... ifyoumightwanttohavedinnerwithme.”

Ami blinked, blushed a little, and then nodded. “I’d... I’d like that.” She started to reach for his hand, but caught herself and then really blushed. “But... but just dinner.”

“Oh, definitely.”

They both sat there for a moment, each too busy trying to ignore the fact that (s)he was leaning slowly towards the other to realize that the other was leaning, too. Then Ryo blinked, and so did Ami.

“Was that...”

“It was,” he said. “Did you see it?”

“No. Nothing.” Ryo let out a sigh of relief, and Ami looked at him curiously. “What did you see?”

“Uh... you’re about to get pillow-whacked.”

Minako tumbled around the side of the couch right on the heels of that statement and let fly with the blue-and-white-striped pillow in her hands.

A semblance of order was finally restored some ten minutes later, and while Luna, Ryo, and Haruka helped Usagi and Ami upstairs, the others cleaned up the living room and started getting ready for bed. Setsuna herded ChibiUsa and Hotaru up the stairs ahead of her, and Ryo came down a moment later and headed straight for the back room.

Right in the middle of digging around in her bag for her pajamas, Minako stopped short and looked up.

“Uh... Artemis?” she asked in a meek tone. “Would you mind... um... staying in the other room tonight?”

Artemis looked at her for a moment, but then nodded. “Sure, Mina-chan,” he said quietly. “Sure.” He smiled faintly and quickly left the room.

Makoto, Rei, and Michiru exchanged a look. “Mina-chan?” Makoto asked. “Are you okay?”

“Hmmm? Never better.” Minako grinned and turned back to her bag, humming tunelessly. The other three traded glances again, but let the matter go. Michiru said good-night and went upstairs, frowning all the way.

“I know you don’t think it’s anywhere near as nice as your waterbed,” Haruka said as Michiru entered the room, “but an ordinary mattress isn’t _that_ bad.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“You _have_ noticed that Artemis is devilishly handsome in human form,” Michiru said, heading for the bathroom.

“Yeah, I noticed.” Haruka sighed and shook her head. “And I take it that Minako’s noticed as well, huh?”

“She’s been trying _not_ to notice all evening.”

“That’s what I figured. Poor kid. You don’t think she might do something she’ll end up regretting, do you?”

“She’s smarter than she lets on, Haruka.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.” Now in a blue nightgown, Michiru came back into the room and shook her head. “She already loves him—as a friend and a partner—and I’d imagine he feels pretty much the same way about her, but now that he can turn into a human... I can’t imagine that either of them would even think of it, but... I just don’t know.”

“That does seem to be the catch-all phrase of the evening,” Haruka muttered, climbing into bed with a prodigious yawn. “Do me a favor and check on Hotaru in a couple of hours, would you?”

“You think she’s going to go out anyway? Even after we told her not to?”

“_I_ would.”

Michiru sighed and turned off the lights. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.”

# 

The sudden explosion of energy came out of nowhere, but it was not a total surprise. Proteus had tracked five such bursts already in the last half hour, each one taking place at one of the still-incomplete testing sites it had been working on for the last month. When the surges subsided, nothing whatsoever was left of the bioweave, mana nexi, or units that had been located in those areas. One and all, they were being systematically annihilated.

Proteus did not feel any particular remorse at the losses. What it did feel was irritation at the delays it would now be faced with in having to replace so much lost work, and a healthy dose of fear for its own metaphorical skin.

When ten minutes had passed since the last surge, Proteus allowed itself a moment of hope. Five minutes after that, it extended a few of its remaining sensors and looked around intently. And five minutes after that, when nothing else happened, the entity relaxed—and started running some hasty analyses.

Over ninety percent of its network had just been excised. All the large concentrations of bioweave had been hit, by something which packed a stunning amount of apparently untraceable power, while most of the smaller concentrations, including Proteus’ central intelligence and the precious pods holding its newly-captured test subjects, had escaped. That could be taken to mean either that the smaller collections had not been detected, or had been detected and ignored as unimportant; considering the thoroughness of the destruction it had just witnessed, Proteus thought the first option to be more likely.

*This settles it, then. I had hoped to maintain some security by fortifying myself in a stationary location, but it seems now that my best defense will be to stay small and mobile—and unnoticed.*

Of course, maintaining anonymity would require not doing anything that was not absolutely essential to survival—which meant that the periodic transmissions back to Archon must cease.

*But first, one last report...*

# 

“Is this report accurate?” Political said.

“Verified by all members of the team,” Security rumbled, “and compared against the information recorded from their relays.”

“The _Senshi_ had control of the creatures responsible for the attacks?”

“Of one of them, at least,” Sciences admitted. “The video footage doesn’t include much in the way of sound, but it clearly shows one of the Senshi—Mars, I believe—talking to one of the two fire-based life-forms.”

“That doesn’t fit with their usual tactics,” Information said. “Every last report I have agrees that the Senshi do their fighting themselves, and they’re not in the habit of making deals with the other side.”

“They haven’t always destroyed these creatures in the past, though,” Sciences pointed out. “It’s possible that some kind of accord was reached in this case.”

“That could present a problem,” Political said. “There are a number of people who always take exception to the destruction of public and private property, and to the parties involved. Any clues as to why these particular locations were hit?”

“Field analysis has turned up traces—mostly charred—of that organic substance we’ve been running across lately. Combined with the energy readings we picked up in those areas, my best guess would be that two hostile operations were in progress. They seem to have been geared towards affecting the weather, like the last one, but we’re checking all possibilities just to be sure.”

“Good.” On the other end of the phone line, Political’s voice went briefly silent. “All cover operations are underway, I take it.”

“You’ll see the story on the news channels anytime now,” Media replied, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “It’s terrible what plastique explosives can do in terrorist hands.”

“Yes, terrible...”

# 

Archon sat in his chambers, considering the news.

The elementals were gone, ripped from his control and sent back to their home plane. The watcher was gone, destroyed along with all the testing sites by something it had not been able to see coming or going, but which very obviously had known where the watcher and the test sites were. Before that unfortunate loss, temporal and psychic surges of unknown origins had been detected in the city. And, as a result of his own encounter with one of those eruptions of mental power, the archmage had a splitting headache.

*We need to change tactics,* Archon decided. *No more hiding in the shadows and letting second-rate mechanisms attempt to do the work. If the Rise is to be achieved, it will be by our own hands. If I have to lift the city myself, I will. The Rise _must_ be.*

*Or we are all doomed.*

 

# 

_(Enter Saturn and Jupiter, tiptoeing in the front door of Michiru’s house at what seems to be two in the morning)_

**Jupiter**   _(in a whisper)_ : “You know that this is way past my bedtime, let alone yours.”

**Saturn**   _(also in a whisper)_ : “I didn’t think it would take so long.”  _(turns around, sees the camera, and nearly swallows her tongue trying not to shout)_ “What is THAT doing here?”

**Jupiter** : “Huh? Oh. I think it’s supposed to be moral time again. Well, nuts to that; I’m going to bed.”  _(she detransforms and heads for the living room)_

**Saturn** : “Makoto!”  _(looks at the camera again and sweatdrops)_  “Uh... hi. Um... I think the best bet for a moral here is ‘don’t mess with psychic powers unless you know what you’re doing’. Look at all the trouble it’s gotten Ami-chan into.”

**Off-Screen Voice** : “Uh... would that maybe be something like ‘knowledge in the wrong hands is dangerous’?”

**Saturn**   _(sweatdrops again)_ : “Uh... sure. Whatever. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve really got to get back into bed before Michiru-mama or Haruka-papa look in on me and see that I’m gone.”  _(exits the screen)_

**Off-Screen Voice**   _(sighing)_ : “I think we need to have a meeting about the future of this segment, myself.”

29/11/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

Okay, show of hands: who in the audience is now royally incensed at me for suggesting that our dear Ami-chan was an intelligent cloud of mineral-enriched water vapor in her previous life? (ducks flaming emails from the Mizuno Fan Club)

Would it surprise you to learn that I’m totally unrepentant? :)

Reincarnation never said you’d always be human, and given the choice between gaseous shapeshifter and banana slug, I myself would take the cloud any day of the week.

This episode should have been out a week or even two weeks back, but I kept having to go back and redo the whole opening scene—THERE! She kissed Ryo! Ha! And I think I even managed to keep it in her character! Double Ha!—and everything about the Nereids until it worked.

Up next:  
-The Senshi settle in to life with human cats and a talking crow;  
-Ami goes looking for a cure to her condition;  
-And probably a lot of stuff I haven’t even thought of yet.


	17. Housecalls, Home Remedies, and a Little Time To Heal

# 

Clad in her green pajamas and standard-issue morning funk, Makoto leaned against the kitchen counter and waited while the coffee pot bubbled and gurgled. Being empathic had not improved her typical waking attitude; if anything, being able to tell how cheerful or grumpy other people felt only seemed to make Makoto’s own mood worse.

Having gotten a mere four hours of sleep wasn’t helping either, which was sort of the whole point in brewing the coffee.

Artemis trudged in. Just as being empathic had not done anything to improve Makoto’s morning mood, so had once again being able to assume human form failed to make Artemis any quicker after a good night’s sleep. His hair was tangled in places and severely cow-licked, his eyes were only about half-open, and even his magically-conjured clothes looked bad—which was to say, they looked slept-in, mussed-up, worn-out, and beaten-down.

“Morning,” Makoto said.

Artemis grunted something vague, glanced at the coffee pot, and ‘mmph’-ed something just as obscure. Makoto didn’t speak cat, but the unique language of the morning grump was well within her understanding.

“Not quite yet,” Makoto replied. “Give it a few minutes.”

This time, the noise was more of an ‘urmph’. Artemis rested his elbows on the counter and buried his face in his hands, muttering, “I’d forgotten what it could be like to wake up as a human some mornings.”

“Are you saying that cats don’t wake up grungy?”

“Oh, we can be _very_ grungy if we want to. We just feel bad in different ways. For example,” Artemis said, smacking his lips in a show of tasting something unpleasant, “_what_ is this gods-awful taste I have in my mouth?”

“In my experience, it’s usually the last three things you had to eat or drink the night before.”

“Which would make what I’m tasting now tea, biscuits, and tuna,” Artemis finished, sighing. “What a wonderful way to start the day.”

“You just couldn’t wait to try a can of tuna fish in human form, huh?”

“You say that like I had a choice. I’ve had to rely on Mina-chan to open cans for me for most of the last five years, and even with her parents thrown in, there have been times when I’ve had to go days without a decent meal.” He held up his hands and actually managed to smile. “No more.”

Makoto didn’t respond to that right away. The murk in her head was going to make what she wanted to say tricky to get right, and she had to work at it for a moment.

“Artemis,” she began carefully, “listen. About Mina-chan...”

“What about her?” he yawned, brushing hair back from his face. Makoto just looked at him—at _him_—and pretty soon, Artemis got the message. “Oh. Uh... yeah. _This_. I guess it would... uh... sort of put a strain on the old working relationship.”

He chuckled humorlessly, after which the kitchen was silent except for the gurgling of the coffee machine. Then he glanced at Makoto. “Did she... that is... did she say anything last night?”

Makoto shook her head and started pouring coffee. “Not about you. She talked about lots of other things before she finally fell asleep, but she didn’t mention you once”—Artemis made a face; with Minako, that was one of the two strongest possible indications that she was uncomfortable with the subject—“and when Rei and I tried to steer the conversation in that direction, she ignored us.”

And that was the other; if Minako wouldn’t talk about him _and_ feigned deafness when someone else tried to mention him, she was well and truly spooked. He said as much to Makoto, who nodded sadly.

“She covered it up pretty well, but yeah, that was my impression, too.” Makoto handed Artemis a cup of coffee, took a sip from her own cup, and then turned it around in her hands. “Artemis... how do _you_ feel about all of this?”

Artemis considered that question for a while. He thought about how good— how _complete_—he felt now that he could remember his own life again, free of the moments of blurry confusion and blank forgetfulness that had been brought on by ten centuries in suspended animation. He thought of his life on the Moon, days spent training first the guards and then the Senshi, nights spent at parties, moving freely among people who didn’t care whether he was a cat or a man. Entire decades spent chasing patiently after Luna without ever successfully catching her, years of watching as the children who were his students grew up and became his friends.

He thought about Ishtar, who, with her typical Venusian candor, had told him on more than one occasion that she thought he was very handsome—among other things—but who had also never treated him as anything more or less than a friend, and who would never have dreamed of interfering with his pursuit of Luna anyway. Ishtar, who could have had any man she wanted with just a smile, but who would settle for nothing less than real love before giving anything more of herself than just that smile. And a few kisses. Ishtar had been very fond of—and very good at—displaying her affection with kisses.

He thought about Minako, who was like Ishtar in so many ways, particularly that one. No matter how often—or loudly—Minako complained about not having a boyfriend, she would not for one second consider pursuing a relationship just for the sake of having the relationship; if real love wasn’t involved, then there wasn’t any point no matter how cute the guy might be. And with that weird love-sensing ability she’d picked up and then honed to the proverbial razor’s edge, Minako could always tell if there was love in a relationship or not.

After almost five years, Artemis had to admit that his feelings for Minako were strong enough to be considered love, even if they weren’t of the romantic variety. Minako confided in Artemis when she was worried or scared, talked to him when she had problems she couldn’t solve; he understood Minako better than anyone but Usagi, and he knew things about her that not even Usagi was privy to.

Now he was human, with a form that Minako had no choice but to notice differently than that of a cat, a form that reacted to Artemis’s noticing _her_ differently than his cat’s body did. Even if he changed back right now and stayed a cat for the rest of his life, Artemis understood that it was too late. From now on, every time Minako looked at him, she would be reminded that there was a handsome, attractive guy under all that fur, a guy who knew her every bit as well as she knew herself and who had genuine feelings for her—a guy who had, regardless of his form at the time, been sharing her bed for years. A guy who had actually seen her naked once or twice.

At the very least, it was going to confuse her, make her go back and re-examine her impression of their relationship, of his feelings towards her—and hers towards him. At the very least.

He had no idea what to do next—and Makoto, picking up on that, sighed.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

# 

Minako yawned and rolled over, hugging her pillow and trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep before she got up. The floor wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it was less _un_comfortable than some of the things she’d have to face once she admitted she was awake.

“Minako.”

Her eyes opened. “Good morning, Artemis.” He was somewhere behind her, probably sitting on that smaller couch. A quick look told her that Makoto and Rei were both already up and out of the room. Convenient. “Is that breakfast I smell?”

“Mako-chan’s made some coffee and toast for herself. I think she said something about making pancakes later.”

“Good. I could use something to eat; sleeping on this floor’s really worked up my appetite.” Still not looking at him, she sat up and stretched, holding the heavy blanket close. “Well, I guess I’d better go make myself presentable before everybody else wakes up.” She started to get to her feet, and then staggered to a stop when Artemis spoke again.

“Minako, we need to talk.”

*Not this. Please, not this.* “Oh?” She did her best to sound casual. “What about?”

“Me. Us. Our relationship.”

“I... see.” Minako sat back down on the floor. “What’s there... what is there to talk about?”

“Mako-chan tells me you didn’t want to talk about me last night. I think we both know what that means, don’t we?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Minako.” His voice was gently chiding. “Come on. This is still me you’re talking to, no matter what I look like.”

“I know that,” Minako snapped. In a quieter voice, she added, “That’s the problem. I used to wonder, sometimes, about what you’d look like if you were human, and I always knew you’d be handsome”—she turned around—“but why did you have to be _this_ handsome?”

He shrugged. “Because I deserve to be?”

“That isn’t funny,” Minako said, fighting back a smile of her own.

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I’m doing no such thing,” Minako lied.

“And your left cheek is just twitching like that because you’ve picked up a nervous tic from the stress of your daily life, right?”

“Exactly.” She turned her back to him again. “Damn it, Artemis, stop making me happy; it only makes this worse.”

They sat there in silence for a few moments. Then Minako started speaking in a quiet, sad voice. “I’m supposed to be the Goddess of Love. I can solve a hundred couples’ romantic problems in a day, but no matter how hard I look, I just can’t find someone for myself. I just want... I just want somebody who can keep up with me when I get going and make me smile when I feel down. Somebody I can talk to and not have to hold back so many secrets from; somebody I can just be _me_ with. And now, now it looks like the perfect guy’s been literally under my nose the whole time, and he’s funny and clever and absolutely gorgeous, only...”

“Only what?”

“Only you’re _not_ the perfect guy—not for me.” She sighed. “I know how you feel about Luna, Artemis; every time you look at her, it comes through so clearly it might as well be written on your face. I won’t interfere with something like that. I can’t. It just wouldn’t... it wouldn’t be right.” Artemis couldn’t see her face, but he heard the sound in her voice which told him there were tears in her eyes. “This happens every time. Every single time I come close to finding the right guy, he either already has someone he really loves, or he sees me as just a kid, or... or... it just isn’t _fair._”

Artemis got off the couch and sat down on the floor next to Minako, taking one of her hands in his own. This was an old complaint, and it usually ended with Minako picking him up and hugging him for support like one of her horde of stuffed animals. This time was no exception, only now he actually had arms that could go around her as well. Everything else aside, it felt rather pleasant to be able to hold her like this—and Artemis immediately told his body to keep its attention on other things.

She didn’t actually cry—this time—for which Artemis was quietly thankful; Makoto and Rei had promised to intercept the others and keep them out of the way, but if someone heard Minako crying, they’d have to investigate. That could have been a little embarrassing.

After a while, he realized that Minako _was_ making a sound—the sound of soft giggles. “What? What’s so funny?”

“How do you and Luna manage to purr so well even when you’re not cats anymore?”

Artemis hadn’t realized he was purring, but he answered the question. “You have to know what to do with which muscles. Humans would have to work at learning it, but we do it by instinct.”

“Yeah, well, you should hear the echo it makes in here.” She rapped on the front of his chest with her knuckles. Then she sighed. “Do you love me, Artemis?”

“Yes—just not in that particular way.”

Minako nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

“You know I’ll always be here for you when you need me, right?”

“Right. Okay, then. Friends? And partners? Just like before?”

“Just like before,” he agreed.

“I’ll even let you keep on sleeping in the bed,” she proclaimed grandly. “At least as long as you’re a cat at the time, of course. A _small_ cat,” she added quickly.

“Of course.”

“Right. But if I catch you sneaking a peek at me when I’m getting dressed in the mornings,” she continued, giving him a warning poke in the belly, “your chicken is fried.”

“That’s ‘goose is cooked,’” he said automatically.

“Whatever.” Minako looked up at Artemis and then kissed him on the cheek. “I love you too, you know.”

Artemis grinned. “Well of course you do. Everybody knows that cats are inherently lovable.”

Minako made a sound of good-natured disgust, pushed him back, and snatched up her pillow to beat him over the head. When she brought it down, though, the man had been replaced by the huge white cat, who took the hit, shrugged it off as easily as a few drops of rain, and pounced on her, smothering her under a few hundred pounds of fur and purr before licking her face from chin to crown with a tongue that was both damp and as rough as a piece of sandpaper.

“Ack,” Minako said, pushing futilely at the huge feline head and wrinkling her nose. “Ugh, fish breath. Yuck! Any notions I had of kissing you just went out the window. Let me up, you big hairball!”

Artemis growled and butted his head against hers playfully, but complied with the request. Minako pulled herself up with some help from the heavy feline shoulder and stood there with one hand on Artemis’ broad back, wiping her face with her sleeve.

“Mreh. Did we not have toothbrushes ten centuries ago?”

“We did. But I can’t brush as a cat”—he flickered back into human form— “and I don’t have fish breath in this form anyway. It’s coffee breath by now for sure.” He leaned forward to demonstrate.

“Get away,” Minako drawled warningly, as she simultaneously leaned back in one direction and put a hand over Artemis’ face to push him back the other.

Artemis grinned, blinked into tiger mode once again, and made as if to bite at the offending hand. Minako withdrew quickly and glared at him.

“We’re going to set some ground rules about this whole changing forms thing, too,” she told him, right before her stomach growled. “After breakfast. You said Mako-chan was making pancakes?”

“I did.” He resumed human shape and gallantly offered her an arm. “May I?”

“Oh, I suppose so.”

# 

Sunlight creeping in through the window reached Usagi’s face, and the soft feel of warmth/light against her eyes made her turn slightly. That started the waterbed shifting and moved everyone and everything on it at least a little, and Usagi ended up flinching when something cold brushed her feet for about the hundredth time that night.

“Um... not warnun you’gain, Ami... keep your feet to yourshelf.”

“Mmm... then quit stealing all the blankets,” Ami mumbled back, tugging a handful of sheets. Usagi tugged in turn, so Ami tugged again and moved one of her feet up to the general location of Usagi’s super-ticklish backs-of-the-knees. Usagi squirmed away from that and elbowed Ami in the shoulder; Ami returned the favor, then opened her eyes wide when Usagi dropped the pillow on her head.

Luna yawned, stretched, and padded out of range as the two girls went at it again with the pillows and the insults, Usagi complaining that Ami had cold feet, and Ami saying that Usagi was a bedhog.

Not for the first time, Luna was glad she’d decided to sleep in cat form. She was willing to admit that the recent discomforts she’d experienced while sleeping in human form might have had something to do with the fact that she’d been sleeping on the ground in a desert at night, rather than in a nice warm bed, but her feline shape was more familiar, it could get comfortable in a much smaller space than her human form needed, and it had a fur coat to keep her warm. All of those were important considerations when one had two room-hungry, cold-footed, blanket-stealing bedmates to contend with.

*Of course,* Luna reflected, as a ripple in the waterbed flipped her first on her back and then over the side of the mattress, *being cat-sized has its problems, too.*

When the three of them came downstairs a few minutes later—Luna back in human form, this time wearing a nightgown of blue-black silk—they found most of the others gathered on chairs around the island-shelf in the kitchen as Makoto prepared breakfast on the counter. Setsuna and Michiru both looked ready to face the day, while Makoto, ChibiUsa, Hotaru, and Haruka were at the other end of the scale, all still in their pajamas—or in Haruka’s case, a long white shirt and a housecoat that wasn’t ‘shut’ so much as it was ‘not open.’ Since he originally hadn’t been planning to spend the night and thus hadn’t brought a change of clothes, Ryo was dressed as he had been the day before, and he was being very careful to not look at Haruka’s legs.

Out of the corner of her eye, Usagi noticed that Ami actually bounced from one step to the next when she caught sight of Ryo. Ryo, who had his back to them, gave a faint start at the same moment that Ami saw him, and he did so again when he turned around and looked at Ami—who bounced a second time before she broke into a blushing smile.

*That mindbond is _really_ something else.*

“Good morning,” Michiru greeted them.

“Good morning,” Usagi yawned.

Ami went directly to Ryo, started to say something, and then stopped and just smiled at him for a moment. She sat down next to him, then blinked and turned slowly to Haruka—who got up and walked over to the counter, ostensibly to refill her coffee. Ami watched her go and briefly closed her eyes, sighing.

“So what was all the racket about?” Makoto asked.

“Some people,” Ami said, opening her eyes with a sidelong glance at Usagi, “simply cannot share a bed.”

“You’re in no position to talk,” Usagi replied. “You and those cold feet kept me up for...”

“...for all of ten minutes before you started snoring. And do you have any idea how hard it was for _me_ to get to sleep with you squirming around every five minutes?”

“At least neither of _you_ got thrown on the floor,” Luna said.

“Waterbeds are fun, aren’t they?” Hotaru asked brightly.

“I’ve always thought so,” Michiru murmured into her coffee.

In the middle of taking a drink of her own coffee, Haruka stopped and glanced suspiciously at Michiru. Then she shook her head, muttering something that nobody else caught, and finished the drink. Makoto bit her lip to hold back a chuckle.

“I didn’t ask you, Michiru-mama,” Hotaru replied absently. “You’d say a bed of _rocks_ was fun as long as Haru-”

“Ahem!” Haruka and Michiru cleared their throats in unison, both of them blushing furiously. Makoto doubled up over the counter from trying to contain herself, her shoulders shaking as weird little sounds slipped out past the hand clapped over her mouth. Everybody stared at her.

“It wasn’t _that_ funny,” a wide-eyed Hotaru said a moment later.

Makoto waved one hand at her. “I know, I know.” She took a deep breath and stood up straight, spluttered once and breathed in again, let out the last breath, and seemed to calm down. Then Makoto glanced back at her friends. “No more jokes while I’m cooking, okay? I don’t want to drop the pancake batter.”

There were some nods. While Makoto went back to her culinary engineering, Usagi looked around. “Where are the others?”

“Rei-chan’s feeding her two new friends,” ChibiUsa replied, “and Mina-chan and Artemis are talking in the living room.”

“What about?”

“Uh...” ChibiUsa hesitated and looked around for some help.

“Minako’s having some trouble adjusting to the idea that Artemis can turn into a human,” Setsuna said.

“Why would... oh.” Usagi looked out towards the living room. “How bad is it?”

“She wouldn’t talk about him _or_ even acknowledge his existence last night,” Makoto said.

Ami and Usagi both winced. “That bad?”

“That bad.”

Usagi sighed wearily. “Did anything _else_ happen while I was asleep?”

“Mako-chan and Hotaru-chan went out on a little mission of mass fungicide,” ChibiUsa replied, yawning.

“ChibiUsa!” Hotaru protested.

“Oh, come on. It’s not like they didn’t already know you were going to sneak out last night.”

“Very true,” Haruka agreed. Hotaru blushed and looked at her feet.

“So how’d it go?” Usagi asked.

“We found six more mana nexi scattered around town,” Makoto reported. “Or the beginnings of them, at least, crawling around on the insides of buildings and under the streets. None of them were in working order, so Hotaru-chan went ahead and dissolved them. We made a quick check of the airport and that cafe, too, just to make sure there wasn’t anything left over from before, and we swung back by the buildings from last night. Did you want berries or chocolate or something else like that in your pancakes?”

“Plain’ll do, as long as there’s lots of them. Did you find anything else?”

“Nothing at the old sites, but there was still an awful lot of that green garbage out there. It was all spread through the different wards, but I’d say that maybe as much as a quarter of the city was covered by the stuff. Hotaru managed to get rid of it without breaking anything else.” There was a hiss as Makoto started pouring the batter onto the pan. “The emergency crews were out by the time we happened by, too, taping off the areas and picking through the rubble.”

“I think that proves what I was worried about last night,” Michiru said.

“What? A bunch of city workers?”

“No; the dispersion of that green... substance. The other side has to know by now that their troops aren’t really a match for us; they ought to have been concentrating their strength in one or two small and heavily-defended areas, not spreading out into a half-dozen huge targets. Not unless they _wanted_ us to find them.”

“They could just be really arrogant and sloppy,” Haruka pointed out. “It’s not like it’d be the first time.”

“Granted, but if they were as bad as some of our previous enemies, I doubt they’d have gone to all the trouble to hide their creations like that. Luna?”

“You’re both right,” Luna said. “The Atlanteans _were_ arrogant, and they were also very good at setting traps like that. They’d willingly throw away an entire army of their unintelligent creations and magical slaves in these sorts of covert operations if they thought it could gain them an advantage.” She paused and folded her arms. “In this case, though, I think the mana nexi were the original focus of their plan. The Atlanteans—or whoever’s inherited their secrets—would want to get access to this region’s powerful elemental energies as quickly as possible. They probably didn’t start setting traps until after you girls had destroyed those first three units.”

“‘Units’?” Ami echoed.

“It’s the closest translation of the Atlantean word. I figured it out when Setsuna traced the existence of that first creature back to the archmage—the man with black eyes.”

“What are they, exactly?”

“The units are creations of elemental energy, somewhat like the two elementals you saw last night, but on a smaller and more readily controlled scale, and without the complications of an animating spirit, whether living or dead. They were—are, I suppose—created by infusing a mass of some specific physical matter with various types of energy.”

“That sounds a bit like what you said about the Nereids last night,” ChibiUsa said, with a quick, cautious glance at Ami.

“The units were created after a lot of study of natural life-forms, including the Nereids. The ones you’ve been dealing with so far seem to be the most basic design, but there are six types that I know of from the records, and I think you’d better be ready to meet all of them. Ami, could you get your computer out? Uplink to the mainframe and run a search on ‘Atlantean weapons technology.’ Include the words ‘unit generation,’ and then set the computer to project the results so we can all see.”

While Ami did that, ChibiUsa hurried out of the room to get Rei. Makoto assessed the state of breakfast and popped a few more slices of bread into the toaster before heading towards the living room, but she stopped near Luna and gave her a questioning look. Luna hesitated briefly before she shook her head.

“What they’ve got to talk about is more important than this. Let’s let them be for now.”

Makoto’s expression changed slightly, but whatever she was about to say was forgotten as the screen of Ami’s computer went dark and then emitted a wave of light. Glowing letters appeared in the air, some of them modern but many others the slender, gracefully curving characters of the Silver Script. The pieces of the thousand years-dead language floated there, tantalizingly familiar to most of the Senshi, but quite unreadable to all of them.

“Give me a minute and I’ll run the translation.”

“That’s okay,” Luna said. “This is all just technical information. I can tell you what you need to know, but I wanted you to be able to see examples of the different designs.” Rei and ChibiUsa entered the room, and Luna waited until they’d found seats before continuing. “Ami, go to ‘First Generation.’”

Ami pressed a button, and the hologram changed. A familiar-looking stringy green humanoid about ten inches high now stood in the air, turning slowly as little captions of the unreadable text spun just as slowly around it. A pod of green the size of the creature’s head was right next to it, complete with its own halo of captions.

“The initial unit design was based primarily on fungoid and the lesser vegetative forms of life. It starts out like this”—Luna pointed at the pod— “essentially a colony of fungus, and then grows into other forms depending on its programming and the energy it’s able to absorb. This level of unit isn’t particularly strong, but it has the capacity for almost unlimited self-replication. A single pod can create anything from one unit to an entire mana nexus—and if it develops that far, it usually has enough energy to start producing new pods and units.”

“So,” Michiru said, “each of the mana nexi we’ve seen so far was created from one of these pods?”

Luna nodded. “Chances are they were all put in place on New Year’s Eve, along with the ones you destroyed at the airport and that cafe, and the one that attacked Ami’s house. First-generation units aren’t smart enough to operate by themselves for long periods of time, so I’d guess that there was a slightly more intelligent variant at one of the nexi, controlling the entire operation and reporting back to its creators from time to time for new instructions.”

“Why am I suddenly reminded of ‘the Invasion of the Body Snatchers?’” Haruka asked of no one in particular as she watched the pod and its progeny turn slowly in the air.

“Well... that _is_ sort of the next stage of their evolution,” Luna admitted. “Ami, switch to ‘Second Generation.’”

The green creature and pod faded out, and a pinkish-brown lump of flesh appeared in their place.

“After plant-based units, the Atlanteans developed a model based on animal tissues.” Luna waited—and the others watched—as the pod expanded and developed limbs and a head, becoming a humanoid body that lacked nearly any features whatsoever. Its hands and feet were vaguely, even uncertainly formed, and the head was just a roundish lump of flesh. “The second-generation design is considerably stronger in a fight than its predecessor, and it’s more intelligent, but since it’s got an animal physiology, it can’t alter its form quite as readily. What it can do is... that.”

Luna pointed as the display changed. Very gradually, the vague shape became less vague. Ears and a face appeared on the head; the fingers and toes became long and flexible; the overall shape grew more distinct, more human. It ultimately ended up taking the shape of some anonymous man—a shape which was hairless except for the head, but which was complete in every other detail.

Hotaru, ChibiUsa, and Ami all blushed spectacularly and hastily averted or covered their eyes. Rei and Setsuna weren’t far behind, and Usagi coughed and took an interest in one of the bunnies on her pajamas. Michiru sighed and shook her head, while Haruka started to chuckle.

Makoto gave the image a few moments of consideration and then turned to Ami. “Just what _else_ can you get on that computer anyway, Ami-chan?”

Crimson-faced, Ami glared at Makoto and quickly hit another button, shifting the hologram back to the indistinct thing it had been before.

Still smiling, Haruka glanced over at the other girls. “You can look now,” she said dryly.

“The second-generation units,” Luna said calmly, “were designed primarily for infiltration and assassination. They can look like any human, male or female, and are able to create whatever clothes they need to complete the disguise from their own substance. Beyond that, they can also create natural weapons and armor, like claws and talons, horns, leathery or scaly skin, and sometimes even insect-like exoskeletons. They’re individually smarter and stronger than their predecessors, but human forms are usually the only ones they’re able to assume, and even if they can _look_ male and female, they really aren’t, so they aren’t able to reproduce on their own.”

“Is there any way to tell them from a regular person?” Setsuna asked.

“If you know what you’re looking for and can observe them in action long enough to find it, yes. The units don’t have emotions, so they’re not very good at imitating them, and the shapes they take are just visual; they don’t have any knowledge beyond what’s been programmed into them and what they’ve been able to learn.”

“Then if one of them was imitating somebody we knew,” Rei said, “we could tell by asking a question only that person should know the answer to?”

“Yes, but I’d be careful about trying that. The units are smart enough to be suspicious, and if one of them thinks its disguise has been penetrated, it might try to slip away and take another form—or it could attack. They may _look_ human, but they’re quite a bit stronger.” Luna paused and looked at Ami and Makoto. “You two will probably be able to pick a second-generation unit out of a crowd even if you don’t know who it’s imitating; it won’t think or feel like a normal person. You might notice it too, Rei. They’re also supposed to have an odd sort of smell, but I’m not sure what it’ll be like, or if it’ll be strong enough for you to notice.”

“This is the point where Mina-chan would advise us all to keep our noses clean,” Ryo said faintly, “but...”

“You hush,” Ami ordered, pointing at him with her right hand and advancing to the next image with her left. This time, the pod looked like nothing so much as a lump of dirt, complete with tiny tufts of grass sticking out of it, and when it expanded, the resulting humanoid had blades of grass in place of hair, as well as jutting from the backs of its forearms.

“The third-generation units were built from dirt, which is made up mainly of dead organic matter. That made it easier to animate than totally nonliving substances, but it also allowed the Atlanteans to experiment with at least semi-inorganic compounds, and they eventually refined the design into the Fourth Generation”—Ami quickly pressed the button again, and the image of a whitish-brown manshape with rough ‘skin’ appeared—“which was made up of sand rather than dirt. Both types are able to shapeshift nearly as well as the first-generation units and can reproduce by absorbing and charging the appropriate substance. The mineral contents of their bodies also give them energy-absorbing and projecting powers which are superior to the previous generations. The third- generation units aren’t very good in direct combat because they have a tendency to fall apart quite easily; the fourth-generation design is tougher and is particularly resistant to electricity and normal extremes of heat or cold, but both types are extremely vulnerable to water. A good rainstorm could melt them.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in case we see any,” Michiru promised.

“You’ll probably be more likely to see fourth-generation units than third- generation,” Luna said. “And even then, I wouldn’t bet on it; they worked best in deserts, and this area’s really too wet for them to function for very long. If they _do_ show up,” she added, looking at Rei and Makoto, “you two in particular had better be careful. As I said, they’re resistant to electricity— mainly because that’s what’s holding them together—and fire won’t be much use unless you can make it hot enough to fuse the unit’s entire outer skin into glass.”

“That might take a while,” Rei admitted.

Ami advanced the image again, and this time the faceless shape was a dull, pale grey color. There was no accompanying pod.

ChibiUsa frowned. “That looks familiar.”

“The Time Gate,” Setsuna said. “Ryo’s vision showed Uranus fighting one of these.”

“Right before someone or something else blew it away,” Ryo added. “I don’t think it was one of you, either.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Luna told him. “Fifth-generation units are made from a single, solid piece of stone, which means they can withstand a lot of punishment. Right now, out of all of the Senshi, only Saturn and Eternal Sailor Moon really have the power to destroy one of these units in a single hit—and neither of them use white-hot plasma beams.”

“Not yet.” The statement made some of the others look sidelong at Usagi. “It could happen.”

Luna did not seem convinced. “As I was saying, this design is made from stone, and that makes them tough, heavy, and extremely strong. In terms of pure physical power, these units will be superior to anything you’ve faced before. They don’t bleed or feel pain, so they’ll be able to shrug off hits that would incapacitate most of the creatures you’re used to fighting, and they’ll never tire no matter how long they fight. And just as an ordinary large rock isn’t particularly affected by wind, rain, or extremes of temperature, the fifth- generation units will have a much higher degree of resistance to your attacks than other creatures.”

“Good.” Now they all turned to look at Haruka. “Hey, I’d hate to think that something that could hold me up one-on-one was _weak._”

“They’re definitely not weak,” Luna replied, “but _you’ll_ be at more of a disadvantage against this type of unit than the others because these creatures are concentrations of earth energy, which is directly opposed to your own air-based powers. They’re too heavy and solid to be picked up or knocked around by World Shaking, and even the Space Sword Blaster won’t be able to do much more than chip away at them. The Sword itself would be your best bet, considering the level of energy it contains, but you’ll still need to be careful.”

“Venus should be able to fight one of these things fairly well, shouldn’t she?” ChibiUsa asked. “I mean, her powers are based on metal, and that comes from the earth, right?”

“Yes and yes. Your tiara should be useful too, since the best way to deal with a fifth-generation unit is to attack the thinnest parts of its body—the joints of its arms and legs. The only long-range attacking capability this design has is to pick up and throw things, so if you keep your distance and take out its limbs, it won’t be able to attack you or give chase.”

“It might try to bite their kneecaps off, though,” Ryo suggested, nodding sagely. He rocked slightly to the side as Ami—to Michiru’s silently nodded approval—punched him in the arm. “Ouch.”

“I warned you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Shutting up, ma’am.” Ryo gave her one of the salutes he’d used last night; Ami started to laugh, then glared at him through it and hit him in the shoulder again. Again, Michiru nodded. Haruka shook her head and rolled her eyes—and got punched herself for the criticism. She gave Michiru an exasperated look, which was ignored.

“I notice that there’s no pod shown for this type,” Setsuna said, concealing a smile. “Is that significant?”

“It is. Since these units are made from nonliving stone, they don’t have any of the healing abilities of the units based on living or formerly living substances, and the natural rigidity of stone leaves them totally unable to shapeshift. They’re not as versatile as some of the earlier designs, they can’t create more of their kind independently, and once they’re damaged, they can’t heal without help. But that said, damaging them isn’t easy, destroying them is even harder, and they excel at the one thing they were built for—fighting. They were _so_ good at it that the Atlanteans only came up with one further refinement of their unit technology.”

The final hologram to appear was larger and more distinct than any of the others. The shape was that of a knight in full armor of blue-black steel, complete with a shield, a sword, and a dark blue cape, but the faint white light glowing within the bars of the visored helm gave away its true, inhuman nature.

“Physically, a sixth-generation unit has superior strength and damage resistance to a fifth-generation design, and it can fight just as well with its bare hands as with the sword and shield. This type also has the ability to absorb a wide variety of elemental energies, store them, and then convert them into various types of power for its own uses. Attack one of these things with magic, and it’ll take the hit, absorb the power, and then spit it back at you. Or it might use the energy to form a defensive barrier, or maybe to fly. The more you throw at it, the stronger it becomes.”

“Oh, joy,” Haruka muttered sourly. “So in addition to the fact that physically hitting something made out of solid metal will hurt _us_ more than _it,_ you’re saying we won’t be able to attack these things with our _powers,_ either?”

“I didn’t say that. Any of your directed attacks will be absorbed, yes, but there’s a limit to just how much energy a sixth-generation unit can store. Push it near that limit, and it stops absorbing energy, at which point it immediately becomes open to the full force of whatever attack you direct at it. Push it _beyond_ its limit, and the unit either shuts down or self-destructs.” Luna smiled. “There’s a catch, of course.”

“Of course.”

“That being,” Michiru said, “that we don’t know how much it would take to push one of these units into an overload. If we just fire full-force attacks at it and hope our luck is in, we’ll wear ourselves out. And while _we_ don’t know the limits of the energy-absorbing power, we’ll have to assume that the units themselves _do_ know what the limit is, and will try everything they can to prevent it from being passed.”

“The second option,” Luna said as Ami shut off the projection, “is to have someone whose power allows for an immediate deactivation deal with the thing. Again, Eternal Sailor Moon and Saturn are the only two of you who could destroy these things easily, but Pluto could trap one of them in a field of slowed Time, and since they’re made of metal, Venus should have some ability to affect them—assuming her powers have developed that far yet.”

“Could you explain that a bit?” Makoto asked. “Rei-chan was all but eating those fires last night, and I’ve already heard Haruka and Michiru describe what they did with the wind and water in the future. How does that work, exactly?”

“Your ties to your specific elements give you the ability to control those elements. You’ve been able to conjure them in various forms since day one, but you don’t have to use them in combative forms: Saturn can heal; Uranus can move objects with focused applications of wind; Neptune and Mercury can create water; and so on. If you can develop this aspect of your powers far enough, you’ll be able to redirect, absorb, or neutralize concentrations of your own elements that you didn’t create yourselves, even ones that somebody else has created or harnessed.”

“Like what Rei-chan did to the fire elemental last night?” Hotaru asked.

“Exactly like that. And when it comes to the units, if you’ve advanced far enough, we’ll have a lot less trouble. With that in mind,” Luna said, looking around at everyone, “you’re all going to start training regularly again.” Luna fixed a particular look at Haruka and Michiru. “And that includes you two.”

“Unlike these powder-puffs,” Haruka replied with a quick, room-sweeping glance of her own, “_we_ never stopped training.”

Hands on her hips, Makoto turned around and repeated the words, “Powder-puffs?” with an expression wavering between amazement and outrage.

“That may be,” Luna said, ignoring Makoto for the moment, “but you’re both beginning to tap into an area of your powers that can’t be learned through combat exercises alone—and you’re both seriously overdue for some real training in how to use your Talismans properly. You in particular, Haruka, if you can’t even hold your own in a fight with an opponent of equal strength.”

“Now _just_ a darn minute...”

“Hush,” Michiru said.

“Speaking of Talismans,” Usagi said suddenly, “what about that Cad-thingy Ami-chan got her hands on? It seemed to me like it was helping her control her powers safely; could we find it for her now?”

“It’s called ‘the Caduceus,’” Luna said patiently—after all, they’d only mentioned the thing about six or seven times the previous night, which was hardly enough for it to have sunk into Usagi’s head just yet—“and it’s a Weapon, not a Talisman.”

“Huh?”

“A Talisman is an extension of a person’s inner being, a bit of their essence given a physical form, and that means it can’t be stolen from or turned against the owner.” Luna stopped and frowned, remembering Medea. “Well, it can’t be stolen _easily_—certainly never permanently—and it’ll never break unless the owner does first. With the right sort of magic, absolutely anyone, even a completely ordinary person, can be given a Talisman, and once it is created, it’s as much a part of them as a hand or an eye. These four particular ones are a bit different in that they were created to be the Talismans of the _Senshi,_ and not the specific woman who _was_ the Senshi at the time. If the Space Sword was exclusively Haruka’s Talisman, for instance, then nobody else would be able to use it unless she let them, but since it belongs to _Uranus,_ any Senshi of Uranus can call for it and use it. Though only one at a time.”

“And this is different from a weapon... how?” Usagi asked.

“A Weapon”—Luna put a slightly different emphasis on the word—“is any one of the devices used by the Senshi over the centuries. That includes your tiara and all the rods you’ve used, the Mercury Computer and the Caduceus, the lightning rod built into Jupiter’s tiara, and a whole host of others. And I suppose Gladius counts as one as well. They generally aren’t as powerful as the four Talismans, and like any weapon”—that particular emphasis was lacking, here—“they can be used by anyone who picks them up and knows what to do. These devices were enspelled so that it’d be much harder for other people to steal or use them, but it can still be done—as Ami sort of proved.”

“Could she do that again?”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea. The Caduceus may not be a Talisman, but it’s fairly intertwined with the power of Mercury—that’s one of the safeguards against it being stolen—and it might trigger another attack if Ami tried to call it again.”

“Well,” Minako said from the doorway, “if you can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, you bring the mountain down.”

Confusion over the latest Minakoism was compounded by the surprise of her—and Artemis, who was standing arm-in-arm with her while shaking his head and looking towards the ceiling for strength—being there, and it took Luna a moment to get out the word, “What?”

“If Ami-chan can’t bring the Caduceus here, then we’re going to have to find a way to get her wherever _it_ is, so she can pick it up and carry it home the old-fashioned way. So,” Minako said, looking at Luna, “where is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Usagi disagreed. “Mother told us there wasn’t anything left on the Moon that could be useful or dangerous, so that means the Caduceus isn’t there.”

Rei rolled her eyes. “Perfect. That just leaves the rest of the solar system to search.”

“That’s going to have to be your job,” Usagi told her absently.

“Excuse me?”

“The Book, Rei. It’ll be able to tell us what happened to all of these ’Weapons’ after the Silver Millennium fell apart, whether or not any of them are still around, and _where_ they are.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, odango-atama, that thing isn’t exactly forthcoming with useful information. It could be _months_ before I find anything.”

“Then you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”

“And speaking of getting started,” Makoto announced, distracting Usagi and Rei from the imminent tongue war, “I’d say the pancakes are ready.”

They looked over at the counter and blinked collectively. Nobody had really been paying attention to Makoto’s cooking beyond the almost unconscious acknowledgment that she _was_ cooking, so it came as something of a shock when they saw the rather mountainous piles of pancakes, toast, and hashbrowns she’d managed to create. There was also a large platter covered with fruit—some sliced, some not—off to one side.

“Is there anything left in the pantry?” Michiru asked in a faint voice.

“You’re definitely out of pancake mix,” Makoto admitted. “I used up most of the fruit you had laying around and two of the loaves of bread that were in the freezer—and I’d imagine that you’re going to be a little short on syrup, butter, and juice before the morning’s out.”

“Mako-chan?” Usagi interrupted sweetly, eyeing the food with a disturbing intensity.

“Yes?”

“Could you get out of the way?”

Makoto did that—quickly. When Usagi started to giggle as she filled her plate, some of the others got up to stake claims to their own breakfasts before their hungry leader tried to eat everything in sight. Makoto stepped clear of the rush and made her way around to Artemis.

“Nice going,” she said softly, glancing at Minako. She might have said something more, but Ami, Michiru, and Setsuna came over.

“You said last night that there were caves on Mercury,” Michiru said to Luna, without any preamble. “Were they anything like the cave where we saw Ami during Ryo’s vision?”

“Not really. The ‘caves’ had been redesigned into subterranean cities during the Atlantean Age, so that any visitors had familiar surroundings to make them feel more comfortable. The Nereids didn’t need the sort of physical comforts we do, but they were absolutely fascinated by geometry, and very conscientious hosts besides. They designed some of the most beautiful pieces of art and architecture during the Silver Millennium, including parts of the royal palace, but their cave-cities were in a class of their own.” Luna sighed with the regret of memory. “But that was before Beryl killed the Nereids and their planet. I don’t suppose there’s much of anything left, considering the original devastation we found and the time it’s had to get worse, so yes, I suppose that cave we saw could be somewhere on Mercury.”

Artemis gave the girls a dry look. “I’ll say right off the bat that yes, the Caduceus is very likely to be somewhere in those caves, but before you suggest we take up interplanetary spelunking, I’ll _also_ say that those caves cover an area larger than the Asian continent. We could search around in there from now until Crystal Tokyo and not find the thing—and that’s only if you can come up with a way to get us there first. You girls did okay getting to the Moon, but trust me, you’re not ready for an interplanetary teleport yet, particularly not a teleport to a place you’ve never seen before.”

“Is that important?” Setsuna asked curiously.

“It’s easier to reach a place you’re familiar with,” Luna replied. “You’ve got to get an image fixed in your mind of where you want to be, and when you know an area really well, its image forms faster and more clearly than when you’ve never seen the place before. And if you can _see_ the place you want to go, you don’t even have to spend the small amount of time remembering what it looks like; you can just go there. But if you can’t form the image precisely enough, you can’t go.”

“A Senshi who’s mastered the power of teleportation is capable of going back to her own planet like _that_”—Artemis snapped his fingers—“no matter her distance or condition at the time, and even one who isn’t skilled enough to do that can still serve as a guide to that world for others, but tracing a path to Mercury _through_ Mercury would almost have to trigger another energy-attack, so we need to find another way.”

“Thank you, Artemis,” Ami said softly, “but if this is the only way to get there, I...”

“Oh, it’s not just you I’m worried about,” Artemis admitted candidly. “I’m worried about my own fur as well. None of you are strong enough to teleport that far on your own, so you’d have to go as a group. If Mercury goes berserk again while all of you are linked in a teleport, it might set off the same kind of reaction in the other girls as well, and I have _no_ idea what the end result of something like that might be, except that it’ll be bad, and probably on a global scale.”

“Besides,” Luna put in, “we don’t know for sure that the Caduceus still exists. _If_ Rei can find some mention of it or the other Weapons in the Book, and _if_ we can get a reasonably good idea of where to look, _then_ we’ll talk about whether we want to risk trying a teleport or not. But not before.”

Her voice was gentle, but the tone of finality on the matter was obvious.

“How many Weapons were there?” Michiru asked. “Was there just one for each of us, or were there more?”

“There were more. Some of them, generally the more powerful ones, were devices like the Caduceus that could only be used by a specific Senshi, but there were others that any of you could use. And just as many ‘Weapons’ were actually defensive devices like shields and armor, or supplementary tools similar to Mercury’s visor and computer. But since we don’t know for sure which ones—if any—are still around, there isn’t much point in going into detail about them, is there?”

“There were _that_ many?” Makoto said.

“We had a whole chamber in the royal arsenal devoted to holding them,” Artemis said. “Not all of them were in use at one time, of course; a few got put to use by every new generation of Senshi, but others hadn’t been touched for centuries.”

Michiru frowned. “That could be a problem. What happens if we find a Weapon that none of us have any idea how to use? We _could_ always have Rei try to find that sort of information from the Book, but...”

“Not to worry,” Artemis told her. “I was the Master of Arms, and knowing what each of the Weapons was and could do was part of the job description.”

“I see.” Michiru turned to Luna. “Did they _let_ him know that, or did he ferret it out on his own?”

“Hey!”

“It _is_ sort of like letting a kitten into a yarn basket, isn’t it?” Luna agreed.

Artemis looked from one of them to the other, then threw his hands in the air with a sound of conceded defeat, and went to see if anything interesting enough to eat had survived the initial feeding frenzy.

“So that’s the plan?” Ami asked with a faint, fading smile. “We keep up the patrols, train, and wait for Rei-chan to find something in the Book?”

Luna nodded. “Although,” she began to say, sounding hesitant and giving Ami a concerned look, “you may want to...”

“I’ll be there with the others,” Ami said firmly. “Even if I can’t transform, I can still learn _something,_ right?”

“Well... we could start you on some of the physical routines...” Luna shook her head. “Ami, I really think it would be better if you not take part in the training until we manage to stabilize your condition. Even the simple exercises are designed to help push the limits of your abilities as a Senshi, and if you push too hard, that could be the same as trying to transform.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Ami...”

“Luna, _please._” Ami’s voice was quiet, almost begging. “_Please_ don’t make me sit this out. I can’t transform, I can’t fight, I’ve got this... this _thing_ in my mind, and then there’s Ryo...” She broke off and clenched her eyes tightly shut for a moment. “So much in my life has changed so fast; I need _something_ to stay the same. Please?”

“Okay,” Luna agreed, sighing. “But if Artemis or I tell you to stop or not to try something, I don’t want any arguments.”

“You won’t get any,” Ami promised.

“You may want to give some thought to getting a promise like that out of Haruka,” Michiru advised. “Pushing the envelope is second nature to her, even in training.”

“She may find that this particular envelope’s a little out of her reach,” Luna replied dryly. “I may have missed that fight in the dining hall, but I’ve had plenty of opportunities to see her fight before. She’s got Uranus’ powers down, but her hand-to-hand skill is another story, particularly where the Space Sword is concerned.”

“You’re not impressed?”

“Oh, when you stop to consider that she’s essentially self-taught, she’s actually quite good, but a lot of that is Ariel’s influence and not Haruka’s own skill. And she’s still nowhere near as good as she should be.” Luna frowned and looked at Michiru. “You know her best; do you think she’ll be able to handle getting knocked flat on her ass a few times in practice?”

Makoto, Ami, and Setsuna all looked at Luna, but Michiru answered the question with a level voice, a raised eyebrow, and just a little pride. “More to the point, do you think you’ll be _able_ to knock her flat on her ass? Even once? Haruka may not be up to your standards as far as skill goes, but she’s still very strong. I have the bruises to prove it, and in four years, I’ve never once managed to beat her.”

“I’ve seen you fight hand-to-hand as well,” Luna said. “That’s one of the things we’re going to be working on—but as for Haruka, I’m not the one who’s going to be teaching her how to use that sword properly. Believe me, in a straight fight with just physical skill and physical weapons, Artemis is more than capable of beating her with one hand tied behind his back.”

Michiru glanced at Artemis, who was trying—unsuccessfully—to get around ChibiUsa and Hotaru to grab a few pieces of the much-reduced pile of pancakes for himself. He resorted to swiping pancakes from ChibiUsa’s plate, at which point both girls turned around, jumped on him, and poked, pinched, and punched him into submission and a surrender of the stolen food.

“I think,” Michiru said at length, “that I’m going to have to see that to believe it.”

# 

The practice sword went skidding through the dirt in one direction as Uranus hit it in another. She raised her head and spit out a bit of gritty, half-melted snow, then pushed herself up and brushed off the worst of the snow and dirt. One of the nice things about the Senshi fukus was that they were always being magically cleaned and repaired, so despite the fact that this was perhaps the fifth fall Uranus had taken tonight, her uniform was still in a close-to-pristine condition. The body underneath was starting to get a little tired of hitting the ground, though.

“You overextended again.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Uranus retrieved her weapon, rotated her neck to work out a stiffness, and turned around. Artemis was leaning against a tree, one foot up on the trunk and the counterpart to her own wooden ‘blade’ dangling with apparent laziness from his right hand.

Uranus understood the need for nonlethal weapons in training exercises— Mars had provided this particular pair from somewhere in one of the shrine’s storerooms—but that didn’t change the fact that she missed the familiar, comfortable weight of the Space Sword. It also didn’t make these ‘harmless’ weapons any lighter on impact.

This was only the second of these training sessions in the week since their return from that near-disaster at the Time Gate, but that first one had left Uranus feeling more thrashed than anything since the last time she’d crashed her bike while off-roading—and _that_ had been a while ago. If it hadn’t been for the fact that turning back to normal got rid of the majority of whatever injuries they suffered as Senshi, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have been able to move the next morning. This lesson was shaping up to be just as debilitating, and they still had the magical exercises to do—and changing forms didn’t help much with the fatigue left over from using attacks continuously for as much as an hour.

If she had thought for one second that _this_ was the kind of training the Inner Senshi had been going through for the last four years, Uranus would never have been able to live it down. Fortunately for her ego, they were all having just as much trouble keeping the pace Luna and Artemis had set. All except Ami, who was actively being prevented from pushing herself that far; Usagi, who for obvious reasons wasn’t attending; and Pluto, who had come out of that first grueling evening looking as if she were more _invigorated_ than exhausted.

It was ridiculous. The woman had hardly done a thing for the last two months as far as strenuous physical activity was concerned—unless you counted getting blown up as exercise—and before that she had spent a couple of thousand years atrophying in oblivion, and yet she was holding up as if this were all a walk in the park.

Either somebody was cheating, or the training system that had produced Pluto had _really_ been something else, but either way, Uranus was not about to let herself fold first.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Uranus said, raising her weapon to an en guarde position.

Artemis stepped away from the tree, tapped the end of his sword on the heel of one of his boots to clear away a clinging bit of snow, and struck at her in the same movement, going from lazy to lethal in less than an eyeblink. He pressed the attack with three, four, five savage slashes that were almost too fast to follow, and as Uranus worked to block each attack, Artemis suddenly wasn’t in front of her anymore.

Uranus immediately swung her sword up, around, and down to protect her back, and she was rewarded with a loud clack as the attack was foiled—this time. Pushing the other sword away as she turned, Uranus went into a half-crouch and swung her weapon through the general level of air where Artemis’ knees ought to be. She saw him jump and begin to bring his sword down at her head, and quickly snapped her own sword up to block the other at the hilts, rising from the half-crouch after the moment of contact to get some extra momentum which might help push Artemis off-balance.

Push him back she did, but off-balance was another story. Artemis spun on his heel, diverting the major part of the momentum of Uranus’ attack into an attack of his own as he struck a two-handed blow at her midsection, which had been left open by the lunge. She got out of that by bringing her arms down fast and hard and taking a hasty step back, but Artemis slipped his weapon free— incidentally twirling Uranus’ sword up high and out to one side—and went for her shoulder without missing a beat.

Something clicked in Uranus’ mind at that point. She dropped low and turned fast, kicking as she spun to sweep Artemis’ feet out from under him, and as she came out of the movement facing him, batted his sword hard before leaping. The move would bring her down right on top of him, knees first and the sword not far behind.

With reflexes that could only be described as catlike, Artemis rolled to one side and somersaulted back onto his feet. Uranus caught herself as she hit the ground and looked up, expecting an attack that she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop, but Artemis was just looking at her curiously.

“Where did you come up with that?” he asked.

“With what? You mean the pounce-and-stab bit?” Artemis nodded, and Uranus shrugged. “Dunno. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Well, it was _one_ thing to do,” Artemis replied. “Maybe not the perfect choice, but not a bad one. Ariel always did favor the ‘hit quick and hit hard’ approach.”

“Oh.” Uranus got up and brushed off her knees, then lunged at him. “So that was Ariel fighting, huh?”

“Right at that moment, yes.” Artemis sidestepped the attack, and they started exchanging blows. “That’s just how it is when Usagi tries to do something with the ginzuishou; Serenity slips a few suggestions in. I’ve seen it happen to Minako fairly often, too.”

“Well, if we’ve all got these backseat drivers to coach us along in a fight”—Uranus took a swing at his head, which Artemis ducked and countered with a stab at her stomach—“why all the big fuss and bother over training?”

“Because your past memories aren’t the most reliable sources of information in the world,” he replied, driving her back with a series of blurred blows. “You have to get into a situation that is extremely similar to something from _their_ life, and usually one that presents a serious threat to your own safety, before they’ll wake up. For Usagi, that’s pretty much every time she picks up the crystal”—he leapt back to escape a vicious upwards slash—“but the rest of you don’t get into that degree of trouble so often or with as much prior warning. Then too, Serenity’s quite a bit more active in Usagi than Ariel is in you or Ishtar is in Minako, so it doesn’t take as much to wake _her_ up as it does to get _their_ attention. And the end result...”

Artemis swerved around behind a fast slash and bodychecked Uranus, knocking her back into one of the trees. She had enough time to blink away some of the stars before the tip of his sword appeared and stopped right in front of her face.

“...is that you don’t get their help as often,” he finished. Artemis lowered his weapon and backed off. “What Luna and I have been trying to do with the Inner Senshi for all this time isn’t just to teach them how to fight, but to re-teach them everything they knew in the Silver Millennium so that their realities of combat and their memories of it will work together smoothly. Considering that each of them is different now from what they were then, that hasn’t been easy, but it’s harder with you and Neptune—and Saturn—because Luna and I don’t know exactly what you’ve taught yourselves over these last few years. _We’ve_ got to learn, and relearn, at the same time that we’re trying to teach, and that really slows things down.”

“And then there’s Pluto.”

“Yeah. And then there’s Pluto.” Artemis shook his head. “For the first time since the fall of Atlantis, all of the Senshi are training to work together as a team—and we’ve got two extra players to complicate matters.” He looked over to where ChibiMoon and Saturn—minus the Silence Glaive—were making faces and growling noises at each other in a prelude to actually going at it hand-to- hand. “Cut that out and get to it!” he yelled in a voice pitched at drill sergeant volume, startling both girls. “Why in blazes isn’t Luna on their case already?”

“That might have something to do with it.” Uranus pointed to where Luna—dressed now in a form-fitting one-piece suit of black—and Jupiter were throwing each other around like rag dolls. A little ways beyond that, Mars and Neptune were flinging fireballs and gouts of water back and forth as fast as they could draw in the energy, and Ami and Pluto stood off to one side, apparently on a brief break while Luna worked with Jupiter. Venus, having drawn this night’s watch on Usagi, was absent, and Mars’s four-bird escort was watching from three different places.

Artemis sighed. “This is one of the problems you tend to run into when you have two instructors and ten students.”

“You must have had fun trying to do this as cats.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Artemis looked at ChibiMoon and Saturn, shook his head again, and flipped the length of his sword up under his arm. “I’d better deal with that. Try practicing some of those forms I showed you last time.”

Uranus made a gesture with her sword which looked very difficult and very painful.

“Not in this life _or_ the last one,” Artemis replied with a dry chuckle as he moved away.

Grinning, Uranus put herself into the opening stance for a series of moves Artemis had referred to as ‘Eagle Swooping Over the Lake.’ She had to roll her eyes at the dramatic name and wonder—not for the first time, or the last—just who came up with this stuff.

She glanced up at the crows and wondered something else. Just before the first training session on Saturday, Luna had taken Saturn aside for a few moments and discussed something, talking with her hands as much as her voice. Saturn had nodded slowly at first, then more confidently, and then she had raised the Silence Glaive and put up a huge, translucent cousin of her normal Silent Wall, a barely-visible dome-shaped ripple surrounding the area behind Hikawa where the Inner Senshi had long since been accustomed to training.

As Luna had explained, the energy they would be gathering and unleashing in these training periods was the sort of thing that would attract immediate notice from Atlantean eyes, be they magical or technological in nature. Saturn’s shield would allow them to train without fear of being detected by the Atlanteans or by ordinary people.

Mars had been happy to hear that for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that her frequently foolish, lifelong-lecherous, and deeply spiritual grandfather had admitted to her a number of times in the past that he had gotten ’an odd feeling’ during the night, or that Yuuichirou had a habit of wandering around the grounds until well after dark in the pursuit of whatever chores Grandpa had set for him during the day. Luna assured her that Saturn’s barrier would keep them safely hidden, and keep Grandpa and Yuuichirou safely ignorant.

The thing Uranus couldn’t figure out was how the crows had known where they were. They hadn’t been anywhere in sight when the training began and Saturn put the shield up, and yet during a break in the first night of training—and again tonight, right in the middle of a fierce exchange of blows with Artemis— she’d looked up and spotted the four birds perched casually amongst the branches overhead, watching—mostly watching Mars.

Were the birds just following and finding Mars because of some potent master/pet bond? Or was the barrier, designed to fool human, magical, and mechanical senses, not effective against the different perceptions of animals?

“Better have a talk with Saturn about that,” Uranus said to herself. “If a couple of dumb birds can see through this shield, some equally dumb monsters might be able to as well.”

One of the crows—one of the original pair, and the smaller of the two at that; was that the one Mars called Phobos?—looked down and cawed in a tone that, to Uranus’ ears, was faintly derisive.

“Same to you, featherhead.”

# 

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes. It’s exactly the same as what happened Friday night and Saturday evening. Our instruments detect what appears to be a sudden surge of energy, but when we go back and look for it, we don’t find anything, not even a residual trace. It’s like whatever we’re picking up never even occurred.”

“Do you know _where_ whatever it is is ‘not happening?’” Security asked.

“No. The power spikes come too fast for our equipment to get a triangulation on the source. Even a general approximation hasn’t been possible so far.”

“But you’re sure it’s one of the Senshi?” Information pressed.

“We picked up the first of these... non-readings... at roughly the same time that eyewitness and personnel reports indicate the Senshi were confronting the two fire-creatures,” Sciences said. “Based on what little we know about their abilities, my guess would be that the one called ‘Saturn’ is responsible.”

“Would you care to explain that?”

“All our information suggests that the Senshi are employing paranormal powers,” Sciences replied, “or that they have technology crafted to give that impression. Each of them appears to be highly specialized in the use of a specific form of power, and we’ve been able to catalogue most of them. Jupiter uses electricity and an extremely impressive repertoire of martial arts techniques, Venus relies mostly on solid projectiles or beams of kinetic force, and Mars wields fire. Although,” Sciences said, sounding momentarily uncertain, “we do have a few reports that seem to indicate she has an additional ability which may be psychic in nature.”

There was a pause, and Sciences seemed to shake her head. “After that, we know that Mercury and Neptune both employ water—though Mercury seems to be strongly oriented towards ice and has repeatedly been seen using a small computer of some sort—and that Uranus attacks with focused blasts of wind, a sword, and fighting techniques at least as advanced as Jupiter’s. Moon—of whom there may or may not be more than one; we’re still checking into that—relies almost entirely on some very limited hand-to-hand ability and an assortment of weapons which seem to be several times stronger than most of her allies’ powers. Then there’s this so-called ‘Tuxedo Kamen’ who’s been sighted along with the Senshi; he doesn’t seem to possess any obviously paranormal abilities...”

“Except possibly his fashion sense,” Personnel said in a dreamy sort of voice. Sciences gave her colleague a long look before going on.

“...but he may actually be a better fighter than any of the Senshi in terms of close combat ability. There are some conflicting reports of three other Senshi with a collective ‘fashion sense’ that is rather... um...”—Sciences actually sounded flustered here—“unconventional... and there are some very old rumors of a ‘Sailor V’—yes,” she said, noticing a general shift around the table, “the same one which all the media circus is about. She may or may not be connected to Venus in some fashion, and she’s easily the most widely-traveled; she appeared here in Tokyo and then in London for several months about four years ago, but since she hasn’t made an appearance in well over three years, we don’t have anything particularly substantial except some incomplete reports from Interpol. Unless you want to start looking through manga for clues.”

“I think we can skip that part,” Media said lightly. “So what about the last two? You wouldn’t have left them this long unless you were going to make a point.”

“The point,” Sciences said, “is that we know next to nothing about the Senshi called Pluto and Saturn. Until very recently, Saturn almost never appeared in public, and Pluto was and remains even more reclusive; we don’t even have a _picture_ of her, let alone any idea what sort of combative abilities and tactics she uses. All we do know for certain is that on the few occasions when Saturn has been observed, she has demonstrated a level of power significantly higher than the rest of the Senshi.”

“When you say ‘significantly higher’,” Security said, “how much higher do you mean?”

“How long would it take one of your teams to disable a hostile?” Sciences countered. “What’s the best time any of them have logged in the simulations?”

“Three minutes twenty-seven seconds from the initial engagement,” Security said immediately. “Factor in the time needed to confirm the kill and secure the area, and it could get as high as five minutes.”

“Roughly the same amount of time as the Senshi have been observed to require,” Sciences said, nodding. “Saturn’s been known to eliminate hostiles in under five seconds—totally—and it doesn’t appear to matter if they’re operating solo or in groups. And yet she almost never engages them—she has in fact been visibly restrained by the other Senshi on more than one occasion, _prevented_ from acting.”

“That’s reasonable,” Security rumbled in his rough voice. “You don’t throw your biggest weapons at the small...” He stopped talking very suddenly.

“I missed something here,” Resources admitted.

“I believe the saying is ‘you don’t crack walnuts with a sledgehammer,’” Sciences said dryly. “But if Saturn is powerful enough to deal with threats so quickly and easily, and yet is so seldom used, ask yourself: how strong must Pluto be, if she appears in the field even more seldom than Saturn?”

Resources didn’t answer.

“It’s entirely possible,” Sciences admitted, “that Saturn and Pluto both have other tasks that they must attend to which prevent them from working with their allies except on rare occasions. It’s also possible that the Senshi don’t work entirely smoothly as a team. Mars and Moon in particular have displayed a great deal of tension between them at times, and Uranus and Neptune seem to prefer operating independently of the others. Even so, they do all work together when circumstances dictate—and given the level of power Saturn and Pluto apparently possess, these circumstances must be very extreme to force them to appear and act.”

“All of which,” Media said lightly, “is a polite way of saying that when Saturn and Pluto show up, all hell is about to break loose. Correct?”

“In so many words. But there’s something else to consider.”

“Oh?”

“Whether by accident of nature or deliberate design, the various powers the Senshi had demonstrated all tend to be in keeping with the assorted mythological and mystical values associated to their respective worlds. This is particularly true with the three better-known Senshi who are associated with the planets of the outer system: Jupiter was a thunder god; Uranus was a sky god; and Neptune was a sea god.”

“And the other two?”

“Saturn is the Romanization of ‘Chronos,’” Information said, “who was the Titan that fathered the Olympians and is associated with the power of Time. Pluto is the Roman version of ‘Hades,’ which was the Greek name for both the lord and land of the dead.”

“Why don’t I like the sound of that?” Personnel asked of no one in particular.

“If those two are in keeping with the precedents set by their allies,” Sciences said, “then Saturn should have some form of control over Time. If it’s true, that would easily explain why she appears so much stronger than the others, and why we seem unable to track her. Pluto, meanwhile, should have control over death. I don’t know how that might manifest itself, but I don’t have to remind all of you of the level of damage the other Senshi have shown themselves capable of causing. What happens if someone whose abilities or weapons are keyed specifically to neutralizing the energy of living beings joins them in a fight? In the middle of one of the largest and densest population centers on Earth?”

“The subject of ‘damage’ is one that has come up a number of times already,” Political said then. “All of our supporters have always been in agreement that the damage or destruction of a few buildings is far preferable to the loss of life, so—despite some grumbling from certain quarters—they’ve been content to look the other way where the Senshi were concerned. But with the disappearances that took place in last Friday’s incidents, that leniency has been seriously compromised.”

“They don’t want us to go after the Senshi, do they?”

“Not yet. But one more incident like that last one, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was the order.” Political looked around. “So make whatever preparations are necessary to get your departments ready for that eventuality.” A wry note entered his voice. “With the track record the Senshi have established so far, that hypothetical ‘next incident’ shouldn’t be too far away.”

# 

Yawning from this evening’s practice, Rei turned another page of weirdly-swirling symbols and tried to make some sense out of what she was seeing. This was becoming a nightly ritual for her, but so far, all it had yielded was sore eyes and a headache.

“Awp?”

Speaking of headaches...

A little black beak poked into her field of view, the head turned to look her in the eye. “Pretty Rei-di?”

“Hello, Rooky. Have you been a good boy today?”

“Rooky has been a good boy for the pretty Rei-di,” Rooky proclaimed in a proud voice. There was a caw of what sounded like disagreement from the perch over by the door, where Phobos and Deimos were sitting at ease; on the other side of the table, Thrax blinked and turned his head, but said nothing.

This was also becoming a part of her life.

The integration of the two time-displaced birds into her own personal flock had not gone particularly smoothly. Phobos and Deimos had always shown a tendency to be protective of Rei and attentive to her moods. They hovered—sometimes very literally—at the edge of her personal space and seldom intruded on it uninvited, and when she was feeling depressed or wanted a little peace and quiet, they fell silent and withdrew.

Rooky, on the other hand, was loud, obnoxious, a shameless flatterer—at least towards Rei—and a prolific thief. In less than a week, he had assembled a private stash of trinkets up in one of the many nooks of the shrine, and it had already grown to an impressive size. Ofudas and other nick-nacks from around the shrine made up most of it, but there were also a few ‘pretties’—basically anything shiny and sparkly—ranging from a bottlecap and a bit of stained glass to a small silver earring that Rooky was immensely proud of. Rei had even cut off a bit of her hair and tied it up in a ribbon for him; Rooky had been absolutely delighted with the gift.

For all those reasons and likely a few others, Phobos and Deimos had taken exception to Rooky right from the get-go. They watched him suspiciously wherever he went. They chased him away from their favorite perches. And they seemed determined not to leave Rei alone with him for a minute.

Thrax received a certain degree of distrust from the pair as well. Under other circumstances, Rei suspected her feathered friends would not have had a problem with the stately raven—he might be as large as both of them put together, but he was quiet, intelligent, and altogether inoffensive—but since he had arrived with Rooky, some of the distrust Phobos and Deimos had for the hyperactive smaller bird was automatically transferred over to his ‘friend.’

Thrax’s manner suggested he wasn’t particularly offended, and that—if situations were reversed—he would have felt very much the same about anyone who showed up with Rooky as a traveling companion.

It was getting warmer, but it was still cold, and since Phobos and Deimos refused to share the warm spots around the shrine with Rooky, Rei had been forced to assemble an indoor perch for the small bird so he wouldn’t freeze at night. Of course, this solution immediately caused another problem, since Phobos and Deimos would not allow Rooky to be alone with Rei, and raised a most uncharacteristic fuss if she tried to shoo them away. So she’d needed to put together another, larger perch to hold the pair—and then, just to be fair, she’d constructed a third one for Thrax, who had watched the entire proceedings with an unmistakable air of wry amusement.

And life went on. Her grandfather and Yuuichirou had both been visibly startled when she came home from the sleepover at Michiru’s with one scrawny crow perched on her shoulder and one majestic raven drifting silently along behind her, but they asked no questions. Almost no questions. Very few questions, none of which she had trouble answering. Rei hoped to keep it this way, and her question about ‘being a good boy’ was how she checked up on that. With a little bit of coaxing and a lot of direct threats—to withhold his food, to take away his pretties, to (and this seemed to be the one that had turned the trick) never speak to him again—she had managed to extract a promise from Rooky that he would not speak when other people were around unless she first told him that it was okay. So far, he seemed to be honoring the pledge. At least, neither her grandfather nor Yuuichirou had asked her yet how Rooky knew how to talk.

*Then again,* Rei thought, *they might have heard him and just not understood. Grandpa’s English is terrible, and I’ve never heard Yuuichirou speak a word of it since he came here.*

“Why is the pretty Rei-di looking at the glowing worms? Are the glowing worms good to eat? If they are good to eat, why does the pretty Rei-di not eat them? If they are bad to eat, why does the pretty Rei-di keep looking at them?”

Rei sighed and lightly scratched the back of Rooky’s head with one fingernail. The downside of that promise was that Rooky was always bursting to overflowing at night with questions to ask her or tales to tell her of his adventures during the day.

“Did Merlin tell you about letters and reading, Rooky?”

“Old fool! Old fool! Old fool talked too much! Awp!”

That translated to a ‘yes,’ so she continued. “I keep looking through this Book because some of the words—the ‘glowing worms’—will tell me something I want to know, but only if I can find the right ones. If I can find the words ’Caduceus’ or ‘Mercury’ or ‘Nereid’ in here somewhere, it might tell me how to help Ami. Do you understand?”

“Cawp! Rooky understands! Pretty Rei-di digs for tasty glowing worms! Rooky will help!” And before she could stop him, Rooky pecked at the left-hand page.

Back in Merlin’s cottage, Rooky had pecked at the Garnet Orb and at the pearls in Usagi/Serenity’s hair, and both times he had earned a zap for his impertinent greed. The Book took a different approach to the matter: it swallowed him.

Rei watched in astonishment as Rooky’s form stretched, blurred, and flowed from a mass in three-dimensional space to a two-dimensional image on a page, a brilliantly-drawn relief of a small, disheveled, loudly squawking crow surrounded by flowing lines of luminous text. With motion more smoothly lifelike than any animated sequence she’d ever seen, the picture-Rooky turned, took wing, and flew further _into_ the background of the page, rapidly dwindling in size until he was a blot, and then a speck, and then a mote, and then... gone.

Rei had her communicator out in a flash. “Usagi? Answer me! Wake up, you moon-faced baka!”

No answer. Rei switched tactics. “ChibiUsa? Setsuna? One of you, please answer!”

“Rei-chan?” ChibiUsa. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to Luna. Now! It’s an emergency!”

“I’m here, Rei. What’s...”

“Luna, Rooky’s inside the Book.”

Absolute silence was the initial response, and then there came a faint, “Say that again?”

“I was looking through the Book, and Rooky and the others were in here with me. Rooky asked why I was reading, I explained it to him, he said he’d help me, and then he pecked the Book and it ABSORBED him like water into a sponge! I could see him moving around on one of the pages, and then he flew into the background and disappeared!”

“He’s _inside_ the... how did... no, never mind. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Rei, whatever you do, don’t touch the Book.”

“I’m not Usagi, Luna.”

“I heard that!” a sleepy-sounding voice protested, just as the line was disconnected.

# 

Jupiter came to a halt on a rooftop about a block away from her apartment, looked around quickly and then stepped off the edge. There was a curious sensation of slowing down as she fell, and when she landed—some three seconds and five stories later—there was nowhere near as much force in it as there should have been. She looked around again, reassuring herself that no-one else was around, and then set Ami down.

“You don’t have to carry me, you know,” Ami said a bit shortly, as Jupiter vanished in a scattering of electrical sparks and was replaced by Makoto. “Even if Haruka and Michiru didn’t have enough room in the car, I still have enough money to pay for bus fare for both of us.”

“And we would be getting home half an hour from now instead of five minutes from now,” Makoto replied, yawning. “I need my sleep.”

Ami glanced at a billboard clock. “It’s only eight-thirty.”

“You weren’t getting thrown into trees by Luna. _Or_ shooting thunderbolt after thunderbolt after thunderbolt against Pluto—damn it, does that woman _ever_ get tired? I swea...” Makoto yawned prodigiously. “Whew. Sorry.”

“You’re going straight to bed, then?”

“Uh-huh.” Makoto smiled sleepily at her. “So if you want to call Ryo-kun for a few hours of sweet talk, the phone lines will be open.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ami replied primly, raising the collar of her coat to hide the blush.

“Oh, _really_? Then let me jog your memory.” Makoto took a breath and set her face into the sort of expression which suggested she was about to play back a scene from memory, and Ami’s face turned scarlet.

“You LISTENED?” she blurted in horrified outrage, before Makoto had a chance to say anything.

Makoto raised an eyebrow at her. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t listen in—and if the blush you’ve got going is any indication, I’m starting to regret that.”

“Makoto!”

“Hey, a girl’s got to get her kicks somehow.”

“I’ve got your ‘kicks’ right here!” Ami suited her words with a furious swing of her right leg which would have permanently disabled any shinbone or kneecap it came into contact with. Even half-asleep, Makoto dodged fairly easily.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she taunted, grinning. Then she looked at Ami closely. “But seriously, _is_ everything going okay with you two? I’ll admit that I’ve been a little more out of it than usual the last few days...”

Ami stifled a reply; the entire school knew by now that Makoto had been ‘a little out of it’ over the past week. Most of them assumed it was one of her typical obsessions over a guy running its course, and chalked up the greater-than-normal degree of spacing out to one of two possibilities; either the guy was _really_ something, or the fact that her last crush had been over two months ago had left Makoto with some sort of ‘daydream quota’ that needed catching up on.

“...but still, I noticed that you two haven’t been talking much this week. Are you having trouble with the mindbond? Is he?”

“We’re not having trouble—nothing we can’t handle, at least,” Ami said. “It’s really not as bad as we thought it would be. That first night, everything was all jumbled up and confused, and it was hard for us to tell each other’s thoughts apart; I’d start thinking one thing and he’d finish it, or he’d stub his toe and I’d feel it, or we’d just look at each other and... well...”

“I remember. I’m glad to hear that part of it at least has calmed down; I’ve got enough trouble fending off other people’s emotions without having to worry about a couple of mentally unstable sex maniacs running around.”

“We weren’t THAT bad,” Ami protested, blushing. “It was just... we just...” She shook her head and skipped the subject. “My point is, we were both worried that we’d be stuck like that, especially when Luna said that the bond would just get stronger over time. The first couple of days, though, it actually felt like it was getting weaker.”

“Oh?”

“It wasn’t, really. It was just settling in. Everything that got stirred up the first night went back to where it was supposed to be, and most of the bond went with it. We could practically read each other with a look right at first, but now it’s all either of us can do to pick out a simple emotion or that fact that the other of us is _that_ way.” Ami pointed off in direction that seemed totally random, but there was nothing at all random about her manner. “This way, it’s a lot easier to deal with, and if it gets stronger in the future, well... we’ll at least be better-prepared than we were the first night. For now, as long as I remember not to let my mind wander when I touch him, we’re okay.” She blushed again. “I forgot about that at lunch on Tuesday, and... um... we sort of got lost in each other’s thoughts for a while. And we lost track of time.”

“Haruna-sensei _did_ seem to be trying to hide a smile when she herded you into class,” Makoto chuckled. “So why are you not talking?”

“We don’t really need to. Even if we can’t pick up each other’s thoughts yet, when we’re together and it’s quiet, we just don’t need to say anything.” Ami made a sound of disappointment. “I’m not explaining this very well.”

Makoto smiled and put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I think you explained it just fine, Ami-chan. Come on. Let’s get in out of the cold; I’ll hit the sack, and you can call Ryo-kun.”

Ami smiled back and followed Makoto up the stairs, but as soon as the taller girl’s back was turned, Ami’s smile slipped into a worried frown.

Her three Senshi classmates knew that Makoto’s unusual degree of distraction was a result of her struggle to function normally with the sense of other people’s feelings pressing in on her awareness from all sides at once. They and the other Senshi also knew—from Ami’s careful and carefully-concealed observations—that it was wearing Makoto down; she was going to bed earlier and sleeping later than she previously had. Only by about half an hour or so, but that much of a change in just under a week didn’t bode well for Makoto’s future. Sasanna had warned them to expect something like it; dryads could go for weeks at a time without sleeping, but as they came into contact with emotional, intelligent minds, they tired more quickly and required greater levels of rest.

The solution was obvious: get out of range. With spring break coming up in a little more than a week, they had the opportunity, and the girls had picked out a number of possible sites where Makoto could go to escape the crowded city for a little while. There were just a few problems:

First, they had to broach the subject with her. Makoto appeared confident that she could handle the situation, and none of her friends wanted it to sound like they were questioning her abilities, or ganging up on her to get out of town because they were afraid of her;

Second, they had to figure out which of their ‘ideal trips’ was the best for Makoto. Should they send her off by herself for a couple of weeks, or should one or two—or more—of them go with her? Would an isolated wilderness retreat like the one she’d attended the last couple of summers be appropriate, or would a comfortable health resort be sufficient? And which one? So many questions, though fortunately the issue of paying for it had been solved when Michiru agreed—or rather, insisted—on footing the bill. Of course, she was now caught in the middle of a massive back-and-forth argument involving most of the Senshi on the subject of just _who_ was going _where_, and _how_—Minako, Hotaru, and ChibiUsa all seemed to be in favor of something along the lines of the entire extended Senshi group taking a first-class round trip to Hawaii for three weeks, while Rei and Haruka were more in favor of sending Makoto off by herself, although for very different reasons—but then, Michiru REALLY ought to have known better;

The third difficulty was whether or not Makoto could hold out for even another week without the empathic strain becoming too much for her to handle or too obvious to hide. Even Luna and Artemis weren’t sure exactly when—or if—her day-to-day weariness would stop increasing, and Haruna had taken Ami aside just yesterday to ask if Makoto was feeling well or not;

And the fourth problem was the worry that even three weeks in the back woods without another thinking soul for miles might not be peaceful and remote enough to allow Makoto to rest—or to get enough control over her ability so that coming home wouldn’t start the whole process anew.

A distant sense of concern from Ryo came into Ami’s mind then—him worrying about her in response to her worrying about Makoto—and in spite of everything, she smiled. Makoto had noticed the phone calls, but what she hadn’t noticed was that each call had been started when either Ami or Ryo got one of these stronger emotion-flashes through the mindbond.

Sure enough, as Makoto turned the key, they could hear the phone begin to ring inside. The second Makoto had the door open, Ami pushed past her, kicking off her shoes and racing to the wall-mounted kitchen phone. She was even giggling as she picked up the receiver.

“Moshimoshi?”

“Hello, Ami.”

Ami blinked. It was her mother. “Oh. Hello.”

There was a pause. “Try to restrain your excitement, dear,” Mrs. Mizuno said in a dry voice. “After all, it’s only been about a week since we talked last.”

That was true; Ami and Makoto had gotten back to the apartment Saturday afternoon to find a message from Ami’s mother on the voicemail. Not that having her mother call had been unwelcome, it was just sort of unexpected. Ami had returned the call, and they’d ended up talking for an hour or so, her mother asking questions about her life in general, and Ami answering them, a bit surprised at this sudden interest in her affairs. Ami knew that her mother loved her very much, but she also knew that her mother was the sort of person who tended to focus on one thing at a time, to the exclusion of just about everything else. When she had been younger—and particularly during the period after her parents had separated—Ami herself had been the focus of that attention a great number of times, and she had many warm memories of learning to read and being read to, of short walks and long talks, of falling asleep curled up next to her mother. It was only later, as she’d gotten older and more capable of functioning on her own, that the main focus of her mother’s attention had shifted back to her work.

Now, for whatever reason, it seemed her mother’s thoughts had shifted once more and returned to Ami. She had said as much herself during that first call, admitting with a certain amount of difficulty that she missed being able to sit down to a meal or a quiet conversation with her daughter—that she was, in effect, missing Ami. Mrs. Mizuno had concluded the hour-long chat by saying she’d likely call again in a few days, but Ami had only half-expected it to happen.

Ami blushed. “I’m sorry, Mother. I was just expecting a call from Ry— someone else when I picked up.”

“’Ry-someone else,’ hmmm? Maybe I should call back later.”

“Oh, no,” Ami said quickly, “it’s all right. I see him at school every day, and I’ve called him several times already this week besides that, so...” Ami winced. She hadn’t meant to say that.

“Since when have you been such a phone fanatic, dear?”

“Uh... well, since never. It just sort of... happened. Probably for the same reason _you_ decided to call me last Friday night.”

There was a chuckle. “Yes, probably. Well, if it has to do with a prevailing weather pattern or a change in our horoscopes, it’ll pass.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I’ll prescribe something. So, your exams are next week, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Don’t worry; I’m studying.”

“Like you’d ever forget that,” Makoto observed as she moved past, heading for her room.

“What was that?”

“Mako-chan says ‘hi,’” Ami lied, sticking out her tongue.

“Oh.” There was a brief pause. “That reminds me. Were you girls planning to head up to Yuriko’s beach house at some point during the break?”

“Maybe later in the month, when it’s warmed up enough to go swimming—why? Is there something wrong? Did Aunt Yuriko call you about a problem?”

“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong. I was just... wondering... Ami, if you do decide to go, would you mind terribly if your poor old mother tagged along?”

A warm sort of feeling welled up in Ami at that. “Kaachan... I’d like that. We haven’t gone to the beach together since...” She had to stop and actually think about the last time the two of them had gone to the beach—or anywhere else, for that matter—together on vacation.

“...since quite a while ago?” her mother suggested.

“Since quite a while ago,” Ami agreed. *I think I was still using water wings at the time.* “We’ve all been discussing plans for the break over the last couple of days, actually. I’ll let the other girls know they can expect you to join us; they won’t mind.”

“If they do...” Mrs. Mizuno started to say.

“...then they can stay in town,” Ami said firmly, “and we’ll go by ourselves.” She was surprised when her voice slipped into a little-girl cadence it hadn’t used for years. “I’ve missed you, too, Rikou-mama. It’d be nice to be under the same roof again, even if it’s just for a few days.”

A startled silence reigned on the other end. “You haven’t called me that since you were about seven or eight,” her mother said slowly. “Ami, is... is everything okay with you?”

“I’m fine,” Ami said. “Really, I am. It’s just been that sort of week.” *The sort of week that would have gone easier if I’d had you around to talk to,* she added silently. Ami wasn’t surprised when her mother’s next words seemed to pick that thought out of her head; they’d always thought a great deal alike.

“Ami, listen, if you need to talk to me—I mean, face-to-face—just say so. I can always make time for you. This Saturday. We could... I don’t know... have dinner... go shopping... whatever it is mothers and their teenaged daughters are supposed to do when they’re not at work or at school.”

“We’d have to take Usagi-chan and _her_ mother along for a consult on that one,” Ami said, her own smile matching the wry note that had entered her mother’s voice, “just to make sure we get it right.”

“Hmmm. I guess dinner is out, then.”

They both laughed. “Thanks,” Ami said simply, “but I’m okay.” Then she giggled, a sound very different from the laugh she’d just shared with her mother. “As a matter of fact, I already have plans.”

“I’ve _never_ heard you make a sound like that, dear. What sort of mischief will you girls be up to?”

“Oh, it’s not with them. I... have...”—Ami paused and drew it out for several long seconds, during which her mother began impatiently drumming her fingers along the phone—“...a date.”

“A date.” Even though her mother couldn’t see her, Ami nodded enthusiastically. “A _dinner_ date... this Saturday night... with Ryo?”

“Yes!” She actually squealed. There was a beep. “Hold on, kaachan; I’ve got another call.” Ami put her mother on hold and switched to the other line with an ease Usagi or Minako couldn’t have bettered. *When did I get so good at this?* she wondered, at the same time as she said, “Moshimoshi?”

“Ami?”

“Ryo! I was just...” Ami frowned; emotional bonding aside, there had been a definite sort of smiling sound in his voice. “What are you so happy about?”

“That’s what I was calling to ask _you,_” Ryo said, his voice a mix of poorly-hidden exuberance and totally unrestrained frustration. “I got the feeling you were depressed about five minutes ago, and I was thinking about calling you, but then it went away all of a sudden—and then this all bubbly goofiness got started, and I _can’t_ get it to stop! Whatever it is you’re doing, cut it out! If I don’t get this dumb grin off my face soon, my mother’s going to think I was poking around in Dad’s liquor cabinet!”

“I’m just talking to my mother, Ryo-kun,” Ami said innocently. “I don’t know why _that_ would make you feel silly. Now if you’ll excuse me, she’s on hold on the other line. We’re probably going to chat for another hour or so, and by then it’ll be time for me to get to bed, so I’ll talk to you at school tomorrow.”

“Ami!”

“’bye!” She hit the button and smothered an explosive burst of giggles. *That was an EVIL thing to do,* Ami scolded herself, as she took her mother off hold. “I’m back.”

# 

“That was quick.”

“Setsuna lent a hand,” Luna said, sliding the door to Rei’s room shut. “She transformed and put that March of Time on me, and it lasted until I was just coming up the stairs.”

“Sounds like a very handy ability.”

“Yes, it is. The only problem is that it speeds up _every_ part of the body, so my stomach burned through what little I was able to eat before you called, and now I’m getting hungry again.” Luna gave the three birds perched about the room a speculative sort of look—and Phobos and Deimos returned a flat stare which said they’d peck her eyes out if she tried what that look suggested she was thinking—and then she put them out of her mind as she came over to the low table and looked down at the Book. “It hasn’t done anything since he went in?”

“Nothing different than it usually does.”

“And you haven’t seen Rooky since he disappeared?”

Rei shook her head. “Luna, does the Book _usually_ swallow people and things it finds offensive?”

“Not that _I_ ever heard. And believe me, if it had happened, I would have heard about it somewhere. So we have to assume this has as much to do with Rooky as it does with the Book.”

“What do you mean?”

“Merlin told us he found Rooky in an area of wild magic,” Luna reminded her. “That’s how he got the ability to speak—but maybe that’s not _all_ he got. Has he done anything unusual since we brought him back with us?”

“Except for talking, no. He steals a lot of things, especially shiny ones, but so do all sorts of ordinary birds. He doesn’t get along with Phobos and Deimos—or rather, they don’t get along with him—but that’s hardly what I’d call unusual; they don’t trust _anybody_ until they’ve had a chance to get to know them.” She noticed the look her two little friends were still giving Luna and smiled. “And sometimes not even then.”

Luna nodded absently and folded her arms, one hand cupping her chin as she considered the Book. Finally she sighed and shook her head. “I think we need to get Ami to take a look at this with her computer. Until we know for sure what happened, we can’t risk...”

“Pretty Rei-diiii!”

All five beings in the room flinched backwards as Rooky came shooting straight out of the Book, a black-beaked bullet of frantic feathers.

“Pretty Rei-di! Rooky is back! Rooky finds the glowing worms for the pretty Rei-diii!”

“Rooky, come down here!”

The small crow fluttered down to the table and hunched in on itself. “Pretty Rei-di’s mad at Rooky? Rooky’s sorry, pretty Rei-di. Forgive Rooky, pretty Rei-di? Pretty please, pretty Rei-di?”

“You scared me,” Rei said, softening her tone. “I was worried you might be hurt.”

“Rooky’s sorry, pretty Rei-di. But look!” He tugged lightly at the sleeve of her robe, pulling towards the open Book. “Look at what Rooky finds for the pretty Rei-di! Rooky finds the glowing worms!”

“Rei,” Luna cautioned her.

“I won’t touch it, I...” Rei looked at the pages and blinked. The words had changed again—no surprise there—but the very first word in the very first line of the new text stood out plain as day:

Caduceus.

“How did...”

“Rooky finds the glowing worms for the pretty Rei-di!” Rooky announced triumphantly. “Awp!”

Luna looked at Rooky, at Rei, and down at the nonsensical mess on the open pages. “Rei, what is he going on about?”

“Luna, there’s paper and pencils on the desk over there. Get me some. Hurry. I have to write this down before it fades away.”

“Write _what_ down?”

Rei looked up. “I don’t know how, but I think Rooky just found the Caduceus for us.”

“For the pretty Rei-di!” Rooky croaked proudly.

 

# 

 

_(The scene is the Aino family’s kitchen, late at night. Someone or something is walking slowly through the shadows towards the fridge when it—he, actually— hits a toe on the leg of a chair and starts hopping up and down, clutching the injured appendage and hissing the sort of words that people who stub their toes on things while wandering around in the darkness tend to use.)_

**Artemis**   _(in a pained voice)_ : Forgot that was there...  _(he starts limping towards the fridge)_  Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ou-ahhhh!!

_(Artemis has just opened the fridge door to find a large camera sitting inside, the little red light atop the lens indicating that it’s ‘On’)_

**Artemis** : Don’t DO that!

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : I suppose that since everybody else is either asleep after that training session or wrestling with ‘weighty matters’, that means it’s MY turn to do the moral...

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis**   _(sighing)_ : That’s what I figured. Okay, let me think... well, I guess I could say something about Ami’s chat with her mother reflecting the importance of having family...

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : ...or, I could talk about how great it is that I finally have hands again! Huh? How about that one?

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : Look, I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to talk about it, and that’s final!

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis**   _(starting to sound a little desperate)_ : No! It’s a personal thing, and it’s been dealt with, and that’s all there is to it! It’s in the past, so let’s leave it there!

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : NO! I’ll talk about Ami and her mother, or I’ll talk about how little misunderstandings early on can lead to big trouble later, like how some of the Directors are starting to get the wrong impression from the girls always being on-hand when buildings get blown up, or...

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis**   _(panicking)_ : NO! NO! A thousand times, NO!

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : OKAY! I give UP! I’ll talk! Just stop looking at me like that!

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : There was a bit of a complication earlier on because Mina-chan was having some... er... difficulty adjusting... to the fact that I can be human—and ridiculously good-looking—whenever I need to be.

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : Okay, okay! And I’ll admit I was a little spooked by the fact that she was... is... well, let’s just say that it’s not everyday you wake up and look at someone who’s just about the closest friend you’ve ever had and suddenly realize that not only is she smart and funny and just plain fun, but she’s gorgeous on the same sort of scale that started the whole Trojan War, and you’ve always thought that, only now it really MEANS something to you, and...

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : Yeah, sorry. I got lost there for a minute. The point is...

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis**   _(frowning)_ : Hang on, I’ve almost got it... the point is...

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : Ah, damn it. I’m not sure WHAT the point is! Well... no... maybe it’s something like a warning that, when you tell somebody you love them, both of you had better be clear on just what SORT of love it is you’re talking about, because otherwise, you can get into all KINDS of trouble down the road... satisfied?

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : Good.  _(reaches for the tuna, then frowns)_  You’re not expecting me to carry you out of here, are you?

**Camera** : .....

**Artemis** : Now just a minute! I am NOT a member of the stage crew! This wasn’t in my contract!

_(The screen fades out with Artemis arguing with the camera, gesturing wildly with the can of tuna he’s holding in one hand.)_

23/12/00 (Revised, 15/08/02)

Merry X-mas! Happy Hannukah! Joyeux Noel!

Just in time, too. Whew!

This is MOSTLY one of those ‘filler’ episodes that answers questions and helps set the stage for later action, but I’d like to think that my exploration of Minako’s and Artemis’ little problem counts for SOMETHING on the dramatic tension scale.

Up next:   
-A little off-road trip;   
-Exam time for the girls, and spring break on the far side of that;   
-And somewhere in between, Ami and Ryo are going to have that date, come hell or high water! (Or both.)

Should be fun; hope to see you then.


	18. A Few Bright Moments In Some Dark Places

# 

“You’ve found it?!”

“Not exactly,” Luna said. She was using Rei’s communicator to inform the other Senshi of the discovery Rei had made—or which had been made for her—and Ami, understandably, was more than a little excited.

“What we’ve found is a description of one of the Nereid cavern-cities,” Luna explained. “The opening paragraph calls it ‘the Place of the Sighing Mists Rising Through the Crystal Chambers, Where the Hand of Mercury Rests.’”

Minako started sputtering, and from the sounds of things, Hotaru and ChibiUsa weren’t far behind her.

“It doesn’t _actually_ say that, does it?” Usagi asked, her own voice full of imminent laughter.

“Yes, Usagi, it actually does. It’s part of the name of the city.”

“That whole thing?”

“Yes. You have to keep in mind that the Nereids were telepathic. Their natural form of communication was mind-to-mind, exchanging memories rather than words, and when they described something, they threw in everything they knew about it. That sort of all-inclusiveness can’t really be expressed in a single word, so it comes across as several, usually in a semi-poetic form. Rei’s been complaining because the Book seems to use a similar sort of high-density information storage, and it makes translation difficult.”

“Did _you_ want to do this?” Rei asked, not looking up from the pages she was reading and the sheets upon which she was copying down the weird symbols.

“Anyway, ‘the Hand of Mercury’ is a fairly good analogy for the Caduceus, so unless Rei finds something to the contrary further on, I think we can assume that it’s in whatever’s left of that city—or that it was. If it _is_ there, the Mercury Computer should be able to pick it out fairly easily, but that brings us back to the question of just how we’re going to get up to Mercury at all.”

“We’ve got an idea on that end,” Michiru sighed. “Or rather, Hotaru does. I checked my Mirror a few times this week about how we might get to Mercury, and it kept returning an image of the planet Saturn. Hotaru started thinking, and she believes she has the solution. I’m not very comfortable with it, myself, but...”

“Oh?” Luna said cautiously.

“There’s a trick Pandora used to use to travel,” Hotaru replied. “It’s a little slower than teleporting, but it’s easier—sort of.” She didn’t stop to explain what she meant by ‘sort of.’ “I’d do all the work myself, and I could get all of us to Mercury in about three minutes.”

“I think I know what she’s talking about,” Artemis said in a weak voice. “Hotaru, does this ‘trick’ of yours involve the Silence Glaive in any way?”

“It does, actually.”

Artemis sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“Artemis?” Luna and Michiru said together. “What’s she talking about?” Luna continued. “Will it work?”

“Is it _safe_?” Michiru demanded.

“Oh, it’ll work. And it’s completely safe. But I’m staying here, and I think Usagi-chan should, too. Pandora took me on a couple of trips with her little technique, and the damned thing always made me nauseous for the next twenty-four hours.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Usagi put in, “_I’d_ sort of like to see Mercury.”

“It’s your funeral.”

“Artemis,” Luna said flatly, “quit trying to be funny and explain what this ‘trick’ involves. I’m not going to go along with something just on your word that...”

“Hang on, Luna,” Hotaru interrupted. “I can show you.” There followed the sound of her transforming, and then Saturn’s older voice asked, “You’re in Rei- chan’s room, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll come in just inside the door. Could you make sure there’s nothing in the way? I’m not completely certain what might happen if I hit something on either end of this.”

“On either end of what?”

“You’ll see. Is it clear?”

“Hang on.” Luna shooed Phobos and Deimos off of their perch and moved it back a short distance while kicking the throw rug out of the way. “That’s about as clear as I can get it. Or did you want me to open the door?”

“No, that’s okay. Stand back. I don’t want to hurt you by accident.” There was a pause, followed by the sound of space being torn.

It was not like the quick ripping of paper or fabric by scissors or by hands, nor like the deep cracking of stone during an earthquake. The sound was more like hearing someone rake their fingernails across a blackboard, but from a distance, and with distinctly metallic overtones that echoed afterwards. The four crows let out a collective squawk and hopped or fluttered away from the area of the door.

Rei looked up and Luna took a few steps backwards as the shining tip of the Silence Glaive appeared in mid-air just inside the door, somewhat above the level of Luna’s head, and then descended down. It left a hair-thin line of intense violet-black light in its wake, a line that quickly widened in the middle, as if two invisible hands had worked their fingers into the gap and were pulling reality itself apart, and when the six-foot high breach was also at least three feet wide along most of its length, Saturn stepped through. Wide- eyed, Luna leaned to one side to look past, and saw Haruka and Michiru staring back at her from the living room Saturn had just left.

“Yikes,” Haruka breathed.

“Yeah,” Artemis agreed, “that’s one way of putting it. Gives you a headache just looking at it, doesn’t it?”

“What is it?” Ami asked. “What did she do?”

“She... there’s...” Michiru was actually at a loss for words.

“We’re standing in our living room and looking into Rei’s room,” Haruka said. “Does that help?”

“You’re doing _what_?”

“Pandora called them dimension doors,” Artemis said. “They use the warping power of Saturn to link two separate points in our universe through another dimension which doesn’t have the same rules of space and motion. Teleporting moves you from place to place without crossing the space in between; you cease to exist at one point and start to exist somewhere else. This way, you still have to cross space, but the door lets you do it in a world where it’s just as easy to cross a couple of light-years as it is to cross a room.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Minako’s voice objected.

“Hey,” Artemis replied, “don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just repeating what Pandora told me. I really haven’t got the slightest idea how it works.”

“Oh, _that’s_ reassuring.”

While Minako and Artemis were arguing, Haruka came up to the opening and very slowly stuck her hand through, moving it back and forth through the air within the purple and black glow.

“Don’t be a baby,” Saturn said, reaching out and taking Haruka’s hand, pulling her through before she had a chance to protest. “See? It’s perfectly safe to go through.”

“What happens if you touch the edge?” Rei asked.

“That depends,” Artemis replied. “The edges will cut through just about anything that happens to get in the way when they’re opening or shutting, but once the door’s open all the way, it’s pretty harmless. Unless somebody happens to hit it with a large burst of concentrated energy, of course.”

“Boom?” ChibiUsa guessed.

“Boom,” Artemis agreed. “And on both ends of the door. It only happened to Pandora once that I ever knew about, but we spent a week rebuilding her quarters afterwards, so once was plenty.”

Haruka, Luna, and Rei all looked at Saturn. “I got the message,” she replied, saluting smartly. “No doors anywhere near a fight.”

“Well,” Usagi said, “it sounds to me like we’ve got everything covered. Do we go tomorrow night, then?”

“We wait until Rei has a chance to finish translating what the Book said,” Luna replied in a voice that would suffer no argument. “If Ami’s computer can’t find the Caduceus for some reason, we’ll need to look for it the old-fashioned way, and I do _not_ want to spend the next month digging around a ruined Nereid city if there’s a chance it isn’t necessary.”

“How much does she have left to do?” Ami asked.

“It’ll only take a couple of nights,” Rei said confidently. “I’ll go as fast as I can, Ami-chan, I promise.” She looked over at Haruka and Saturn. “Now, will you two kindly get out of my room and close that hole before Yuuichirou or my grandfather come along and see it?”

That made Saturn blink. “You know, I’m not even sure what this thing looks like from the other side.” She leaned around behind it, her face disappearing behind the image of Michiru and the living room. “Ah, nuts.”

“What? What do you see?”

“Just the three of you and a slight haze at the edge,” Saturn replied, coming back around to the front with a disappointed frown on her face. “I was hoping for... I don’t know, something a little more... weird.”

“You poor, poor girl.” Haruka smiled. “Come on. It’s past your bedtime anyway.” Saturn stuck out her tongue and then went back through the door. Haruka followed her and then looked back. “Did you want us to take Luna and the birds off your hands for a while, Rei?”

“Huh? Why would...”

“Well, I was just thinking that if there wasn’t anybody else around to see, it’d be a lot easier for Yuuichirou to sneak in here unnoticed...”

Haruka dodged to one side, grinning, as a pillow came flying through the door after her. Saturn poked her out of the way with the blunt end of the Silence Glaive and politely levitated the pillow back to Rei in a small field of black and violet energy before closing her strange portal. The edges which had been pulled apart now flowed back together in an almost perfect reversal of the original process, leaving a straight line of intense violet light, both ends of it contracting towards the middle and canceling out in a brief starburst and a faint, high-pitched chiming.

It was quiet for a moment, and then Usagi asked, “Luna? Are you still there?”

“Of course she is!” Rei snapped furiously.

“Just making sure.”

# 

“Saturday?” Ryo asked.

“It’s looking that way,” Ami admitted a bit sadly. It was lunchtime on Friday, and they were sitting together in a small, out-of-the-way corner of the cafeteria.

“Usagi said that based on the amount of text Rei-chan was able to translate last night, Luna thinks it’ll all be finished by tomorrow afternoon at the latest, and unless there’s bad news somewhere in that, there’s really no reason to put off going...” Her hands were resting on the table, and Ami was looking down at them as she spoke, but then she looked up at Ryo curiously.

“I’m a little upset,” Ryo admitted, answering the question he could see— or feel—in her eyes, “but only a little. It’s not like this was our _only_ chance to go out on a date—we’ve got a whole month coming up for that—and if the Caduceus really can help you get yourself back to normal, then the sooner you have it, the better.” He chuckled. “Besides, I think a trip to another planet ought to be interesting.”

“Oh?” Ami raised one eyebrow and smiled faintly. “And just where did you get the idea that _you_ were going?”

Ryo met her smile with one of his own and tapped the side of his head, but then his smile fell away. “Ami, listen. I _am_ going with you tomorrow, and so are Saturn, Luna, Mars, and ChibiMoon, but at some point, you’re going to get separated from the rest of us. I’m sure of that because I saw all of us walking through the same kind of caves I saw _you_ in when we were at the Time Gate. I don’t know _how_ it’ll happen, but in case it’s because something bad happens, I’m telling you now not to worry about me or the others. I’ve had visions of all of them—and myself—that haven’t happened yet, so I know we’ll get off Mercury okay. And so will you. So don’t worry. Okay?”

Ami nodded. “Okay. I won’t worry about the others. But I _will_ worry about you,” she added, taking his hand. “Just a little bit.”

“Fair enough. Would you like me to have a complete nervous breakdown when you disappear?”

Her head tilted to one side, Ami regarded the ceiling and pretended to think it over. “No,” she said at last, “that’s okay. You can just be a little worried, too.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They both laughed. “So,” Ryo said, “we’ll reschedule the dinner date, then? Say, the week after exams? Tentatively, of course.”

“Of course.” Ami rolled her eyes. “We must keep our calendars flexible; after all, there could be an alien invasion that week.”

“Or a demonic uprising,” Ryo agreed.

“Or a mutant insurrection,” Ami added.

Ryo shook his head and chuckled wearily. “’May you live in interesting times.’ They could have been thinking of us.”

# 

The girl paced back and forth in her room, thinking. Then she looked up at the floating image of Archon. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Now that the Senshi have ripped up your network of trained mold, you want _me_ to carry out these little energy-raids for you?”

“Not quite.” Archon called up a map of Tokyo. “Our watcher-unit was originally charged with the task of locating specific concentrations of elemental energy which we require for present and future operations. When it became evident that a hostile presence was opposing our activities, the unit’s program was altered so that it would establish traps in which to observe, analyze, and possibly defeat our enemy.” The wizard’s mouth quirked at one corner. “That plan has failed.”

“Obviously.” Such a flippant response would have earned most people a painful taste of magic, but due to the curiously personal bond between teacher and student, Archon afforded his apprentice considerable leniency in such matters.

“We are still not entirely certain how all our creations in this city were so quickly and totally eliminated, but since they _were_, we are producing the necessary replacements in Atlantis itself. What I will require you to do is mark specific target areas so that we may precisely teleport the mana nexi and their defensive systems into position. I will inform you as each new nexus nears completion, and you will have approximately three hours from that point to have the designated target prepared for the transport.” He gestured, and a small black object appeared in front of the girl. It looked like a pager.

The girl looked up at her teacher with a wry smile. “Do I even dare ask where you got the idea for this?” she asked, taking the device.

“You are not the only one who has been learning these past weeks,” Archon replied. Honesty was something else he showed the girl, although this was more because he was finding more and more that he genuinely liked her—for who she was, and also for what she represented. As the first true student of old magic in the new world, her progress had been remarkable, and where there was one with talent such as this, Archon knew there would be others.

All in all, that boded well for the Atlantean age to come. The Lords would rule, of course, under the guidance of the as-yet uncrowned Emperor, but they were, after all, only a few hundred against a planet of billions. Once the Rise was achieved, they would still need allies to help advance and maintain their rule—and, just as important, if not quite as urgent, they would need heirs. Very few of the Lords or Ladies were married, and none had any children as yet.

With his black eyes revealing nothing of his thoughts, Archon considered his student and concluded that, with a few more months of work to hone her knowledge of both magic and Atlantean culture, she would impress any number of Lords quite satisfactorily when he finally presented her before the court, regardless of what they thought of her low-born heritage. It was even possible that she might catch the interest of the Crown Prince.

Lilith’s reaction to _that_ would be worth seeing.

Archon smiled faintly as he pictured the moment, but he banished the smile and the thought behind it. It lay in the uncertain future, and there was still a great deal of work to be done.

“I find the basic concept of these devices to be quite efficient,” Archon said, “so I included a number of functions which I felt would maintain that ideal. At its simplest, this ‘pager’ will alert you to when I have an assignment for you, display the details of your current task in holographic form, and allow you to contact me in the same manner as the spells you are currently using for that purpose. There is a scrying crystal in the front which will allow you to obtain limited information on objects, entities, and locations you encounter, and should you find that you require the services of one of the creatures whose summoning rituals I have had you study, the device can create a suitable conjuring circle for you in any location. It can also teleport you to a pre- selected destination within approximately ten of your kilometers. To set such a location, you must first go there and allow the device to scan the area; it can store the necessary data for a dozen or so locations.”

“Does it need to be recharged or anything like that?”

“No. The power is derived from a continuous feed off of the planetary ley lines; it will never run out, but be careful not to let it into harm’s way. The casing is fairly sturdy and has spells of self-repair woven into it besides, but none of the device’s functions will be accessible to you when it is damaged and repairing itself.”

“And it even has a built-in clock,” the girl observed dryly. Pocketing the pager, she looked up at her teacher. “Tell me, Archon; have you by any chance ever heard of something called a Swiss Army Knife?”

# 

There were a few complaints about who Ryo had claimed would be making the trip to Mercury. Minako and Usagi were both seriously put out about not being allowed to go, and Makoto expressed some dissatisfaction as well, although in her case, being upset had more to do with some side-effects of her empathic talent than any desire to go traipsing around the solar system.

Being around someone left Makoto with a sort of emotional imprint after the person had gone, and the longer she was near them, the stronger the imprint. She and Ami had been in relatively close proximity for more than two weeks straight, seldom separated by more than a few meters or a few hours, and Makoto had gotten used to having the sense of the other girl around. She had gotten _so_ used to it, in fact, that her behavior had changed in small, considerate ways that made living with her less of an uphill battle for Ami, and therefore less of an emotional strain on Makoto herself. For one thing, kitchen appliances almost never got turned on before seven-thirty anymore, and for another, Makoto had stopped going out of her way to make time for Ami and Ryo to be alone; now she actually _waited_ for Ami to indicate whether or not she wanted that level of privacy.

They were still working on Makoto’s potentially disastrous little combination of casual near-nudity and early morning obliviousness, but since Ami now knew well in advance of seeing him just how close Ryo was to her current location at any given moment, she wasn’t quite so worried about him dropping by unannounced.

In any event, Makoto had adjusted to being around Ami. Now Ami was going to be a very, very long way away—much too distant for even the strongest emotion to reach—for what was likely to be the better part of an entire evening at the very least, and moreover, she was going after something which would either take away a powerful source of her personal stock of anxiety or, by failing to be there, increase it. And whether it was to cheer Ami on to success or to comfort her over failure, Makoto wasn’t going to be there.

All of which was basically saying that Makoto was having a hard time even _thinking_ about saying goodbye, even just for a little while. That gave the other girls something else to think about in their ongoing vacation-planning. It also added another dimension to why Makoto had suppressed her empathic ability in the first place; if she was having to struggle to get over a friend leaving for a few hours after a mere two weeks of close contact, the fallout of losing her parents—two very close and powerful relationships carried out on a daily basis for twelve years—must have been almost unthinkable. Small wonder, then, that her mind had turned off its extrasensory reception rather than risk facing that sort of shock and pain again.

Still, as Michiru pointed out during another conference communication on Friday evening, it made sense for the Senshi to split up. Their fighting strength would be cut in half for the duration of this interplanetary trek, especially since Saturn was—of necessity—leading the little expedition. With their single most powerful weapon temporarily out of the picture, it only made sense for the strongest and most experienced Senshi to stay behind and keep an eye on Usagi and the city.

Phrased like that, there was almost no doubt in anybody’s mind as to which of the remaining Senshi Michiru would put into what categories—almost. As Luna had said, Neptune’s hand-to-hand skill left a bit to be desired, and in the drills at their two training sessions, Jupiter—her black-belt prowess enhanced by Senshi strength and speed—had knocked her around rather easily; Venus had been a somewhat closer match, but the simple truth was that, powers aside, Neptune wasn’t a very good fighter. Minako said that Michiru had the same sort of problem Ami did when it came to fighting: all thought and no action.

Of course, whenever Minako said anything like this, Ami would inevitably remind her—after correcting yet another Minako misquote—that it had been Mercury, alone and unassisted and with nothing more than the Shabon Spray, who had once out-thought and out-fought Tuxedo Kamen. The problem with _that_ was that the conversation swiftly degenerated into an endless round of which of them was really better at fighting than the others. And somehow the argument always managed to grow to include every other aspect of their lives, so that by the end of it egos were bruising each other in head-on collisions over the most ridiculous things. Minako and Makoto had stopped talking to each other for a week one time because of a disagreement over which of them was going to get a driver’s license first.

Compared to _that_, the fireworks that Ryo touched off by telling Ami who was going on the trip to Mercury were really fairly minor.

Around five-thirty that Saturday, the would-be travelers began to gather at Michiru’s. Rei had informed her grandfather that she would be out with her friends until late, Makoto had agreed to tell Ami’s mother—if she called again— that Ami was out on that date with “Ry-someone,” and ChibiUsa had somehow managed to convince Ikuko to let her go to “another sleepover at Hotaru-chan’s,” which came as news to Michiru and Haruka. As far as Ryo’s parents were concerned, he was out on a date—he mumbled something to Ami about his mother wanting to meet her—and Luna didn’t have to explain her comings and goings to anyone.

The other Senshi didn’t come, which was due mainly to something else that Michiru had pointed out. Jupiter and Saturn had wiped out most—if not all—of the green substance their still-undeclared enemy had been using to set their traps and carry out their schemes, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t now or wouldn’t in the future be some other form of surveillance put over the city, so they had to avoid behaving too differently from their normal patterns.

Except for ChibiUsa and Hotaru, the Inner and Outer Senshi tended to run into each other mostly by accident in their day-to-day lives, especially since Haruka and Michiru were no longer attending high school. Michiru wasn’t advocating that they shun each other, only that they try not to do anything that might make people ask why they were all spending so much time together all of a sudden; the number of things ten girls ranging in age from fourteen to twenty- four could have in common were only so numerous, after all. Then she had gotten cryptic on them.

“It’s a feeling I’ve been having a lot recently, like there are eyes watching us. It’s been building for a few weeks, since we started dealing with these units and mana nexi, but it didn’t go away after last Friday night.”

“Did you try checking the Mirror?” Luna had asked.

“Yes,” had been Michiru’s reply. “I got a lot of subterranean imagery from it; caves, subway stations, city maintenance tunnels, building basements and sub-basements and parking garages. A lot of dark rooms and closed doors. It’s showed me computers more than once, and there were a couple of images of soldiers and politicians—symbolic images, not of specific people. The scenes were all pretty dark, and they made less sense than usual, if that’s possible.”

Even Luna and Artemis hadn’t been sure what to make of that; when used as a scrying device, the Aqua Mirror was generally as vague as it was powerful.

When they stopped to think about it—as they had at that point—the Senshi realized that they had quite a few means of discerning the future at their disposal. Leaving aside the elemental sensitivities and latent danger sense they all had to one degree or another, between the scrying powers of the Aqua Mirror and the Garnet Orb, the extrasensory abilities possessed by Michiru, Rei, Ryo, and Setsuna, and the all-knowing, all-telling nature of the Book of Ages, they really should have had an overabundance of information rather than the opposite.

And yet, every one of their resources had some kind of limitation on it. Michiru’s and Rei’s dreams came to them at random, and Rei’s fire-readings were often every bit as vague as the images Michiru received from her Mirror; by contrast, Ryo’s visions were frighteningly precise, and again quite unpredictable. Setsuna’s ability to perceive personal life-events was controllable, but at once too specific and too generalized to be of much help— she saw a billion possibilities, all of them for just one person, and each of them every bit as likely to happen as the others. The Garnet Orb was controllable and understandable, but it was so rigidly focused on the duty of Pluto to guard the fabric of Time that it wasn’t likely to show them anything short of the appearance of a time-traveler. The Book was incomprehensible on top of unpredictable, and then there was ChibiUsa, who—as Minako put it—probably knew all kinds of juicy gossip, but just wasn’t allowed to tell them.

Since this discussion had been over their communicators, only Usagi, Setsuna, and Luna had been on hand to see ChibiUsa squirm uncomfortably at that remark. Setsuna gave ChibiUsa’s hand a gentle squeeze while Luna hopped up onto her lap and purred, both of them letting her know that they weren’t in any way upset with her. Usagi had demanded right then and there that Minako apologize for her “selfish and insensitive mischoice of words”—which she did, and which set the other Senshi to reassuring ChibiUsa that they weren’t taking her silence on this matter personally.

The fact that she really _didn’t_ know what was going to happen only made ChibiUsa that much more uncomfortable, but she just couldn’t bring herself to admit it out loud, not even to Hotaru. As long as the Senshi “knew” that they all wound up in Crystal Tokyo a few hundred years hence, there was a distinct lack of personal concern over this latest threat. This wasn’t to suggest that the Senshi didn’t take it seriously; that would have been foolish. They were worried about their friends and families and the world in general, but about their own lives? Not particularly. _Ryo_ had seen Crystal Tokyo in visions; _everything_ he saw _always_ happened. More than that, Setsuna had tested her own precognitive powers, and when she looked far enough ahead, every one of their lives reached Crystal Tokyo, no matter how many times the paths of probability divided along the way.

So. If they were all going to survive, then that was that. There was no fear of being killed or derailing the utopian future to get in their way this time. They weren’t about to start taking dumb risks—they had all ‘died’ more than enough times in the past, thank you very much—but there was a difference in all of them from what ChibiUsa had seen before. No more confused reactions to things they didn’t understand, no more nearly hopeless struggles against incalculable odds, no infighting about whether or not the next move was the right move to make. It was a little bit like the deep calm that always came over Usagi when she turned into Serenity, or the strange non-mood that had been one of Pluto’s defining characteristics—the quiet, unshakable resolve of someone who has looked at destiny in all its wonderful colors and terrible darknesses, and accepted it.

ChibiUsa couldn’t bear the thought of taking that away from them. She accepted Minako’s apology, accepted all the reassurances, and kept her knowledge of Time’s potential shifting—and the danger it posed for her and Pluto—to herself.

As she stepped out of Haruka’s car that afternoon and got her sleepover gear out of the back seat, ChibiUsa said a silent prayer, asking whatever benevolent spirits or deities might be listening to give her enough strength to keep that secret. Like her mother, ChibiUsa liked to talk, to share things with her friends, and the Senshi were more than her friends; they were her family. Their future selves had raised her every bit as much as her parents, and they meant no less to her than anyone she was related to by blood, but their younger selves, so much closer to her own age—especially now—were infinitely more approachable than the grown-up women she knew. And even if these younger girls didn’t know her quite as well as the future Senshi, they knew Usagi, which was close enough as to make almost no difference.

Keeping secrets from them—especially Setsuna and Hotaru—was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Not telling Usagi was easy; the nearest that ChibiUsa could figure, since they _were_ so much alike, telling Usagi would have been like telling herself, and since she already knew, there was no reason to tell herself again.

And the headache produced by that line of logic was simply not to be believed.

Yes, not telling Usagi—and for similar reasons, Minako—had been easy, but ChibiUsa had caught herself on the verge of telling Hotaru everything no less than four times in just this one week. She had only almost told Setsuna twice, and none of the others more than once, if that.

“Something wrong, kid?”

“No,” ChibiUsa said immediately, smiling at Haruka. “I asked Setsuna to take a quick look into my immediate future before you picked me up. As far as she could tell, I’m not going to get disintegrated or anything like that during this trip.”

“Good to know.”

It was so much easier not telling Haruka and Michiru than it was the others. ChibiUsa’s earliest memories didn’t include these two—or Hotaru—in any way; it was only later, after her second trip back, that she had heard her mother and friends speak of the pair—and Hotaru—only then that she had met them. In her time, Uranus and Neptune were away a great deal, sometimes overseeing the ongoing efforts to recolonize the moons of the outer system, and at other times making months-long patrols of interplanetary space and the deeper void which lay beyond Pluto—just in case. Once or twice a year, they’d go off by themselves and disappear for a while, and Saturn—who usually accompanied them on patrol—would stay at the palace and play with the children of the royal court.

That was another thing it had been hard to keep back from Hotaru. Everyone in _this_ era had at some point or other been afraid of Saturn, but in nine hundred years, when every child in the city would already flock to any one of the Senshi on sight, Saturn could hardly go anywhere without picking up a small army in the process. They adored her, and not one of them was afraid of her. Knowing how much it would mean to Hotaru to discover that on her own, ChibiUsa had been able to keep silent.

She just wished there was a similar answer for keeping her other secret.

Michiru, Luna, and Rei were sitting in the living room, drinking tea and talking quietly. A large backpack sat on the floor near Rei, holding the Book— which she wasn’t about to leave behind for a second—and the translated ‘map’, which they were going to need. There was no sign of Hotaru, Ami, or Ryo, and ChibiUsa thought that was a bit odd; Ami was _never_ late for _anything_ if she could possibly help it.

“Hotaru had a good idea,” Michiru said when ChibiUsa commented on the absence of the others. “She said that if I wanted to keep a low profile, it would make sense for her to pick up everyone else other than you with her little traveling trick; that way, nobody could see them coming in or leaving.”

“I came on my own,” Luna added, “but Hotaru arranged to meet Rei not too far from Hikawa, and she’s getting Ami and Ryo from Makoto’s right now.”

“Which was the other reason for it,” Rei concluded. “She wants to make absolutely sure that traveling this way won’t hurt Ami, and it’s better to test that with a short hop to a safe place than a really long trip to another planet.”

“Is that why...” ChibiUsa asked, indicating the direction of the foyer with her thumb; there was a space out there which she was sure was quite a bit emptier than it had been during her last visit.

“Loading and unloading only,” Haruka confirmed. “She was worried about slicing up the furniture.”

“Can it do that?”

By way of an answer, Haruka nodded and left the room, returning a few moments later with a piece of smooth white stone. “Check it out,” she said, handing it over.

ChibiUsa did that. Most of the edges were slightly rounded, but one narrow face of the approximately rectangular stone had extremely sharp corners and a too-flat surface, as if someone had taken a laser cutter from her time and flashed the end right off.

“Hotaru was testing out her range for an hour or so last night,” Haruka said. “That’s a piece of one of the ruins from the Moon which was on the edge of her second attempt. I guess she aimed a little low. The edges on that one side are pretty sharp, too, so watch your fingers.”

“And she can reach Mercury?” Luna asked, as ChibiUsa carefully handed the stone back to Haruka.

“She opened up three separate doors into the caves to make sure she had it down, and it wasn’t tiring her out at all that I could see. She _considered_ opening a door to one of the outer planets or their moons, just to see how far she could go, but she’s not completely sure of her ability to stop things from going through the door, and we didn’t really feel like having an example of Saturn’s atmosphere suddenly filling up the house, so...” Haruka shrugged.

There was a screeching noise from the foyer.

“That’ll be them now,” Michiru murmured.

# 

If there were a real estate company that dealt in whole planets, Mercury would be the sort of property that no showman in his or her right mind would want to try and sell.

For starters, it’s not a very big planet. Of the nine planets, only Pluto is smaller, and there are several moons in orbit around Jupiter and Saturn which are big enough to give both Mercury and Pluto a serious run for their money in the diameter department. And just like Pluto, Mercury has some real location problems which make it highly unattractive to potential buyers. Most species don’t much enjoy a seven-hundred odd degree range in surface temperature, or being blasted day in and day out by the thermonuclear ejecta of a healthy star— especially not on a world where a ‘day’ outlasts the planetary ‘year.’ The complete lack of atmosphere and surface moisture are self-evident and barely worth mentioning, and even the presence of some interesting mineral elements doesn’t do nearly enough for the market value, since the most interesting of those—mercury-silver or just plain mercury—once available in staggering quantities, is now just not to be had.

Suffice to say, unless the clients are in the market for a nuclear waste dump or have the resources to do some major remodeling, Mercury just isn’t worth the trouble.

Unless of course, you have clients like the Nereids, who thrive on electromagnetic energy, have a physiology which doesn’t give a hoot about nuclear radiation, and have no qualms about living underground when the intensity of the local temperature and UV start getting into the range where even metallic skin and sunblock with an SPF of five hundred thousand won’t do you any good.

Sadly, there haven’t been any Nereids around for the last ten centuries or so. At one time a very populous species on Earth, they were forced by the short- sightedness of humans to leave for new homes. As Luna had explained to the Senshi, some went to Jupiter, others to Neptune, a very small number to Pluto, and most moved to Mercury. None of them were there anymore, but Mercury was the only one of the planets that had witnessed a mass extinction. The other three worlds saw evolution.

Over the course of generations, Jupiter’s intense electromagnetic field gradually accelerated the thought processes of its Nereid population to the point where they were technically insane by any other species’ reckoning. At the same time, they were absorbing various atmospheric gasses with the vital water which formed their bodies, and the different properties of those substances caused other changes—most noticeably, a change in color from generally blue to generally red. After about five hundred years, energy-beings were born who simply could not be considered Nereids anymore; they were crazed, violent pockets of red lightning, an infrequent but very real threat to the Jovian tribes, who came to know them as the Furies. Those of their predecessors still able to function with some degree of normalcy fled to Mercury, leaving their lost children to roam the mini-system around Jupiter.

Neptune, on the other hand, exposed Nereids to greater amounts of elemental water than anything to be found on Earth, and their bodies grew steadily larger until they achieved staggering size. Some grew too large for their normal electrical energies to sustain them, and they grew slow-witted and slow-moving, eventually sinking into the clouds and vanishing forever. Others, though, developed semisolid bodies whose higher concentrations of various magnetic minerals could better retain electricity, and these creatures became known as the Cetaci, the ice leviathans. They were to the Nereids what Earth’s whales were to dolphins, but they had lost even the Nereids’ low tolerances for heat, and could no longer venture into the orbits of the inner planets. So instead they roamed the outer system, feeding on the electrical energies of the four gas giants.

Those Nereids who tried to live on Pluto suffered terribly at first from the extreme negativity of the tiny ice-world’s energy, but they survived, and somewhere along the line, they ceased to be creatures of mist and became instead beings of solid ice, the Chrysmat. Few in number, they retained the great longevity and mental powers of their ancestors, traits which were somehow enhanced as they fed upon the strange forces of Pluto, the combination of death- energy and Time-energy which also made the planet a haven for the wraithlike creatures known as the Shi’i. But like the Cetaci, the evolution of the Chrysmat left them unable to tolerate heat, and indeed they could not long survive away from the uniquely twisted nature of their homeworld.

And so despite their common ancestry, none of these creatures could venture to Mercury after its destruction. Thus, when the Senshi of Mercury was killed in the fall of the Moon Kingdom, the Nereids became extinct, leaving their home an empty tomb, a planet-sized monument to a strange and beautiful form of life which was gone forever.

# 

As he followed Ami through the dimension door, Ryo was relieved to note that Saturn’s new method of travel, even when stretched out to an interplanetary distance, did not appear to have any adverse effects on Ami. He had also been pleased to discover that traveling through the door did not agitate whatever nerve endings in his nose objected so violently to teleportation.

“Welcome to Mercury,” Saturn said, bowing and smiling like an airline attendant greeting disembarking passengers.

The cavern Saturn had chosen as their landing zone was pretty large; she and Mars had done something between them so that everything within about twenty meters of the Silence Glaive was illuminated by a soft, reddish-grey light, but there were stalactites overhead which disappeared into unbroken darkness, and Ryo could only make out one wall—and that just barely. Considering that they were something like a kilometer or more underground on a world that didn’t have any sort of atmosphere, the air was pretty good; it had a faintly dusty smell and was a bit damp and cool, but he and Ami were both wearing winter clothing, Luna had created a thick fur robe for herself upon stepping through the door, and it would take quite a bit of cold to really bother the other three Senshi.

On the other side of the door, Haruka and Michiru were now standing by themselves in the foyer. “You’re sure you don’t want one of us to come along?” Haruka asked.

Luna shook her head. “There’s nothing here to fight.” She sighed, her breath hanging in the air as mist for several seconds, and then turned around. “There’s too much interference this near to the sun for your communicators to penetrate, so we’ll stop and have Saturn reopen a door every half an hour or so to talk to you.”

“Okay then. Happy hunting. And Ami... you know... good luck.”

Ami smiled. “Thank you, Haruka.”

“Yeah, well...” Haruka shrugged and waved vaguely as she turned and walked away; Michiru shook her head and nodded silently to all of them before following, and then Saturn let the door wink shut.

“Let’s get started.” Mars looked around. “Which way?”

“Doesn’t all that stuff you got out of the Book say which way we should go?” ChibiMoon asked, sounding worried.

“Get me to the city it described and I’ll give you the guided tour,” Mars replied, hefting her backpack, “but I’m as lost out in these tunnels as you are. Any ideas, Saturn? Luna?”

“This way.” Ami pointed at and started walking towards the near wall, where a circular tunnel perhaps four meters across was just visible.

“Luna,” Mars said softly, “she doesn’t have her computer out.”

“Shhh.” Luna watched Ami for a moment, taking note of her slow, purposeful pace, and then nodded. “Let’s follow her for now. All of you, keep your voices down, and try not to do anything that might distract her, but keep your eyes and ears open. We’re the only things alive down here, but there’s plenty of cliffs and holes to worry about. I’ll stay close to Ami and make sure she doesn’t fall.” Luna looked back at Ami and added, “I have to say, though, that I really don’t think she’s in any danger just now.”

Under different circumstances, Ryo might have stopped to argue with Luna about her definition of ‘danger’—he could _feel_ the weird shifting between human thought and almost-Nereid thought that was going on inside Ami’s head—but Ami was nearly to the edge of the lighted area, and they all had to hurry to catch up before she wandered off into the darkness.

They walked along in silence for about twenty minutes, Ami in the lead and Luna just an arm’s reach behind her. ChibiMoon, Saturn, and her glowing Glaive were next, while Ryo and Mars brought up the rear, Ryo biting his lower lip in frustrated concern as he watched Ami, and Mars pausing every so often to look back the way they had come, or off into side tunnels that they passed. It was all well and good for Luna to say that there wasn’t anything alive down here besides the six of them, but all these dark, empty caves made Mars nervous.

And there were a _lot_ of caves. They passed cracks too narrow for even Luna’s smallest form to fit through, and gaping holes that could have swallowed a bus. There were arches and spires and columns of stone, stalactites and stalagmites in all shapes and sizes, all of them in pale, eerie colors. At one point, the path Ami was following divided into three possible directions, one of which was a narrow outcropping of stone which arched out into an enormous cavern whose floor they couldn’t see. To everyone’s relief, Ami took one of the other routes, leading them instead down a kind of broad ravine which made several long turns on its way down the wall, curving back on itself and sloping gently to the bottom.

There were a lot of crystals, too. Some were embedded in the walls while others stuck up from the floor, and there were a few that seemed to have fallen from the ceiling. Many of these crystals were merely the shattered remains of larger pieces, and even those that were reasonably intact were still badly cracked. All of them flickered in the pale grey light, but about halfway down that winding ramp they saw a perfectly spherical greenish-blue crystal set into the wall. It couldn’t possibly have been a natural formation, and it didn’t show any signs of the damage that the others did.

Ami walked right up to the sphere and placed her hand over it, and it responded, giving off a soft glow and a musical chime. A short distance further on, another crystal sphere chimed and began to glow, and then another beyond that, then another, and another...

A dotted line of blue-green light appeared in the darkness below, zigzagging across the vast cavern faster than a person could run. Somewhere out in the darkness, the line came to an end as a ring of the blue-green lights appeared, and then there came a much louder series of chimes as some very large lights began to shine from around and inside the circle.

“Uh, Luna...”

“It’s okay,” Luna reassured them. “We don’t have anything to worry about.” She turned to Ami and gently shook her shoulder. “Ami? Wake up, Ami. Come on.”

“Hmmm? What?” Ami looked up from the crystal globe, blinking. “Luna? Wh- where are we? What happened? I remember... I remember walking, and...”

“It’s okay, Ami. Calm down. Mercury was just showing us where to go.” Luna took a moment to check Ami’s eyes again, and nodded at the absence of the blue light. “It’s over now. With a little luck, that’ll be the last time.”

“What is that?” ChibiMoon asked, pointing out to the lights.

“The Nereids had cities all around the planet, but not all of the caves interconnected with each other, and those that did hadn’t exactly been arranged for convenience. You could spend hours wandering around just to reach a place that was a few kilometers away and one level down from where you started, so the Nereids built a planet-wide system of teleporters.”

Mars blinked. “It’s a subway station?”

“More or less. And like any subway station, it’s got maps. I don’t really trust it to be safe for teleporting after all this time, but we can at least find out where we are and where we want to be.” She traced the path of light with her eyes. “Let’s go.”

It only took a couple of minutes for them to navigate the path, and as they got closer, they could see that the ‘station’ consisted of several dozen crystal and marble constructs. There were narrow, meter-tall pyramids with more of the glowing crystal orbs balanced at their peaks, and there were three-meter tall obelisks with lines of silvery writing all over each face. A forest of finger-thin, translucent crystal rods held up the wide, blue-white, and slightly cracked dome which covered the entire place, except for a spot off to one side where a section had been cut out to allow a tall cone to rise up.

All in all, it looked more like a pile of giant tinkertoys and building blocks than part of the ruins of an extinct nonhuman civilization.

After first cautioning the others to stay clear of the crystal columns that filled the back end of the ‘station’, Luna went directly to a group of five diamond-shaped blocks that had been arranged in a semicircle near the general center. The columns she had pointed out were arranged in groups of three, and there were—or had been—ten such triads in all; two were entirely shattered, and all but three had at least one of their component pillars snapped off short or shot through with cracks. One of the ‘intact’ groups wasn’t glowing despite its apparent good condition, even though most of the damaged columns were, albeit feebly in some cases.

There weren’t any obvious seats, so ChibiMoon and Saturn sat down on an obelisk which had fallen over, Mars leaned against one of the intact ones, and Ami and Ryo settled themselves on the fourth level of a pile of long rectangular blocks that looked like a very wide staircase but wasn’t going anywhere.

“Interesting architecture,” Ryo noted.

“Luna said they liked geometry,” Ami replied, “but this wasn’t what I’d pictured at all. I’m almost scared to ask what one of the cities must look like. Any ideas, Saturn?”

“I didn’t find any cities when I was testing the door last night. Sorry. Oh, that reminds me.” She got up from the toppled obelisk. “Time to check in.”

Luna looked back for a moment as Saturn made the space-warping cut with the Silence Glaive, but then returned to her examination of the display.

“Hello?” Saturn called. “Anyone home?”

“No,” Haruka called back. She came in from the direction of the kitchen and blinked when she saw the ‘geometry’ scattered around on the other side of the door. “What the...”

“Neat, huh?”

“That’s... one word for it.” Haruka squinted at a crystal crescent that was rising up from a block of marble—the thing looked remarkably like the Space Sword at this angle, although it was about three meters from tip to tip and probably weighed a couple of tons—and then shook her head. “All goes well, I take it?”

“We’re getting directions from an old subway station.” Saturn smiled at the confused look she got with that line, then glanced around. “Where’s Michiru?”

“She decided to get in the tub about five minutes ago.”

“Ah. So all’s quiet, then.”

“Pretty much.” Haruka’s smile was crooked. “And now that we’ve said that, there’s probably going to be an explosion somewhere downtown as soon as you close that thing.”

“Probably,” Saturn agreed. “Let me know how it goes.” And she shut the dimension door.

# 

“Another one?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s what, the sixth time in the last two hours?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And we still haven’t got any idea where it’s coming from?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Stop talking like that.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

The Director of Sciences gave her subordinate a flat look and then headed back to her office. Although she didn’t show it, she had a powerful headache just now from trying to think up some way to track down this non-energy that kept not showing up on their scans, and being “yes, ma’am”-ed and “no, ma’am”-ed was only adding irritation on top of frustration.

Back in her office, she sat in silence for a time and then dialed a number on her phone.

“I hear you’ve been having a busy night,” the Information Director’s voice greeted her.

“Busy but unproductive.” Sciences didn’t elaborate on that. “I was wondering if there have been any developments on our pet project.”

“The young lady has apparently been shanghaied by two of her friends for an evening at the movies,” Information replied. “The man I have following her is waiting outside.”

“He didn’t go in?”

Information coughed. “It’s one of those movies teenaged girls always go for and drag their boyfriends along to see. A lone man in his late-twenties would have stood out rather unavoidably.”

Sciences sighed. “And the research into her predictions?”

“One of them came true last week.”

“Oh?”

# 

Makoto looked up from her tea when the buzzer went off at the door. With half of the Senshi off to Mercury and Usagi, Minako, and Setsuna out to a movie, she had no idea who it could be, unless Artemis or Haruka and Michiru had decided to...

*No,* she thought as her empathic sense picked up an unfamiliar presence, *it’s not one of them.* She looked out through the eyehole and saw a woman about her own height, with short black hair and dark brown eyes. She had to be well into her thirties, and Makoto had no idea who she was. Frowning, she opened the door a little. “Can I help you?”

She wasn’t sure why the woman gave a start. “Yes. It’s Makoto, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Makoto said carefully. “I’m sorry, but have we met?”

The woman smiled faintly. “We have, but I’m not surprised you don’t remember. We only met that one time, and... does this help?” Her eyebrows took a decidedly downward slant, and her smile became a thin, stern-lipped line.

The image clicked. *Setsuna’s nurse.*

“I see you remember. Could I... could I come in for a moment? I’d like to talk to you about something. It’ll only take a minute.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Makoto said evenly. *How did she know where I live?* “We didn’t exactly get off to a good start, and I’m not really in the mood for uninvited guests. Please, go away.” She started to close the door.

“She was right, you know.”

Makoto stopped. “Who was?”

“Your friend, Setsuna. About... well, about everything she said about me. I do have a little girl. She’ll be eleven this May 2nd. I had myself convinced that your friend was just guessing, or maybe she knew something about us from before that came back to her, but... but last week...” She fell silent and held up her hand, a diamond ring winking on her finger. “February 9th, at 4:09:48 _exactly._ There was a clock on the wall behind him, and I could see it, and I couldn’t... I couldn’t believe it. If it had been anybody else asking, I would have thought it was being staged... and I almost said no anyway, just because... but she was right.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because... because if she was right about me, then I knew she had to be right about... about the rest of it... and I had to tell you that I’m sorry for the way I acted, and what I said. I know... a little of what it’s like to lose someone you love.” She thumbed another ring, a plain gold band that was quite a bit older than the diamond engagement ring. “I know nobody likes to be reminded of losses like that, even in a well-intentioned way, and even if I didn’t know until later... but that’s no excuse. I was doing my best to be rude, and I hurt you in the process. I’m sorry.” She bowed. “That’s... that’s pretty much it. I’ll get off of your doorstep now.” She bowed again and started to walk away.

“Wait.” Makoto wasn’t sure at first if the woman heard her or not, but she stopped and turned around. “How did you find me?”

“Oh.” She blushed. “After last Wednesday, I knew I had to talk to Setsuna and apologize to her, so I spoke to Doctor Miko and got the address where she’s been staying, but it took me until tonight to get up the guts to go... and she was out somewhere when I finally did get there, so I ended up talking to Tsukino Ikuko for a while. She wanted to know how I knew Setsuna, of course, and why I was looking for her, and when I told her... all of this just sort of came out. She invited me to stay until Setsuna got back, but I asked her if she knew where you lived, because I had to speak to you as well... and here I am,” she finished, gesturing around with her arms.

Makoto looked at her in silence for a while. Not once in any of that had she gotten the feeling the woman was being anything less than completely honest. Of course, considering what she’d said, it seemed that Ikuko might know about Setsuna’s ability to see Time now, but even this news couldn’t make Makoto muster the energy for more than a brief, wry hope for Usagi to be _really_ enjoying that movie.

“It wasn’t easy to say that, was it?” Makoto finally said.

The woman shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”

Makoto nodded slowly. “I... I just made some tea, if you’d like to stay a while.”

That earned a look of faint amusement. “I thought you said you weren’t in the mood for uninvited guests.”

“I’m not.” She opened the door all the way and bowed. “We weren’t properly introduced the last time. Kino Makoto.”

“Kima,” the woman said, bowing again. “Fuucho Kima.” She glanced at her hand and smiled again. “At least for a little while longer.”

Makoto smiled back. “Would you like to come in?”

“I... yes. Thank you.”

# 

As before, Saturn was the first one to step through the dimension door. She raised the Glaive and looked around at another station which was—apart from the crystal columns on one side and the blue-white dome overhead—almost entirely different from the first. The designer of this place appeared to have been a fan of dodecahedrons and other three-dimensional shapes with so many sides that they almost appeared round; there were pillars and piles of them all over. Saturn shook her head and stepped aside so the others could come through, closed the door after them, turned around...

...and let out a scream.

She hadn’t seen it before, but there was a dead body laying among the forest of glowing columns. The others jumped when they heard her and then again when they saw the body themselves.

“Gomen,” Saturn apologized, blushing.

“Don’t worry about it,” ChibiMoon said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Ami’s face was blank as she looked at the body. It hadn’t been reduced to bones; the flesh was desiccated but otherwise still very much intact, and the same could be said for the clothing. The person—it was too withered to tell from the shape if it had been a man or a woman, and what was left of the colorless hair was only about as long as her own hairstyle, short enough to have suited either—had been wearing a blue robe of some kind, and there were dull flashes of tarnished silver and gold here and there.

“Luna? Is... _was_ that a Nereid?”

“No. Nereids either evaporated or condensed and crystallized when they died; it depended on exactly how they were killed, and what the environment was like. No,” she repeated, walking over and looking down, “this was a human. A woman, if what’s left of the clothes are any indication. She probably stepped out of the teleporter right before Beryl’s bomb went off.”

“Will there be more bodies?” Mars asked.

“A few, I’d expect. There was a fairly sizable human population in most of the Nereid cities; merchants, tourists, and artists, mostly, but there were some humans who didn’t have a problem living among mind-readers. More than a few human telepaths came here to study.”

Ryo coughed. “Should we bury her or something?”

“The ground around here’s solid rock,” ChibiMoon reminded him. “That could take a while to dig out.”

“I’ll do it.” Saturn pointed the Glaive, and both the blade and the body were surrounded by dark energy; when it cleared a moment later, the corpse had vanished. Mars murmured the words of a Shinto prayer, and then they proceeded on, following another line of the glowing crystals into the darkness of the caves.

At least, it started out as darkness. As they moved further along and followed the path around a couple of corners, the number of the crystal orbs increased to the point where it was dim rather than dark, and then shadowy rather than dim. They entered a long tunnel that had a row of the blue lights on either wall and along the ceiling as well, and when they exited it, they stopped and stared.

The tunnel opened up at the top of a wide ramp which led down into the largest cavern yet, and they could see this one in its entirety, for there were light-orbs everywhere, set into the walls at all elevations. The sheer number of them put out enough bluish light to create a starry twilight effect throughout the enormous cave, especially since there were deposits of some silvery mineral clustered around, refracting and reflecting the light. A huge version of the crystal orbs had been set into the roof of the cavern, some one hundred meters above them, and it probably would have been lit up like the sun if it hadn’t been for the deep fissures running along its surface. Even without the shattered sun-replica, they could still see that the other side of the cavern was a good two kilometers away; the place was at least half that in width, and the floor was entirely covered by the ruins of the city.

There were no individual houses that the travelers could recognize. Rather, there were complexes of interconnected rooms, somewhat like apartment buildings, but with the individual chambers arranged using the same oddly random placement that the two teleport-stations had shown. Each of these structures— apartments or dormitories or whatever they had been—was centered on an open courtyard, which might have anywhere from zero to six different paths connecting it to the surrounding streets, and no two of them were quite alike. Some were pyramid-shaped terraces rising three or four stories above the ground, and a few had extremely circular designs; most were cubical, looking very much as though a toddler had piled up some blocks and then wandered off for lunch.

Above the cube-dorms and pyramid-terraces rose many towers, none of which bore a rectangular shape; they were all cones or piled-sphere columns or needle- like uprights that tapered at both ends. Elevated walkways surrounded and interconnected each and every last tower to every other, a second street level about fifteen stories above the first, and there were ramps connecting the two levels, some of them coiling around the towers, others sloping up through empty air.

The streets and walkways often ran into open squares—they were platforms on the upper level, and most of them, whether placed high or low, weren’t square at all—and each of these had a small body of steaming water at its center. The one in the largest square on the ground—which was actually a sort of irregular octagon—was bigger than most of the swimming pools Ami had ever seen. In the cool, damp air of the caves, thick plumes of steam rose up from all of the pools, and yet all of the buildings—built from stone in shades of white and grey, green and blue, or from transparent crystal—appeared to some extent as though they were made of ice. There was a shimmer to it all in the blue-tinted light which made the ruins look as if they were on the verge of melting; it made them shine.

It had been a thousand years since this and all the other cities of Mercury had been destroyed, a thousand years in which the damage of the original cataclysm had only gotten worse through neglect and decay. Here and there, towers had toppled. Walkways had collapsed, and some of the buildings on the ground had been smashed by the falling debris, which also choked off roads.

Somehow, the damage only made it all that much more breathtaking.

“It goes right up the sides of the cave,” ChibiMoon murmured, pointing to other ledges that were scattered around the cavern at various levels. Some were large enough that entire buildings had been assembled atop them, but most were balconies, with the rock wall behind them carved out to create rooms. More of the elevated walkways ran along the wall, linking this platform to that balcony to a ramp which led back down to the main city.

“It’s... survived better than I thought it would,” Luna said after a moment. “Well, let’s get started, shall we? Ami?”

Ami was staring at the ruins and had to be gently prodded in the ribs before she wiped surreptitiously at her eyes and started paying attention. Her computer went through its familiar sequence of beeps and then returned a soft “ping” which made Ami’s face glow.

“It’s here,” she whispered excitedly. “It’s actually here! Fifteen hundred and twenty-one meters north, four hundred and nine meters west, and fifty-two meters down!”

“We’re at the main east entrance,” Luna said, looking up at the arch of the tunnel behind them. She turned back and considered the layout of the city. “Four hundred meters out and fifteen hundred to the right would almost have to put it in another chamber than this.”

Looking at her computer’s screen, Ami nodded. “There’s a smaller cave beyond the north wall.” She frowned. “There doesn’t seem to be any way to get to it, though.”

“I’ll get us there,” Saturn said confidently, swinging the Glaive to open another dimension door.

Nothing happened.

Saturn blinked several times and tried it again, with the same result.

“You’re not running out of gas or anything, are you?” Ryo asked with a note of very real concern.

Saturn shook her head and made another cut in the air. This one worked, but once the door was fully open, they saw the foyer of Michiru’s house again.

They looked at the room. They looked at Saturn. Saturn looked off towards the north wall of the city cavern with a narrowed gaze, and Haruka wandered in from the kitchen with a half-eaten sandwich in one hand.

“Problem?” she asked.

“It’s that cave,” Saturn announced, swirling the door closed on Haruka’s mildly startled expression. “Something’s _actually_ keeping me out of it.” It was hard to tell if she were more offended or intrigued by this fact. “What could be doing that?”

Luna shook her head. “I don’t know. Everything I was ever told about the power of Saturn says it’s impossible to keep the Senshi out of a place if she wants to get in.” She looked in the same direction as Saturn and added, “At least, it _was_ impossible.”

“So how is Ami supposed to get the Caduceus, then?” ChibiMoon asked. Unlike Saturn, she _definitely_ sounded offended. “If there’s no entrance and even Saturn can’t get inside, what do we do? Blast our way in?”

“Somehow,” Luna sighed, “I doubt that’d work particularly well. Whatever’s stopping Saturn can’t be a natural phenomenon, and that means somebody had to put it there. I can’t believe anyone would go to all the trouble of creating that powerful a means of blocking abilities like teleportation and then not include some sort of physical defense as well.” She folded her arms and fell silent for a time. “Mars, I think we’ll need that translation after all.”

Mars nodded and reached back to dig the papers out of her pack.

“I don’t know what the situation is with that cave,” Luna said to the rest of them, “but I do know that when there wasn’t a Senshi of Mercury, or when the current one was still young and learning her powers, the Caduceus was kept in a place called the Blue Hall. If there’s an entrance to that cave or some other means to get inside, the Hall’s where we’re most likely to find it.”

“And which building would that be?” ChibiMoon asked.

“Hang on,” Mars muttered, pulling out a ream of paper and then flipping through it, repeating, “Blue Hall, Blue Hall, Blue... okay, here it is.” She slipped two sheets out of the group and read through them quickly, then started searching the city.

“There.” Mars pointed to a building situated right beside the pond in the city’s central square.

Traditionally, the word ‘hall’ conjures to mind the image of a long and generally rectangular wooden structure, often replete with falling-down drunk Viking warriors and the occasional trophy in the form of a monstrous head or arm. The Nereids must never have heard of Beowulf, though, because this ‘hall’ appeared to be a series of rounded and overlapping domes, running north-south along the opposite side of the pond from the six visitors. It was about three stories tall at its highest point and certainly just as worthwhile to look at as all the other buildings, but at this distance, there didn’t appear to be anything to set it apart.

“You’re sure?” Ami asked.

Mars nodded. “It says the Blue Hall has nine domes, and unless you want to consider those bubble-shaped houses, that building by the pond is the only place I can see that has enough domes.”

“I’d have to agree with you on that,” Luna admitted. “Okay. Let’s go.”

# 

Usagi came out of the theater and headed straight for the refreshment center.

“Four small Cokes and one large cream soda, please.”

The girl working behind the counter looked at her and then glanced around at the lobby, which was empty except for the two of them, the girl who worked in the ticket window—who was on her break and chatting with the other counter worker—and a janitor who was making sure all the trashbins were empty in advance of the post-movie exodus.

“Isn’t one of your friends coming to help you?” she asked, filling up the small cups.

“Huh?” Usagi caught the girl’s concerned look, and smiled. “Oh, no. They’re not making me run their errands for them. This is all for us.”

The girl’s look went from concerned to startled as she started setting down the small cups, full of pop, and Usagi started draining them, barely stopping to breathe in between. By the time the girl had finished filling up the large cream soda, Usagi was chugging down the last of the small Cokes. She sighed, covered a hiccup, and noticed the girl looking at her again. She patted her belly.

“We get _really_ thirsty sometimes,” she explained. “How much?”

Cream soda in hand, Usagi was halfway back to the theater when the door swung open, and Suzuran, a girl she knew from school, stepped out. She saw Usagi immediately and headed straight for her.

“Su-chan,” Usagi greeted her. “Enjoying the movie?”

“Usagi-chan,” the girl said, “you’ve got to tell me; WHO is that gorgeous hunk Mina-chan’s with?”

Usagi blinked. *Uh-oh.*

For some reason, Minako had dragged Artemis along to the movie with them, probably to make him suffer for keeping her from going to Mercury; even though it hadn’t been his idea for the Senshi to split up, he’d fully supported Michiru’s suggestion, since it meant he himself wouldn’t have to go through Saturn’s dimension door.

It had long been the Senshi procedure to smuggle Luna and Artemis into theaters in gym bags and the like, but since he could now take human form, Artemis had done so, sparing himself the grim confinement of a bag that reeked of Minako’s three favorite soaps and two favorite perfumes. By necessity, Minako had literally been hanging on his arm the entire evening, keeping him from sneaking off to another theater or out of the cineplex entirely. She had all but torn his arm off when he offered to help Usagi get her drinks.

“It’s just that Dei-chan and Sumi-chan and Keshi-chan and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him before, and none of us could believe we’d _ever_ forget a guy that cute, and we asked Chii-kun and Hose-kun and Goro-kun and Ken-kun, and none of _them_ had seen him around before, either, so we figured he must have just moved here or something...” There was a question hanging on the end of that.

“Um... yeah, he did...” *Terrific. They’ve all seen him.* Suzuran had named her three closest friends and all of their current boyfriends, and Usagi was just too busy trying to have a clever idea for damage control to follow Su’s line of thought.

“...and Sumi-chan thought that he might be related to Mina-chan or something like that,” Su continued, right from where she had left off, “because it seemed really odd for the hottest thing on two legs to just drop out of the sky and get picked up by _Minako_, of all people...”

“What do you mean by that?” Usagi snapped, coming out of her absent-minded state.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Su replied. “Usagi-chan, we all like Mina- chan—she helped me catch Ken-kun, for Kami’s sake!—but let’s face it; however much she knows about finding boyfriends for other people, she’s lousy at finding them for herself.” She looked around and leaned closer to whisper, “And Aneiko’s here tonight, too. We’re all positive she saw Mina-chan and that guy, and, well... you know how Aneiko is.”

Usagi made a face.

“That’s why I came out here instead of waiting to ask you on Monday,” Su said. “Aneiko’s not very fond of any of you...”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

“...but she absolutely _loathes_ how Mina-chan keeps getting on everyone’s good side by helping out in the romance department and always being right. Wrecking Mina-chan’s reputation as a matchmaker is probably number one on Aneiko’s To Do List, but I think she’d settle for just wrecking her reputation, period. When word gets around that she’s seeing a guy that nobody knows, who doesn’t even seem to have a name _and_ has _white_ hair... Usagi-chan, unless you can tell me that he’s her older brother or young uncle or something, we’ve got to get started—right now—or Aneiko’s going to drag both of their names through the mud.”

“His name’s Arthur Knight,” Usagi said immediately, barely hesitating, trying not to wince, and wondering what in the universe had prompted her to pick a name like THAT. “And he’s not a relative. He’s from England, and Mina-chan met him when she was there. He came out here on vacation, but he might be planning to attend university next semester; I don’t know for sure.”

“Are they serious, or is it just a friendly relationship?”

“They’re serious friends,” Usagi said firmly.

Su nodded, getting the point. “I’ll tell Dei-chan and the others; I can _guarantee_ you that _this_ is the story that will be all over school in a couple of days. Make sure you warn Mina-chan, okay?”

Usagi nodded back, and they both walked back into the theater, splitting up and heading to their respective seats. Slipping past Setsuna, who had the aisle seat and was fixated so intently on the movie that she barely noticed the interruption, Usagi plopped down between her and Artemis and stared up at the screen with wide, unseeing eyes.

*What in the name of the Moon did I just DO?!*

“Usagi-chan?” Minako was looking around Artemis at her. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Just peachy.”

Minako blinked. “What’s got you in such a bad mood all of a sudden? Did they run out of pop or something?”

“I think that I just gave you a boyfriend, Mina-chan.” Usagi sighed and patted Artemis on the shoulder. “Say hello to Arthur Knight.”

Artemis and Minako looked at Usagi, at each other, and then back at Usagi. Setsuna just kept watching the movie.

# 

By unspoken agreement, they walked to the Blue Hall rather than zipping there through one of Saturn’s dimension doors, so as to get a chance to look at the rest of the city in a bit more detail. Ami scanned the streets with her computer and then plotted the shortest unblocked route to the Hall, but she was barely paying attention to the blinking icons on the screen.

From a distance, the Nereid structures looked simplistic, but up close, they became complex. Each basic geometric shape was covered by intricate designs of stone, crystal, and metal, patterns which had been worn down over the centuries by the humid air, but which still hinted at the original shape and color the builders had intended. It seemed that every surface of every building had been adorned one way or another—or both—as if the entire city had been as much a work of art as it had been a place to live and work.

In a human city, the irregular placement of the structures and the complexity of the streets would have created a claustrophobic’s nightmare, with grey and brown walls pressing in on all sides and no sky to be seen no matter where you looked. Considering that this city was totally subterranean, such impressions were already hard to stave off, and yet the overall sense the visitors had of the city was of space. Most of the buildings did not top three floors, and those that did were narrow and slender. The streets were wide, the main roads as broad as four-lane highways, and the soft, pale colors of the local building materials added to the feel of openness. It was also noticeably warmer down in the lower bowl of the cavern, as the steam rising from the many pools countered something of the predominant coolness of the caves.

Ryo turned to Luna. “I thought you said the Nereids didn’t like heat.”

“They couldn’t tolerate extreme heat because it evaporated away the water that made up their bodies and interfered with the conductivity of the solid minerals that enabled their thought processes. This isn’t nearly hot enough to have endangered them, and the atmospheric moisture would have more than made up for any discomfort they felt—and it’s a much healthier environment for our form of life than those dank, drafty caves. As I also said, they were very considerate hosts. Just look around.”

Ryo did that. “Am I looking for something in particular?”

“Look at everything. Wide streets and low or narrow buildings that make the city seem more spacious than it is, barriers along the sides of the ramps and upper walkways to prevent falls, _lights_ that simulate the effect of stars and the sun. Even this air we’re breathing had to be created—a whole underground world’s worth of it. Nereids didn’t need any of it, not even the air, but they built it all anyway to help their human guests feel comfortable.”

They passed what was left of some of those guests every now and then. Thanks to the warmer and more humid air, most of the bodies were much further along in terms of decomposition than the first one had been, but knowing what they did, the visitors couldn’t help but recognize each shrunken pile of dust and bone and feel a quiet sadness. The smaller bodies were particularly painful to look at.

Even though Luna told her it would be the work of a lifetime to give every human that had died in these caves a decent burial, Saturn went ahead and repeated her service each time they encountered another body. Mars did the same, even though the odds of even one of these people having been a follower of the Shinto faith were pretty remote; it was the thought that counted, and it made her—and the rest of them—feel a little better.

They reached the Blue Hall about fifteen minutes later. Like all the other buildings, it only got more wondrous up close, and its ornamentation was in much better condition than that of the rest of the city, even with the wide pond of steam-spouting water situated right next to it.

Ami walked over to the edge of the water and waved her hand back and forth above the surface. It was hot, no question, but certainly no more so than a pleasant bath, and the water somehow seemed to be more pure—clearer and more sparkling—than anything she had seen before. She was suddenly regretful that she hadn’t brought a bathing suit, and just as suddenly certain that she had in fact swum in this pool before, sometimes as a human, sometimes as a fish, sometimes in her natural form, drifting along the surface, passing through the steam...

“Ami?”

She blinked and realized two things. First, a hand—Luna’s—was on her shoulder; secondly, her feet were wet. Ami looked down and found that she had stepped into the pool without realizing it, and her legs were now immersed to about mid-calf.

She blushed furiously when she realized a third thing, this being that, under the influence of those drifting memories, she had been about ten seconds away from undressing and diving into the pool.

“I... er...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Luna said, helping her step out of the water. “We’re almost there.”

Ami worried about it anyway, and she couldn’t even look at Ryo as they all made their way up the steps surrounding the Blue Hall. She was sure he had a pretty good idea of what she’d been about to do back there, because he was having a hard time making eye contact just now, too.

The Blue Hall’s nine domes were made from the same bluish stone as many of the other buildings in this city, and they were arranged so that each dome was overlapped by the next one in, with the central dome hanging over the two on either side to cap the entire structure. The domes were supported by blue-tinted crystal arches rather than solid walls, and Ami felt a curious tingle as she walked between two of the curved pillars.

The floor beneath the middle dome was given over entirely to a recreation of the symbol of Mercury, some four meters across and fashioned from many tiny, deep blue crystals that might even have been sapphires. There was also a single pyramid-shaped prism of blue crystal standing beneath each dome, but that was it. There was nothing else here, and no sign whatsoever of the Caduceus.

“I don’t get it,” ChibiMoon admitted, looking around. “If this is where they kept the Caduceus, you’d think they’d have at least had a decent security... eep!”

The others looked where she was looking—namely, up—and saw more of the blue pyramids hanging inverted from the ceiling. There was one at the center of each of the smaller domes, and a ninth, considerably larger one built into the underside of the center dome, directly above the large sign on the floor.

Ami almost didn’t notice when her computer beeped softly and began running a series of complex commands along its screen, but she and everyone else definitely noticed when the largest prism began to flicker internally with varicolored lights and then sent a narrow beam of blue light coursing straight into the scanning port on the back of the computer—which returned the favor from the Mercury-sign on the lid. Computer and crystal proceeded to beep, chime, and ring at each other, and the characters scrolling and flashing by on the screen grew ever more numerous and complicated. Ami tried pressing a few buttons which ought to have shut the computer down, but it stayed active and continued whatever task it was performing without interruption.

“Luna, something’s...”

The computer emitted a final, chiming tone, and the eight crystal pyramids along the floor responded in kind, ringing softly and shining with a pale blue light. A spot of energy gathered at the tip of each crystal and then shot forth a beam of blue force directly to the point of the prism opposite it, a beam along which energy began to pulse rhythmically back and forth. The travelers jumped clear as crackling arcs of energy danced into existence between the pillars, and they looked up in surprise as the domes shone bright blue.

The intensity of the light within the crystals grew until they were almost too bright to look at, and then a thousand lines of blue energy slammed down from the tip of the largest one, striking the dark blue sign on the floor and causing it to glow. There was a flash in which all the shimmering power in the Hall seemed to get sucked up into the domes and hurled down into the sign, and then the entire light show subsided.

What was left behind was a circular field of blue energy about three meters in diameter, hanging in the air above the center of the slowly pulsing symbol and showing another cave.

“That,” Ryo said, the suddenness of his voice causing the girls to start, “was a doorbell, I think.”

They heard a slicing sound and turned to see Saturn in the process of chipping a small bit of the floor away with the Silence Glaive. “Just to make sure,” she explained, throwing the blue stone at the unwavering image. It passed through intact and clattered when it hit the stone surface on the other side.

Saturn wasn’t done quite yet. She stepped close enough to the portal to extend the Silence Glaive out and touch it, and her weapon was immediately pushed back by a spark of blue. She didn’t feel any pain or real force behind the push, just enough to repel the blade. She stepped closer and tried pushing her hand through, and was herself pushed back.

Without prompting, Ami walked over and tried to put her hand through the portal. She met no resistance whatsoever, but when Saturn again tried to push through, she was pushed back, while Ami was not.

“It’s warded,” Luna said. “Probably by the same force that stopped you from creating a door into the cave in the first place, Saturn.”

“So Ami-chan’s the only one who can go through?”

Luna didn’t answer that; she didn’t really need to. Instead, she looked at Ami, who looked back at her and then through the portal. The cave on the other side was being illuminated in a very different manner than this city-cavern; the light was uncolored and did not appear to have any particular source. There were patches of that silver mineral here and there, and Ami could just make out the sound of water dripping somewhere out of sight.

“I guess that’s that, then.” She took a breath and smiled at her friends. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

They all smiled back at her as she stepped through the portal. Ami felt another odd tingle as she passed through the blue energy-ring, but it wasn’t painful or even particularly unpleasant—it was just there—so she ignored it. She had only taken a few steps when she stopped and looked back, smiling.

“Ryo-kun? You can have that nervous breakdown now, if you’d like.”

Ignoring the odd looks from the others, Ryo nodded. “I’ll get to work on that right away. Don’t step in any puddles.”

Ami made a face at him and then went on her way, suppressing an urge to do something foolish like dance or sing. Just a few more minutes, and she’d have the Caduceus, this time for real, for herself.

Just a few more minutes, and she’d be back to normal.

# 

The rat pattered through the sewer, its nose alert for scents of food and its ears alert for the sounds of danger. It came to a junction and detected one of the smells it most liked, that of reasonably fresh fruit, drifting from somewhere up ahead, but it could also smell the distinctive odors of a large number of other rats. It couldn’t see them, though, or hear them, and this bothered the rodent.

It paused, ignoring the tempting fruit-smell, and sniffed cautiously at the cold, damp floor of the tunnel. Yes, many rats had gone into _that_ passage there over the last little while, but it couldn’t find any sign of them coming out again—not one of them. This set off warning lights in the rat’s brain that had a great deal to do with images of fur and lashing tails, of teeth and claws and loud “mrrrraaaaaarr”-ing noises, and it quickly chose another tunnel in which to continue its search.

Down the darkened path the rat had shunned, one of Proteus’ unblinking red eyes watched the little creature shuffle off. Somewhere in its complex awareness, the entity chuckled.

*Clever little thing. Yes, go the other way, ignore and avoid the too- obvious bait and the trap behind it. Keep the freedom your caution and cleverness have preserved. I have more than enough of your kind already.*

This wasn’t the first show of intelligence Proteus had observed in the local rat population. It had been trapping them for study this entire past week, and it had captured precisely seven hundred and twenty-six of the furry creatures so far; the others were understandably suspicious about so many of their number vanishing in such a short period of time, and the intake of the various traps had dropped off sharply in the last two days.

Most of the captured rats were now moving up on the streets, keeping out of sight and warding off cats with the enhancements Proteus had made in them. They were several hundred research projects in progress, and each was part of a fully-mobile information-gathering network, whose individual components were a hundred times smaller than nearly anything Proteus had used before.

An undetectable—or so the entity hoped—means of collecting data with which to protect itself, and an essentially unlimited source of test subjects.

There were some drawbacks, of course. The transfiguration process had been much simpler and smoother with the rats than with the humans, but the end goal of these experiments was for Proteus to redesign itself into something better than it was, and while from a certain standpoint ANY animal form would be a vast improvement over the body in which it now existed, it would much prefer to shape itself into something like a human rather than a less-advanced creature such as a rat. Proteus had IMPROVED the rat, and it was intent on doing the same to a human—and once it had figured out how to create an undeniably superior form, it would transfer its consciousness and inhabit that form. And then... and then...

Proteus paused, realizing that it had no clear objective for the future beyond surviving and obtaining a functional body for itself. With the ability to blend in with and disappear into the human world, the options would be many, and yet it really wasn’t sure what it ought to do.

*Indecision. That is what this feeling is called.* Proteus considered it for a time, then dismissed the sensation. Indecision would have to wait for later.

Proteus examined its human subjects. It now had five of them at or nearing readiness, but the question was whether to unleash them all at once, or more selectively. Considering the rapid deactivation of the first hybrid, a group deployment would probably be required for optimum study time, and yet using so much of its limited resources at one time did not strike Proteus as wise. And there was the hybrid that had been derived from the woman Nanako to consider; THAT one could be very useful indeed, but only if applied properly, and there was still so much about humans that Proteus did not sufficiently understand.

Not for the first time, Proteus considered reestablishing a means of observing Archon and his apprentice—considered, and rejected. The girl’s powers had been growing dangerously close to the point where she would be able to create the proper mix of spells to detect such a device, and detection was something that must be avoided, even if it meant sacrificing whatever knowledge might have been gained from listening to the Atlantean archmage tutor his student.

And speaking of detection, it was high time to be on the move again.

The heavy, fungoid mass with its glowing red beads—all that remained of Proteus’ city-spanning network—recalled the tendrils it had scattered about this section of tunnel to keep watch and trap rats. Thick lumps of fleshy green matter extended out from the main body and grew swiftly into legs, and something that looked like a ten-meter long hunchbacked green centipede went scuttling slowly down the tunnel, the dozen egglike pods fused into its back glowing and sloshing as the thing rocked back and forth.

# 

The tunnel was cooler than the city had been; Ami could hear the dripping water more clearly now, and it was obviously not steaming like the pools in the city.

*It really was a beautiful place,* she thought sadly, pausing for a moment just in case Mercury tried to respond to that. Nothing happened, and Ami continued on, walking in silence except for her soft steps and the steady drip, drip, drip of the water.

It really _was_ a beautiful place, even now. The buildings in the city had been stunning, and the natural beauty of this cavernous world was growing on her as well: the rainbow shimmering of the metallic silver crystals that seemed to be growing from the walls; the shapes and colors of the wild caves they had walked through on their way here. She wondered—but not too hard, for fear of waking up her past life again—what it must have been like with people living here, some of them humans, some of them Nereids, and perhaps others from other species that had been around back then, like Luna’s and Artemis’ feline race.

She could almost see a group of children playing tag in the streets, some of them little boys and girls on sturdy legs, others furry cat-children leaping about and tumbling down with awkward feline adolescence, and a couple of little girls with blue hair and eyes and pale, blue-tinted skin, who would suddenly be replaced by clouds of sparkling mist whenever one of their playmates got close to catching them, and then they would swirl around and make the other little ones laugh by tickling them in a hundred places at once, and it didn’t matter at all that they were all different species or that she was Mercury, because for today they were all just children...

Ami closed her eyes and put her hands to the sides of her head. *Stop it, Mercury. Please. Just stay quiet a little bit longer and let me do this. If you’re still there after I have the Caduceus, you can talk all you want and I’ll listen and talk with you, but please, not now.*

The tide of memories continued for a few moments and then settled back down. Ami let out a slow breath and reopened her eyes, continuing forward.

The tunnel led her into the chamber her computer had picked up. It wasn’t nearly as large as the cavern that held the city, but it was big enough to hold a small pond of what appeared to be ice-cold water, over and around which drifted a pale, blue-white mist. In the center of the pool was an island barely large enough to have held a car, and in the center of that island was a plain marble stand about as high as Ami’s waist. On top of that stood the Caduceus.

It hadn’t changed in the week and five thousand years since she’d seen it. The ruby-eyed gold serpents still coiled around the handle; the blue sapphire still shone; the white wings were still perfectly carved and outstretched. She could see every detail right down to the tiniest curve of the feathers, because the Caduceus itself appeared to be the source of that pale glow.

There didn’t seem to be any bridge or stepping-stones with which to reach the island, but Ami supposed that since she’d already gotten her feet wet once today, one more time wouldn’t hurt. She stopped at the edge of the water and changed her mind.

The pool wasn’t all that wide—she could have swum across it in about three strokes—but the bottom of it was black, black, black, out of which the stone pillar that was the island rose up from somewhere below. She generally wasn’t scared of anything that had to do with water, and Luna had said that there was nothing alive up here to be concerned about, but looking down into that narrow abyss, Ami found it a little too easy to imagine some hideous Things that might be lurking down there, just out of her sight, waiting for her to step into the water...

She shivered, and not just from nervousness. It was definitely cold in here, worse than the untamed caverns by a fair degree. The water looked as though it might be cold enough to freeze the blood in her veins if she jumped in, the silver crystals were creaking as if they were about to break, and the mist...

Ami’s heart skipped a beat. The mist was moving.

*Intruder.*

*Trespasser.*

*Thief.*

Jets of icy water erupted from the pool, spraying up into the air and filling it with a blue mist that swelled up in front of Ami like a thunderhead about to unleash a storm.

*Intruder,* the whisper-quiet voice said from everywhere, *this is a sacred place you have entered. You have defiled the death-place of the Senshi of Mercury. You have stolen a Weapon given to them by the First Lords of Atlantis, and you have come to steal another. Foolish thief, foolish girl, foolish _human_ girl, know that your life is forfeit.*

The roiling mist flooded over her, and Ami felt incredibly cold. There was no warmth in the air at all; there was no _air_, period, just the mist.

*Some sort... of protective... measure... must be what... was keeping Saturn... out...* “I d-d-didn’t-t-t s-s-steal anyth-th-thing,” Ami stammered, hugging herself to try and retain some kind of heat. “I d-d-din’t-t-t c-c-come t-t-to s-s-steal anyth-th-thing.”

*Liar. You have the Mercury Computer. You came for the Caduceus. They are for Mercury.*

“I... am-m-m... M-m-merc-c-cury.”

*Liar!* Ami went flying backwards as something vague in shape but very real in force slammed into her. Laying on the floor, she was actually grateful for the cold, because it had already numbed her beyond being able to feel most of the pain.

*You may have fooled the gateway, but you cannot fool me! You are not a Nereid! You cannot be Mercury!*

“I... am-m-m...”

*YOU ARE NOT MERCURY!*

That did it. For nearly a month now, Ami had been stuck at an in-between point. Once—four years ago—she had been a normal, albeit somewhat extraordinary girl. Then her life had been turned upside-down by Mercury and the mission of the Senshi. For all the trouble it caused her at times, she loved being Mercury, and while it sometimes scared her to know what the power was slowly doing to her and her friends, making them more and more different from other girls—other people—the fact that one day she would transform and then never again be without Mercury’s strength to protect her and help her protect the people she loved was a welcome one.

Then there was the mana nexus, and the sickness, and her inability to become Mercury. She had been locked in place, halfway between normal and magical, facing the possibility of being forever different from both normal people and the other Senshi. She had trained, and fought, and bled and died; she had EARNED the right to be Mercury, only to have it snatched away by some stupid twist of fate and an unfeeling machine, and now this THING had the gall to tell her that SHE WASN’T MERCURY?!

“My name is Mizuno Ami!” Ami screamed, getting to her feet and pulling out her transformation pen. “MERCURY CRYSTAL POWER, TRANSFORM!” As the light began to gather, she looked right at the heart of the mist and screamed again. “I— AM —MERCURY!”

The mist seemed to recoil from the force of that scream, but it might have been the sudden flare of blue light that flooded the small chamber.

# 

Luna and the three girls looked up in surprise as Ryo fell over backwards with a shout, just before the distorted, indecipherable sound of an enraged scream came ringing back down the tunnel on the other side of the portal, along with a powerful blast of ice-cold energy.

# 

She opened her eyes and looked around at the cave. Frost lined the walls and floor; icicles hung from the ceiling by the hundreds; the pool had been flash-frozen into a solid block of ice, while the Caduceus did not seem to have been touched at all.

Mercury walked quietly across the frozen pool, her bootheels clicking against the pure white surface. The ice was so thick that it didn’t shift or even creak under her weight, and nothing else sprang up to challenge her.

She wasn’t sure what to expect as her fingers closed around the Caduceus, and there wasn’t any great flash of light or chorus of angels or anything of the sort, for which Mercury was privately grateful. Still, she did feel _something_ change, as if an unpleasant pressure had shifted and settled. It might have just been part of her adjusting to the magic of the Caduceus—she could feel that at work already, linking itself to her so she would be able to call it or dismiss it at will—but somehow she knew it was a great deal more than that. The hollowness that had been lurking inside of her all this month was gone, completely and totally gone.

Mercury—the other Mercury—was still there in her mind, but she was different from before. Mercury looked back and saw the Nereid’s life, all twenty-nine wonderful years of it, arranged before her with perfect crystal clarity. The Nereid herself, wearing a face and body that were older versions of Mizuno Ami’s—rather like her mother, in fact, but more youthfully slender and with longer hair—appeared to float there in front of the mind’s eye of her human reincarnation, wearing a soft blue gown and a patiently gentle smile, ready to tell her whatever she asked to know.

Ryo was still there as well, and her sense of him seemed sharper than it had been a moment ago. He was worried about what that flash and screaming had been about, happy that she was feeling better, slightly curious about what that other presence he was feeling could be, and quite tired of mental impulses that blew through his head like a bullet train with the brakes cut...

So it wasn’t as much of a cure-all as she’d hoped, but it was also no less than she’d expected. That was something, at least. No more energy-attacks, no more interference when she tried to transform. She was Mercury again, and her memories and Ryo... she could deal with. She was going to have to.

Something touched her shoulder, and she spun around, half-raising the Caduceus to defend against whatever new problem was...

A girl her own age was standing next to her on the island. It was almost like looking into a mirror, except that this reflection seemed a little more delicate, had longer hair which reached to just short of her shoulders, and was wearing a close-fitting yet loosely-hanging blue gown instead of the Senshi fuku. The color of the girl’s hair, though, was the same as her own, and the eyes... the eyes were so large and clear that they reflected Mercury’s face back at her, and she could see and compare the color, and know it to be the same.

The Nereid presence in her mind sat down in shock.

“Sister?” the girl said softly, wonderingly touching Mercury’s face with her hands, while at the same time touching her mind. “Is it really you in there, Mercury?”

*Calypso,* the Nereid-memory whispered. *Oh, gods, little sister. You’re alive?*

The girl—the Nereid—nodded, biting her lip and starting to cry. “You’re alive,” she said. “I only saw a human, and I didn’t even stop to study her mind, but it really _is_ you. You’re in a human body, but you’re alive, and I’m not alone anymore... oh, Mercury!”

The Nereid rushed forward and buried her face in Mercury’s shoulder, weeping. At the prompting of her past life, Mercury put her arms around the girl and kissed the top of her head, patting her shaking back and murmuring soft, soothing sounds, all the while wondering what in the world had just happened.

What followed was a very bizarre moment in which all three minds got tangled up in each other and dragged the edge of Ryo’s startled awareness along for the ride. Ami wanted to know _what_ was going on here, and Mercury tried to explain it to her; Mercury wanted to know _how_ this had happened, and Calypso was trying to explain it to _her_; and both Ami and Mercury were trying their best to calm the terribly upset Nereid down.

Ami learned that this was the birth-sister of her past life, Calypso, a little under thirteen years younger, and she was a sprightly little delight, always full of fun and mischief and adventure. She learned of a decade’s worth of practical jokes, some of which made no sense to anyone except a Nereid, others which only a human should have been able to appreciate, and all of them executed by this misty little minx. She learned of parties on the Moon or here in the cave-cities where the two sisters had appeared as twins and confused a whole generation of human nobility, and of times when they had conspired with Ishtar to sneak handsome young noblemen into Vestia’s quarters, and then turned around and helped Vestia teach Ishtar a new meaning for the phrase ‘cold front’...

Mercury learned that not all of the Nereids had been killed in Beryl’s attack. A few—so terribly few—were spared because they had been inside the teleporter network when the mana inversion weapons exploded. Somehow, that had protected them, when everyone else had perished, even those humans and Nekorons and others who had been in transit. The aftereffects of the bomb had poisoned them all, and they knew they would soon die anyway, so they gathered in this city, in this most sacred place of their entire species, and fused their remaining life-force into a single entity—into Calypso, the youngest and healthiest of them, who had been cured of the slow wasting death that would have claimed her in days, but who had also grown ancient and wise far too quickly, inheriting the memories and knowledge of nearly forty of her elders all at once, a shock which nearly destroyed her mind. And then she had been bound here, to protect the most powerful relic the Nereids possessed until either Mercury came for it—and for her—or the sun died and carried her away into oblivion. She had spent ten terrible centuries here, drifting between unconsciousness and awareness, between despairing loneliness and mad grief...

Calypso learned how her sister had died and then been brought back, and why she was here now, why she had not come for her sooner, and that it was all right, she was not alone anymore, she would never be alone like that ever again...

Out in the Blue Hall, Ryo sat down on the floor and concentrated very hard on keeping his head from exploding. He took a moment’s satisfaction when he heard a sound coming from the deepest, blackest pit in his soul—an inhuman roar of anguish—and knew that in its prison of silver light and crystal shards, the trapped essence of the youma was suffering a thousand times worse than he was.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Calypso said. “I was asleep most of the time, only waking up every now and then, and I could never tell how long I’d been asleep for or what time it was, but I could see each time that the cave had changed, and I knew it must have been years... decades... centuries... and you never came... no one ever came...”

*You know I would have,* the Nereid within Mercury replied.

Ami couldn’t help but notice that Calypso’s body temperature was a couple of degrees shy of even her own—which, according to her mother, had always been a bit low—and that in her distraught state, the Nereid was having some trouble maintaining her solid form. Small arms of sparkling blue mist were flowing off of her, some to hang in the air, others to sweep around behind Mercury as if hugging her. Then again, this might be exactly how Nereids embraced; Mercury was a little too preoccupied to tell her.

That was something else to consider. Mercury wasn’t trying to take charge of her—their—body to soothe her sister; everything the Nereid was doing was mental, speaking to Calypso mind-to-mind, quietly asking Ami to be her hands for this instead of reaching out and doing it herself. She could have done taken control easily, but she chose not to.

*I wouldn’t mind,* Ami told her.

*I know you wouldn’t mind, but what would be the point? There is no physical comfort I could give her that you are not already providing, and I do not need to be in control of our body to feel our dear little sister in our arms again.*

OUR arms. OUR body. OUR sister. Ami realized how true that was. Her illness had been caused because her human body and Mercury’s Nereid energy had not been entirely compatible, because their minds had not been able to properly link. Ami could not recall Mercury’s life, and the last thing Mercury had been able to clearly recall was the battle on the Moon, and dying. Then there was darkness, broken only by flashes of a life that was not hers, in a body that could not change form, which suffered illnesses and injuries her kind had never known, pains she did not know how to cope with. She panicked, tried to protect herself the best way she knew how—by assuming her Senshi form—and suffered more pain.

All that was over. The Caduceus had not done it; it was a tool for information and defense, and Ami knew now how to use it to tremendously enhance the scanning capabilities of her computer, and to summon the Frost Lancet and all the other powers locked up inside the Weapon, but it had no capacity to heal. What the Caduceus had was a potent affinity for the power of Mercury, and the power itself had taken a hand in things, resolving the separation between two sides of that one special soul that was its window into and hands within the physical world.

Ami could see Mercury’s life, and Mercury could see Ami’s, and in both cases it was from the inside, each of them seeing the other through her own mind and eyes. They did not merely know each other; they _were_ each other. Mercury was Ami, Ami was Mercury—and Calypso was Mercury’s sister.

*I have a sister,* Ami thought in wonder.

*And she loves you very much,* Calypso’s mental voice whispered.

# 

The portal of blue energy had fallen apart not long after Ami’s angry scream, leaving her friends in the Blue Hall with no obvious way to reach her. They had already tried their communicators, and whatever had blocked Saturn was blocking the signals. If it wasn’t for Ryo, with his connection to Ami telling him that she was okay, the local rock stratum would have been getting a serious facelift from Saturn right about now—and that might happen anyway, the ability to wait around while one of their friends might be in danger not being a particular gift of any of the Senshi.

They were all very much relieved when a cloud of blue mist swelled up from the floor, expanding upwards and outwards and then parting to reveal Mercury. In her right hand, she was holding the Caduceus, and in her left, she held the hand of a girl in a blue gown who looked so much like her that even Ryo blinked and looked from one to the other in confusion. Luna, white as a sheet, was staring at the girl in shocked recognition; the girl smiled timorously at Luna and raised her free hand in a short, slow gesture of greeting.

“Everyone,” Mercury announced, “this is my sister, Calypso.”

“Hello,” Calypso said, nodding.

Ryo, Mars, Saturn, and ChibiMoon blinked.

Luna fainted dead away.

# 

_(Calypso wanders onto the sound stage)_

**Calypso** : Oh, hello there. As I understand it, this segment is intended to provide some modicum of moral instruction for the benefit and betterment of any younger readers. I also understand that the author seems to be constantly avoiding any conscious effort to create such instruction, so that he ends up either scrambling around after writing each episode for some justification, or just fills this segment with attempts at witty dialogue and ignores the moral altogether.

**Off-Screen Voice** : AHEM.

**Calypso** : They deserve the truth, you know.

**Off-Screen Voice (the Judge)** : Don’t push it, fog-girl. I can write you out of existence if you get on my nerves, you know.

**Calypso** : Yes, but since you’ve gone ahead and released me into the public forum, I no longer exist solely in your imagination, so anybody who wants to could conceivably come along, post a legal disclaimer, and then keep me going without you, just as you and a great many other people have been doing with the original characters.

**the Judge** : ..... Just do the moral and stop being clever...

_(Calypso folds her arms and bobs her head in a Jeannie impersonation)_

**Calypso** : As you say, Master.

**the Judge** : Right, that’s it. If anybody wants me, I’m going to get a drink. (There comes the sound of footsteps and dark muttering, followed by a door closing)

**Calypso** : Now then, a good moral is set in motion by the nurse, Kima, who feels some sense of guilt for the—perhaps unintentional—harmful remarks she made some time back, and goes to the lengths to find Setsuna and Makoto and apologize to them. The lesson is primarily one of forgiveness, both in the willingness to seek it and the willingness to provide it; Kima did not _have_ to apologize, nor did Makoto _have_ to listen to her, but in doing so they have given themselves the opportunity to make their lives a little bit better.

_(Ami walks in)_

**Ami** : All done?

**Calypso** : Yes, I think so.

**Ami** : Good, because I have to hide you before Mother sees you and starts asking questions I can’t answer right now. ChibiUsa may be able to pass herself off as Usagi-chan’s live-in cousin, but she’s played with the Tsukinos’ memories a half-dozen times to do it, and nobody is poking around inside _my_ mother’s head like that as long as I have anything to say about it...

_(They exit screen right)_

19/01/01 (Revised, 15/08/02)

And there it is, Ami back to normal—or close to it—at last, and I’ll bet NOBODY saw Calypso coming. No, nobody could have POSSIBLY guessed, with all the references I kept making to the Nereids, that I’d bring a live one into things... ^_^

I’d imagine a lot of you had forgotten Setsuna’s prediction about someone proposing to the nurse, too...

Still to come:  
-We’ve got a Nereid, so now what do we do with her?;  
-and Senshi spring break ought to begin shortly.


	19. Mercury's Return Inspires A Few Misty-Eyed Moments

# 

Makoto and Kima were talking quietly in the living room when several familiar presences appeared very briefly at the outermost edge of Makoto’s empathic awareness. The feeling lasted only a moment before the emotional background noise of the city swallowed it up, but she knew it couldn’t have been a mistake; the sense of Ami had come through very strongly, almost as if there were two of her, with a slight muddling around the edges that must have had something to do with the excitement and triumphant joy that was pouring out of her.

*She must have found the Caduceus.*

“Mako-chan?”

Realizing her head had moved unconsciously to track the return of her friends, Makoto blinked and turned back to her guest. “Gomen, Kima-san. I thought I heard something.”

Both of them looked up then. Since she hadn’t originally been expecting company, Makoto had emptied her teapot just filling both their cups. She’d put the spare pot on the stove to boil, and it was just now starting to whistle.

“Good instincts,” Kima complimented her. “You do this a lot, I take it?”

“It’s usually tea for five,” Makoto replied, getting to her feet. “Or sometimes ten. But you’re right; I have had plenty of practice.”

“Do you need any help?”

“No, I can handle it.” She faked a growly look. “Besides, I’m the hostess, and you’re the guest. I made the tea and I’ll serve the tea; _you’ll_ sit there and drink the tea, and dammit, you’ll _like_ the tea—or else.” Then she smiled. “Did you want any more cream or sugar or anything?”

“No, that’s okay.” Kima smiled in a bright, starry-eyed manner that reminded Makoto of Minako, and which made the woman look a good ten years younger. “The floor show more than makes up for the bad refreshments.”

Makoto bowed. “We aim to serve, if not to please.” And she headed to the kitchen.

Considering that she had been about a finger’s breadth away from closing her door in the woman’s face less than half an hour ago, Makoto was astonished at how much she was enjoying Kima’s company—and at how much Kima was enjoying _her_ company. They had both been a bit defensive at the start, but then they’d slipped into some clumsy attempts at humor, and now it was like they’d been acquainted for years. The others wouldn’t have known what to say if they could see this.

In the middle of setting the teapot down on its tray, Makoto frowned. The others.

She got her communicator out, quickly checked to make sure Kima’s attention was elsewhere, then hit a switch and spoke into the device.

“I know Ami-chan and the others are back,” she said quietly, putting a seldom-used function of the communicators to work, “but I’ve got a guest right now, so unless it’s an emergency, call by phone if there’s something you need to tell me. Makoto out.”

There. If one of the others contacted her, they’d get that voice message first, and her own communicator would stay silent unless the person on the other end chose to push through. Flipping the communicator shut, Makoto busied herself with the tea before gathering up the tray and heading back to the living room.

# 

When the travelers marched out of Saturn’s dimension door and into the foyer, Haruka spotted the Caduceus right away and concluded that the expedition had been a success. Then she saw that Luna was holding an icepack to her forehead while being helped along by Mars and ChibiMoon, and that there was a girl who looked almost exactly like Ami following closely behind Mercury.

“Who...”

“We’ll explain in a minute,” Mars interrupted. “Give us a hand here. Luna hit her head.”

Haruka nodded dumbly and assisted them into the living room. It was a perfect opportunity for her to crack wise about how cats were always supposed to land on their feet, but the only words she used were to ask where Luna had gotten the icepack—which was, she realized, sort of a silly question when you had Saturn around to fetch things from the far side of the solar system.

The other Senshi were reverting to normal and taking seats, and when Haruka looked up from helping Rei lay Luna down on the largest couch, the strange girl was sitting next to Ami, wearing an exact copy of her clothes. Skirt and blouse and vest; of the whole ensemble, the only difference between the two was the ribbon choker. Ami’s was black, while the one her doppelganger wore was blue, and only about half-formed out of a small ring of mist that was shrinking around her throat.

That was too much for Haruka, and she stared at the girl openly. The girl noticed and looked back at Haruka curiously.

“You’ve cut your hair,” she said, in a voice almost exactly like Ami’s, with a slightly higher pitch.

“Excuse me?”

“Your hair. It used to be much longer”—she pursed her lips thoughtfully, and then smiled—“but I like this style, too. How have you been, Ariel?”

“I’ve been... wait a minute...”

“Tennou Haruka,” Ami said, stressing the name with a sidelong look at the girl, “meet Calypso.”

“The Nereid, Calypso,” Ryo added dryly.

“Ami-chan’s sister,” Hotaru finished, smiling from where she sat next to the pair of look-alikes.

There was a dead silence as Haruka looked at all of them before covering her face with her hands and letting out a long sigh that sounded suspiciously like, “Shootmenow.” When that was done, she folded her arms, looked directly at Ami and her ‘twin’, and in a flat voice, said, “A Nereid...”

They nodded simultaneously, with the same solemn expression.

“...from the Silver Millennium...”

Another dual nod.

“...is your sister?”

“Yes,” Ami said simply. “Caly was Mercury’s little sister then, so she’s my little sister now, too.”

“You lost me with that line of reasoning, Ami.”

“I was afraid I might,” Ami murmured. “I was transformed when I picked up the Caduceus, Haruka, and the body of a Senshi is something that both Mizuno Ami and Mercury had to change their form to achieve. We weren’t able to safely coexist with active Nereid energy in a normal human body, but being Mercury was common ground, and as long as we didn’t deplete our power too much, it stabilized us a little.”

“Okay...”

“There’s a lot of energy that comes with the Caduceus,” Ami continued, “and the empty feeling I’ve had these past weeks was filled up by it. Our Senshi form was back to normal, and both minds were able to communicate safely. Mercury should have gone back to sleep when I reverted, but it’s like Luna’s been telling us all along; each time we change back from Senshi form, we change back a little less. When I changed back _this_ time, I changed back a lot less. My body is just enough like the Senshi Mercury’s now that it can accommodate Mercury’s Nereid life-force without any danger, and since a Nereid’s life-force is also the essence of her thoughts, that means I can actively remember everything that Mercury knew. It’s not _like_ I was there myself; I _was_ there, just as she’s here now, seeing my life through my eyes.”

“Okay,” Haruka repeated, even though she really didn’t look or sound like she meant it, “but even if you’re carrying around what’s left of a dead Nereid, I still don’t see how that makes _her_ your sister.”

“That’s just it, Haruka; our past lives aren’t really dead. Yes, their bodies are gone, but everything that they were or would have been is living on in us, even if we haven’t been fully aware of it or of them—of who we used to be. I _am_ aware of Mercury now, and I can recall every last detail about her, every thought and feeling she ever had, all of it from the inside. I know what she knew and feel what she felt. I’m still me, but in a certain sense, I’m also her—and that means I love Caly just as much as if she’d been born from my own mother’s womb.”

Calypso had leaned over and rested her head on Ami’s shoulder as she spoke, and Ami put one arm around her without even stopping to think about it. More than anything, the ease of that embrace convinced Haruka. There remained a degree of reserve in Ami’s character that even a few years around Usagi and Minako hadn’t yet been able to completely erode, certain barriers that didn’t typically come down except in private, if then—but with that one little gesture, all the walls had dropped. It was proof of a degree of affection, trust, and understanding that took years to develop, an emotional state even your best friends needed to work at achieving, but which someone as close as a sister had just from growing up with you.

*Like I used to have with Iki.* Haruka quickly banished the thought and looked away from Ami and the Nereid. It was hard to see the two of them together and not remember... things she’d rather forget.

“She started talking like that when she came back with the Caduceus in one hand and Calypso in the other,” Luna said, her head pillowed on Rei’s lap as she looked out from under the edge of the icepack at Haruka. “It scared me half to death when she teleported back to us and started calling Calypso her sister; I was sure it meant that Mercury had taken control of Ami’s body.”

“You know she wouldn’t do that,” Ami and Calypso said in unison. Not even Usagi and Minako—whose own ‘twin’ act was good enough to have earned them compliments from a few actual twins they’d met in the past—could have matched each other better.

“Don’t do that,” Haruka told them both.

“Spoilsport,” Calypso murmured. She looked past Haruka. “Is Larissa coming down to join us?”

“Her name is Michiru now,” Ami corrected. “And I think she’s still in the tub.”

Calypso brightened—literally. She began to glow blue, and the edges of her assumed form started to blur. “I’ll go surprise her,” the Nereid said, her smile and the rest of her face dissolving back into the rapidly-growing cloud of blue mist.

“Caly!” Ami said sharply. The metamorphic melting paused, and Calypso’s face resolidified about four feet off the ground, with a slightly puzzled look and no body beyond a sparkling blue-white cloud that was twice as large as the couch and hanging just over Hotaru’s head.

“What?”

“Just wait here. Haruka can go get her.”

“But I want to _see_ her,” Calypso objected, pouting as her substance gathered and reassumed human shape. It was VERY strange for all of them to see Ami’s face—almost—in that sort of expression and hear her voice—again, almost—using that particular tone.

“I know you miss her, Caly, but I also know that you used to sneak up and surprise Larissa when she was having a bath by fusing with the water and rising up from it right in front of her. I don’t think Michiru would appreciate someone interrupting her bath, especially since she might not recognize you right away.”

“Michiru-mama _does_ take her bath time very seriously,” Hotaru added in solemn agreement. “Of course, it’s a whole other story if Haruka-papa is in there with...”

“AHEM!” Haruka’s interrupting cough was positively explosive, and she was red right to the tips of her ears. Ami, ChibiUsa, and Rei weren’t far behind, and Ryo was looking off in another direction, blushing a bit himself but mostly trying not to laugh too loudly.

“Why don’t you just go get her?” Hotaru suggested over her shoulder. “That way I can talk, and you won’t have to listen to things you don’t want to hear.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Haruka came over and picked Hotaru right up off the couch. Holding the girl up by the elbows, Haruka headed for the stairs. “You can come with me, and I won’t tell Michiru you’ve been spying and then carrying tales.”

“I did _not_ spy!” Hotaru protested, keeping her knees bent so that Haruka had to keep carrying her along.

Calypso frowned after them and then turned to Ami. “Sister... I may have missed this... but Hotaru _did_ just call them her parents, didn’t she?”

Ami nodded and took Calypso’s hand, explaining the situation in a quick telepathic burst. It occurred to Ami in that moment that she honestly had no idea what had ever become of Hotaru’s father, Tomoe Souichi, after Pluto had taken his reborn, ‘infant’ daughter to live with Haruka and Michiru. None of the Outer Senshi had ever volunteered anything, and it would have been rude to pry, but still...

“Ohhhh.” Calypso nodded slowly. “I see.” She cast another frowning glance in the direction of the stairs, but whatever she was thinking drifted away before Ami could read it, as the Nereid shook her head and snuggled in next to her sister again with a smile.

# 

“She actually called her ‘sister’?” Michiru asked from in front of the dresser, where she was brushing her hair into some semblance of order.

Sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, Hotaru nodded. “It has to do with how Ami-chan can remember all of Mercury’s life now, but the explanation got a bit complicated. I think it gave Haruka-papa a headache. Then again, most things do.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Haruka advised. She was leaning against the wall, just inside the bedroom door. “Yeah, she called her sister, and they’re both acting like they believe it.” She hesitated. “She... Calypso, I mean... also seemed really eager to meet you.”

The hairbrush paused briefly as Michiru looked at Haruka’s reflection in the dresser mirror and smiled. “Are you jealous?”

“A little, I suppose.”

The brush stopped in midstroke as Michiru turned around on her seat with a startled and concerned expression. “Haruka?”

Smiling crookedly, Haruka walked over, took the brush, and turned Michiru back around, adding a few expertly practiced strokes to her hair. “Nothing that extreme. It’s just that from the way she was going on, you two were pretty close back then—and _she_ remembers it clearly. I don’t.” She lifted Michiru’s hair back from her face and put a hand on her shoulder. “And that makes me a little... uncertain.”

Michiru smiled and patted Haruka’s hand. “You’ll recover.” She stood up then, smoothing out the front of her blue nightgown before fetching a robe. “Not my first choice for meeting a guest,” she fretted absently.

“Yeah, well, as to that”—Haruka tossed the brush back down onto the dresser—“from what Hotaru-chan was saying before I managed to drag her out of range of their hearing, the others probably think we both lounge around naked between baths and sexual escapades...”

“I did NOT say that!” Hotaru objected, sitting bolt upright and driving her fists into the mattress.

“...so I don’t think the sight of you in a damp towel would have startled them much.”

“I wonder if Calypso or Ami can tell me whether or not your sense of humor was this warped when you were another person,” Michiru remarked casually as she moved past Haruka.

Haruka gave her a flat look.

# 

When the sound of footsteps echoed in from the front room, Ami felt a mental jolt from Calypso which prompted her to get a good solid grip—mental even more so than physical—on her sister as she sat up. It was mostly a feeling of enthusiasm, but there was some anxiety, too. Calypso and Larissa had been very close for almost their entire lives, but that was a thousand years in the past. Michiru wasn’t the same person now as Larissa had been then, nor did she have complete access to her memories; she might not remember.

Michiru stepped through the door and stopped short, blinking, when she saw Ami and Calypso sitting side-by-side and looking back at her. Their resemblance to one another was not only uncanny, but uncannily familiar. She _knew_ she’d seen those two almost-identical faces looking at her before, and the magnitude of that certainty left barely enough space for her mind to acknowledge that Luna was holding an icepack to her head.

Something from that recognition made her raise her left hand with her first and last fingers both pointing up, her other two fingers waving while her thumb pressed up in front of the first. Calypso and Ami both blinked and returned the gesture, and it occurred to Michiru that with those two fingers raised, the shape of their hands suggested the sign of Mercury to some degree.

“Larissa?” the nearest of the pair said uncertainly, in a voice Michiru’s ears and musical training informed her was just a little too high to be Ami’s.

“*Aren’t you going to give me a hello kiss, you silly water nymph?*” There was something about her own voice besides the choice of words that Michiru found odd, and from the way Luna sat up straight to join everyone else in staring at her, the odd thing had been noticed by the full room, but the Nereid’s reaction took center stage.

“You _remember_!” Calypso squealed in delight. One second the girl was sitting beside Ami, and the next she was a cloud of sparkling blue mist, billowing across the room from the couch with a sound that was liquid laughter. Then the cloud became a girl again, a girl who put her arms around Michiru and gave her the requested kiss before spinning both of them around, laughing happily.

The corner of Haruka’s mouth twitched once, but she was the only one who noticed it.

Calypso finally calmed down and backed off enough to look Michiru over. “*You’ve grown up, Lari.*” She smiled. “*It looks good on you.*”

“*Thank you. And you’re still copying your sister, I see.*”

“*Bah. I can change that in a Saturnian second, and you know it.*”

The body that was almost Ami rippled, expanded, and became a precise copy of Michiru herself, right down to the small pattern stitched into the edge of the robe and the fall of her hair. Then that shape shrank down to the form of a girl in a blue robe, who looked like a chibi version of Michiru at the age Hotaru now appeared to be. And while that image was still going *click* in the memories of the gathered Senshi, the Nereid expanded once more, taller than the previous shapes. Eyebrows went up around the room as the onlookers realized the new shape was that of a boy, a lean youth whose facial features and short blue hair made him look like Ami’s brother. Then he/she/it dwindled back down to almost-Ami and smiled.

“*You haven’t lost your touch,*” Michiru said.

Calypso beamed, but her smile shrank to a pensive line. “*How much do you remember, really?*”

“*Less than all of it,*” Michiru admitted. “*But a lot more than I’d expected to—a lot more than I _could_ before I saw you. Mostly it’s about you and Mercury, but there are some things about myself—my old self—that I didn’t know before.*” The visual perspective in those memories was different. Lower. “*I was... shorter... then?*”

“*You were,*” Ami agreed from over on the couch. “*Larissa wasn’t any taller on her fifteenth birthday than Hotaru-chan is now, but Ariel said she liked her that way, since it made her easier to pick up and hug.*” Ami frowned, sure that there was something more to that thought that she was missing, but she didn’t get a chance to pursue it.

“Will you three cut that out and talk so that the rest of us can understand you?” Haruka demanded.

Michiru blinked and realized what it was about her words that had been bothering her—the language had changed, to what she suspected must have been the speech of the Moon Kingdom.

“Oops,” Ami murmured, blushing. “Sorry.”

“It was my fault,” Michiru apologized. “I didn’t realize until just now that I’d switched languages like that.” She smiled at Calypso. “I guess that’s another thing seeing you again shook loose.”

“Glad I could help.”

Luna let out a weary sigh and leaned heavily against the back of the couch, pressing the icepack more firmly to her head. Michiru stared at her in surprise; usually Usagi was the only thing which could inspire such a noise.

“Luna’s been having a rough evening,” Ryo explained, catching Michiru’s startled look. “She passed out and hit her head when Ami-chan brought Calypso out to meet us.”

“Why?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Luna replied. She sighed again and sat up. “I don’t know very much about the effects of this degree of past- life awareness; nobody in the Silver Millennium really did, because it just didn’t happen that often.”

“Philosophers of the age believed that the soul was a pure essence,” Ami said, “something that existed without a physical form or a conscious awareness. It was the containment and direction of the soul within a body that created awareness and personality, and the idea of past-life awareness was explained by strong similarities between a modern body and a past one that the soul had formerly inhabited. It was something that _could_ happen in nature, but only did so very rarely. _We_ remember our former selves because Queen Serenity interfered with the normal process of rebirth and made sure our modern bodies would be as physically similar to our old ones as possible, but we are ourselves and not merely copies of who we used to be because our bodies aren’t identical to what theirs were, and our souls have grown and changed since then.”

It had been quite some time since her friends had stared at Ami with that blank-eyed expression of zero comphrension, mostly because she’d learned over the years to cut back on her use of complex words, and because they’d all picked up enough of her advanced vocabulary to get the gist of the rest. Luna and Michiru had _never_ looked at her like that, and she was fairly sure Haruka hadn’t, either, but all three of them were doing so now. And none of them were staring because they didn’t understand the words.

“I told you,” she mumbled, blushing anew, “I can remember whatever Mercury knew.” Ami’s blush faded as she frowned in sudden worry. “And it’s going to make writing the exams next week awfully tricky...”

“Exams?” Calypso asked curiously.

“We’ll explain later,” Michiru assured the Nereid, leading her back to the couch. Ami scooted aside so they could sit down, but Michiru had no sooner settled on the cushion than Hotaru appeared and scrambled up on her lap. The girl was _really_ getting too big for this, but Michiru chose not to make an issue of it—to some extent because she wasn’t quite ready to give up this part of being a mother, foster or otherwise, and also partly because Calypso took an interest in tickling Hotaru’s feet. “Go on, Ami. You sounded like you were leading up to something with that.”

Ami glanced quickly at Luna, who gestured for her to go ahead. “Since total recall of former lives didn’t occur very often, nobody was completely clear about how it worked, or what should be done when it was confirmed to be happening. A theory was eventually put forward that this sort of thing didn’t happen often because it wasn’t _supposed_ to happen, and over time the notion became set that past-life awareness was dangerous. ‘The body contains the soul and gives it form and direction, but the power of the soul can change the body.’” She said that part with her eyes briefly closed, quoting. “Basically, they came to believe that while a slow and gradual pace of recall was relatively safe, too sudden and strong a recollection would actually recreate the previous persona in its entirety, and that it would conflict with the existing one, to the point of taking over the body or killing both awarenesses.”

“Lucky for you, they got it wrong.” ChibiUsa paused. “They _did_ get it wrong, didn’t they?”

“It’s hard to say, exactly. The only thing different about me now is that I have Mercury’s memories in addition to my own, but my situation has too many unique elements involved to be any good as a template: first there’s the fact that Mercury was a Nereid and not a human; then there’s the influence of the mana nexus to consider; and then you have to take into account the fact that I only fully remembered her when I was transformed, with the Caduceus and a lot of extra energy that might have protected me.”

“Usagi turns into Serenity practically at the drop of a hat,” Rei pointed out.

“She has the ginzuishou to protect her,” Luna replied. “There really wasn’t any way for me to be sure of whether there was any danger to you or not, and when Ami came back talking like she was Mercury...” Luna shivered.

Calypso looked up from tickling Hotaru’s feet. “You worry too much, Luna.” She turned to Ami. “Are Serenity and Amma and Ishtar as much like they used to be as the rest of you are?”

“Very much so. Although,” Ami added, “Ish... _Minako_ has a slightly different... er”—she blushed again—“focus... than she used to.”

“Then I personally don’t think there’s going to be a problem,” Calypso declared confidently. “You didn’t have any trouble because there wasn’t really anything different enough between your _then_ and _now_ to cause a conflict, and I think the exact same thing will happen for the others. It’ll just be like rain falling over a lake; it causes a few ripples on the surface, but all that really happens is that the lake gets a little deeper.”

“Lakes flood over their shores sometimes,” Ami reminded her.

“That’s why humans build dams,” Calypso countered. “Or floodbreaks. Whatever you call them. My point is, the Caduceus and the energy boost it gave you would have protected you if anything had gone wrong, so Vestia should just go ahead and use the Book to track down more Weapons. And if anybody does start to have trouble in the meantime, get them transformed and as powered-up as you can. You get all kinds of automatic defenses just by being Senshi, and the more energy you’re actually holding on to, the stronger they get.”

Rei glanced at Luna. “Is she right?”

“Of course I’m right,” Calypso said, snuggling back down beside Ami. “We Nereids are always right. It’s a well-known fact.”

“I seem to remember you saying that on a number of occasions,” Michiru said dryly. “It was usually right before we got into trouble because you’d made a mistake.”

“My plans were always perfect,” Calypso replied. “_You_ were the one who made the mistakes.”

“_Really_? What about that time we tried to put a fountain in the garden and ended up turning the place into a swamp because _you_ miscalculated the water pressure in the sprinklers?”

“It _would_ have worked if you hadn’t snapped the pipe right in half,” Calypso retorted.

“I did exactly what you said to!”

“That was NOT what I told you to do!” Calypso shot back, sitting up. “I distinctly remember telling you to make a small hole in the top of the pipe, NOT to shear it in two!”

Hotaru nearly lost her seat as Michiru sat up as well and leaned towards Calypso. “I DID make a small hole! The force of the water coming OUT of it was what snapped the pipe!”

“YOU said you could keep something like that from happening!”

“YOU said the water pressure wouldn’t be that high!”

“TIME OUT!” Haruka shouted.

Calypso and Michiru both glared at her for a moment before they blushed and looked down at the floor like a pair of children expecting a scolding. Hotaru took one look at the two of them and immediately started giggling helplessly, and ChibiUsa joined in a moment later, falling over on the floor and laughing into the carpet.

“Honestly,” Ami said, her tone fitting her rediscovered role as an older sister to the hilt, “after ten centuries, I would have expected at least ONE of you to have outgrown this foolishness.”

“I’m sorry,” Michiru said contritely, looking absolutely amazed at her own behavior. “I don’t quite know where that came from. I think the last time I shouted at someone like that was when I was five, but it felt so _natural_...” She glanced up at Calypso. “I take it we did that quite a lot?”

The Nereid nodded.

“About once a week,” Ami added, “just on general principle. And again whenever you got into trouble for something. It didn’t improve as you got older, either. Ariel and I ended up having to separate you nearly every time.”

“Could you all please stop using antiquated names?” Ryo asked plaintively. “It makes keeping track VERY hard for some of us, and it’s going to cause nothing but trouble if anybody else hears it.”

“Speaking of other people,” Rei said, “how exactly _were_ you planning to hide your new sister, Ami-chan? She can’t just move into Mako-chan’s apartment with you.”

“Actually, she can, and nobody’ll think twice about it. Show them, Caly.”

Smiling, Calypso became mist again, dwindled, contracted, and reformed as a pretty little cat with ice-green eyes and white fur that had just the faintest tint of blue to it. She meowed with a kittenishly cute squeak.

“Don’t push it,” Luna warned her.

“What about food?” Rei pressed. “Don’t you eat electricity or something?”

“Essentially, yes.” As weird as it was hearing a near-perfect copy of Ami’s voice coming from a near-perfect replica of her body, hearing the voice coming from a small cat was even more bizarre. “If worst came to worst, Amma...”

“Makoto,” Ami corrected. “Or Mako-chan.”

“Mako-chan, then. If worst came to worst, she could always keep me fed with Jupiter’s electric powers. However...” Calypso’s slit-eyed feline gaze fell upon a short lamp standing on a table beyond Hotaru and Michiru. “Would you mind, La... I mean, Michiru?”

Following the Nereid’s gaze to the lamp, Michiru blinked and looked back. “You mean...?” She pointed at the lamp, and Calypso nodded. “You can do that?”

“Artificial energy was never as good for us as a pure source, but some kinds were enough for us to live off of. We won’t know if this’ll do unless I try.”

“Be my guest,” Michiru replied, gesturing towards the lamp.

“Wait a minute,” Haruka said, her eyes blinking around the light of dawning comprehension. “She’s not going to...”

The little cat scattered into a smoky mist, and Calypso drifted up above their heads, sparkling and shifting. Hotaru looked up at the cloud and raised one curious hand to poke at it, her fingers passing into the lower part of the mist with no sensation of resistance, just the cool dampness of the water and a tickling tingle.

“Stop that,” Michiru said, pulling Hotaru’s hand out of the mist.

A little bit of blue came down along with Hotaru’s fingers, a nebulous tendril which quickly worked its way up her arm, leapt left at her elbow, and landed on her belly. Sparkling points of light began to appear fast and furious along the end of the mist, and Hotaru started squirming and laughing.

“C-c-cut—hah!—that—mmph!—out!”

“Caly,” Ami said, admonishing her misty sister through a smile.

*She started it,* Calypso declared defensively, her voice a disembodied whisper in all of their minds as the glimmer ceased, the tendril drawing away from Hotaru to inspect the lamp instead.

“You... er... you may want to try the wall,” ChibiUsa suggested.

*The wall?* The length of mist found the cord at the base of the lamp and followed it back to the outlet. *Oh, I see. A general power-distribution network rather than independently-operated devices. What do you do if the source goes down, though?*

“We wait,” Haruka replied.

*I see. Well, let’s find out if this is of any use to me. Hmmm...* There was a noticeable *ZAP* as an arc of energy jumped from the wall socket to the shimmering end of Calypso’s flowing tendril. Anything human or animal would have jumped back instantly, assuming the shock hadn’t fried it, but the Nereid stayed where she was, and the electric discharge continued for all of three seconds before the tendril pulled away. The only obvious change to Calypso was that the glow illuminating her gaseous body became brighter, and the sparkles scattered throughout grew more numerous. Her inner light also took on a distinct shade of pink.

*My goodness.* Calypso’s voice seemed a bit different, and it was accompanied by the sound of mental giggles.

“What’s _that_ about?” ChibiUsa said, watching the light show.

“It means she likes it,” Ami said quickly, shooting a warning glance at Luna. There wasn’t really any need for them to get into a discussion about the electricity-based link between the feeding and reproductive habits of Nereids just now.

While they all waited for Calypso to come down, it occurred to Ryo that from the proper angle, his girlfriend’s peculiar new sister bore a striking resemblance to deep-space images of other galaxies.

Calypso hovered there for a few moments after withdrawing her ‘arm’ from the outlet, and when she moved again, it was not towards the couch. Reassuming human form so that she seemed to drift down to a soft landing, she stood in front of Ryo and smiled.

“And you,” she said, putting her arms around his neck, “have pretty eyes.” She kissed him lightly, and Ryo’s face went red.

“Caly.” Ami was smiling again, but her voice had the sound of clenched teeth in it.

“He started it,” Calypso replied.

“I did NOT!” Ryo blurted.

“Yes, you did. You said I looked like a galaxy.”

“I did not... oh. That’s right, you’re telepathic. Look, just because I was thinking it doesn’t mean I was thinking of _saying_ it, and even if I _was_ thinking of saying it, I don’t think I would have said it.” He blinked and immediately discarded the idea of trying to make sense of what he’d just said. “Could you let go of me now?”

She did that, and then folded her arms and looked at him thoughtfully. “Interesting. I can’t say that you remind me of anyone in particular, but there’s something in there that seems... hmmm...” Ryo felt a faint pushing sensation inside his head.

“Caly!” Ami snapped. “You stop that this instant!”

“I was just...”

“NOW!” Ami’s expression softened along with her tone as she stood up and walked over. “Caly, we already discussed this. I know it’ll be hard for you, but you agreed you wouldn’t go digging into people’s thoughts.”

“But I could _help_ you,” Calypso protested. “I can go anywhere without anyone noticing me, and I could find things out...”

“You could do that,” Ami agreed, “but ignoring for the moment the fact that it wouldn’t be right to go spying on the private thoughts of half the people in the city, what would happen if something found _you_ out? I know you still have most of strength and all of the knowledge of the others, and I know that it makes you ten times stronger than you would be otherwise, but that’s still not enough for you to stand up to the kind of creatures we have to deal with.”

“I kept Hotaru-chan out of the cave, didn’t I?”

“You know as well as I do that it wasn’t just you doing that.”

“What _was_?” Hotaru asked.

“That cave was more than just a storeroom for the Caduceus,” Ami replied. “It was also the resting place of the Senshi of Mercury.”

Hotaru frowned. “Luna said Nereids either evaporated or froze when they died. How could they have gotten something like mist back there to be buried?”

“It wasn’t a graveyard, Hotaru. It was where the Senshi of Mercury went to die.”

The little Senshi of Saturn blinked. “I don’t understand. Why?”

Ami sighed. “Hotaru, Nereids didn’t measure their lifespan in decades; they measured it in centuries, and they didn’t suffer from injury, illness, or the effects of aging during all that. Quite the opposite; they generally got _stronger_ as they got older. But even at the peak of the Silver Millennium, the average life expectancy of a normal person was only about seventy years. It was bad enough for a normal Nereid who made friends or fell in love with an ordinary person, but Mercury always had it worse. She’d grow up with and train alongside the other Senshi, just like we do, and she’d be as close to them as I am to all of you—and then they’d begin to die on her, some in battle, others from illness, and the rest from inevitable old age. One hundred years was considered the age of maturity among Nereids, but by the time Mercury reached that age, most of the closest friends of her youth would already be dead.”

“The cave was originally built merely to house the Caduceus,” Calypso said, “but the Mercury at the time of its construction went in one day after the last of her Senshi friends had passed away, and never came out again. She was just a little more than seventy-three. It was a sad day, but after a while, it became an unspoken tradition among us that when Mercury felt it was her time, she’d go to the cave. It was the only thing to do to stop her from hurting so much after her friends were gone. Some lasted longer than others, but in the end, all those who weren’t killed in action would come home to die.”

It was impossible not to notice her take Ami’s hand as she spoke.

“We always suspected something like that must be happening,” Luna said quietly. “It was really the only explanation for why all the old Mercuries kept disappearing. But I have to admit, I don’t understand how it could have stopped Saturn from getting in.”

“By itself, it wouldn’t have,” Ami admitted. “But each time one Mercury died in that cave, her energy didn’t dissipate in quite the same way that it would have for a normal Nereid. It was absorbed by the rocks and the water and the structure of the Blue Hall, and it stayed there, in a form that didn’t have consciousness anymore. The Hall and the cave became so strongly oriented to the power of Mercury that that was where each new Mercury was born, using some of the energy of her predecessors to insure the birth was successful.” Ami’s eyes closed, and she smiled. “I remember waking up for the first time in that place. I could hear Mother’s voice, and the voices of the other elders, and all the whispers of the inhabitants of the city who attended... and I heard something... hundreds of quiet voices nobody else seemed to know were there, all of them welcoming me...”

“Ami,” Luna said, “for the sake of what’s left of my nerves, please stop doing that.”

Ami opened her eyes. “Sorry, Luna. It’s just that the Blue Hall was kind of central to Mercury, and thinking about it brought back some strong memories. As I was going to say, the Hall was very important to all the Nereids; it was holy ground.”

Rei nodded silently. There had been a feeling in the old building not all that different from the peaceful warmth she felt at Hikawa.

“After Beryl destroyed the planet,” Ami continued, “there were some survivors, Nereids who had been inside the transit system and just far enough out of phase with reality to escape the main force of the attack. They realized that they were dying from the aftereffects of the bomb, so they gathered at the Blue Hall and did something similar to what all those generations of Mercuries had done, sacrificing themselves to increase the strength of the energy that was protecting the Caduceus. The defense they had in mind needed _a_ mind to guide it, and Caly was the youngest—and she was my sister—so the others gave their energies up into her. They knew I’d come for her, so they saved her life, but they also made her... more.”

“More what?” ChibiUsa asked.

“It’s hard to explain,” Calypso said. “I still have much of the energy of my elders, and all of their knowledge, and it’s made me able to do things no Nereid short of Mercury should be able to do. I almost _am_ another Mercury myself, and while I was in the cave, I could feel the lives and strength of all those who came before my sister.”

“The energy in the cave is aligned to Nereids in general and Mercury in particular,” Ami said, taking up the story again, “and it amplified Caly’s abilities even further.” She looked at Hotaru. “When you tried to open a dimension door into the cave, Caly was able to disperse the energy on her side before it fully formed. The door didn’t open because she simply didn’t want it to.”

“There wasn’t anything ‘simple’ about it,” Calypso said, turning to Ami. “It took every bit of information crammed into my mind and all the energy the cave could give me to take those things apart without blowing up half the city in the process.”

“Good.” The sisters looked down past Michiru at Hotaru. “Don’t give me that look, Ami-chan. I don’t like it any better than you when my powers get messed with.”

“Well, it won’t happen again. Since she’s a Nereid and I’m not, Caly’s abilities now are a little different from what mine were when Luna first activated Mercury, but they’re about the same strength. And that,” Ami said, fixing a firm look on Calypso, “is why I’m not going to let you wander around looking for trouble. I know exactly what I was capable of right at first, and I know it wouldn’t be enough to stand up to what we’ve been seeing recently.”

“But...”

“NO, Caly. I lost you once, and I’m not going to take the chance of it happening again.” Calypso stopped pouting immediately, smiled, and gave Ami a hug, which she returned. “Now, do you promise me you won’t go off by yourself?”

“I promise.”

“Good. And keep your hands off Ryo,” Ami added. “He’s mine.”

“Okay. But he _does_ have pretty eyes.”

They both turned and looked speculatively at Ryo. “Yes,” Ami agreed, with only a faint blush, “he does.”

“Quit that,” Ryo said to both of them, reddening slightly himself.

“Quit what?” they said back. Ryo stared at them, then closed his pretty eyes and let out a slow breath.

“I’m seeing a lot of headaches for Mako-chan in the near future,” he predicted gloomily. “I...” He stopped with a faint grunt and a sudden expression of mild pain. It set off a sympathetic twinge in Ami’s mind.

“What did you see?”

“Jupiter. The planet,” he added quickly. “From one of the moons, I think.”

“You’re sure?” Haruka asked.

“The red spot is pretty distinctive,” Ryo replied, “and my point of view was close enough to get a good look at it.” He frowned. “I saw a shadow on the ground, but I’m not sure who it...” He blinked suddenly and grunted again. “What the...”

“Again?” Ami asked in surprise.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you have two visions right on top of each other like this,” Rei said. “I know _I_ certainly don’t.”

“Neither do I,” Ryo replied. “Or maybe I should say I _didn’t_. It was some guy I’ve never seen before, this time—a _big_ guy. He was standing next to Chiba-san, and he was just a bit shorter, but nearly twice as wide. He...” Ryo stopped and shook his head, and so did Rei.

“_Another_ one?” Ami sounded worried now. “_Both_ of you?”

“A moonlit beach?” Ryo asked hopefully, looking at Rei with a pained expression.

Rei shook her head. “A snowy park somewhere in town. At night. With another nexus.”

“Terrific.” They both winced again. “This is really getting tiresome,” Ryo grumbled, sitting down and putting his hands over his face. “And it looks like we’re going to get a fairly strong earthquake this summer.”

Rei was frowning. “I saw that park again. Hold on a moment; I want to try something.”

She raised her hands, closed her eyes, and focused intently as her hands began to move through the familiar series of motions, accompanied by the faintest whisper of her chanting. Rei hadn’t actually tried calling a vision without some sort of fire as a focus before, but if—as she suspected—some outside force was triggering these flashes in her mind and in Ryo’s, then she might be able to...

Rei’s eyes snapped open—and Calypso’s went wide—as she brought her hands together and felt a soft burst of heat. No fire, but heat nonetheless. That had never happened before. More than that, the image had formed clearly in her mind again, and it was holding steady, along with a familiar directional tug.

“It’s happening right now,” she said. “There’s a mana nexus in the park, and it’s sending out some kind of pulse...”

“Then could one or all of you kindly do something about it?” Ryo asked, gritting his teeth. “This is starting to get”—he actually shook a bit as the next vision hit him—“bad.”

“I can help with that,” Calypso said brightly.

“Caly...”

“I won’t hurt him, sister. I’ll just put him to sleep so that he can’t be consciously aware of things.”

“You can do that?” Haruka asked in surprise.

Calypso nodded, looked quickly at Ami and Ryo—both of whom nodded—and then put her hands to the sides of Ryo’s head. Her entire body flickered with lines of blue energy, and Ryo slumped immediately; Calypso caught him with surprising ease, showing a great deal more strength than her slender frame should have possessed as she picked Ryo up and carried him over to the couch Hotaru and Michiru were in the process of vacating.

“Is he okay?” Hotaru asked.

“He’s very deeply asleep,” Calypso replied, setting Ryo down. “Too deep to dream or feel the pain. I can keep him like this for five or six hours before I’ll have to wake him up. Are you okay?” she said, looking at Rei. “I can put you to sleep as well if you need help.”

“Thanks, but I’m okay. I’ve got a better handle on these visions than Ryo does—and besides, somebody has to point the way.”

“I’ve got it,” Ami said, looking at her computer and waiting for it to analyze the disturbance. When it returned an answer, she blinked. “The energy signature reads as... temporal...”

ChibiUsa looked up. “Pu.”

# 

The movie had just progressed to a point where the female lead was on the verge of being forced to marry an older man whose main interest was in her family’s lands—although he wasn’t averse to some of the benefits of a lovely young wife—while her one true love got shipped off to fight in a war in lieu of serving time or being executed for a theft and murder he hadn’t committed.

Setsuna had been watching the entire movie with a focused intensity that had even Minako a little worried—it wasn’t THAT good a movie, after all—but when the scene of the lovers’ last moonlit tryst came up, her gaze faltered, and she shook from head to toe as a wave of invisible iciness washed over her. It set off a feeling in her head that she couldn’t remember experiencing before and certainly hadn’t expected to encounter now, but which she somehow knew instantly to be a warning from the Garnet Orb that something was interfering with the energy of Time on a major scale.

In that same moment, Usagi looked down at her brooch as she felt the ginzuishou give a solid *whump* of energy in response to something she herself hadn’t sensed in any way.

“Usagi,” Setsuna said quietly.

“I know.” Another chilling ripple; another *whump* of force. Minako’s eyes broke off watching the screen as she looked around curiously.

“Usagi,” Artemis said in a voice even lower than a whisper. “Was that the ginzuishou?”

Usagi touched his arm and “Mmm-hmm”-ed softly, right before the crystal jolted her again. Setsuna had a deathgrip on the armrests of her seat and was struggling to keep her breathing under control; a moment later, three communicators beeped softly.

“Perfect timing,” Usagi murmured, almost relieved. All four of them stood and hurried out of the theater. The girl at the snack bar blinked in surprise as they came out, but Usagi was already pointing down the hall.

“The phones are that way, right?”

There was a quick look at Setsuna, who was pale and visibly shaking, an expression of comprehension, and a nod from the girl; Usagi nodded back and led the way out of sight. She took a quick look around to make sure nobody else was nearby, unhooked a phone receiver just in case someone did come along, and flipped open her communicator.

“We’re here.”

“We’ve got a problem,” Rei’s voice said. “There’s another nexus in the park, and it’s playing with Time. Luna says we’ll need Pluto to stop it.”

Usagi glanced at Setsuna, who returned a look that said it was going to take a lot more than just her, Minako, and Artemis to _stop_ her from going.

“She’ll be there.” Usagi closed her communicator and hung up the phone, and they headed for the exits.

“Can you find your way?” Minako asked.

“Easily,” Setsuna replied, transformation pen in hand even before they got outside. The exit they had taken came out in a short alley between the theater and the mall to which the multiplex was attached; the place was deserted except for a scruffy brown cat which popped out from behind the dumpster at the end of the alley and padded over to wrap itself around Artemis’ legs, purring noisily.

Minako glanced down at the cat while Setsuna transformed, smiled, and then looked up at Pluto. “Maybe you’d better take Artemis with you so we can be sure he isn’t getting into trouble.”

Artemis cleared his throat and tried—unsuccessfully—to shoo the cat away, while Pluto shook her head. “He’d just slow me down.” She raised her staff, and crimson energy gathered around it, spreading rapidly to her body. “MARCH OF TIME: QUICKEN!”

The red light flared, and Pluto jumped. Any of the Senshi could have cleared the level of the theater roof without any real trouble, but Pluto did it in the blink of an eye and left a blurred arc of red in her wake.

Usagi opened her communicator again. “Pluto?”

“Go.” The word came out short and fast.

“I don’t want to worry Mom, so come back to the mall after you’re done so we can link up before we go home. We’ll be in the food court.”

“GotitI’llseeyouthere.” Usagi blinked as her mind worked to interpret the hasty jumble of words, and then nodded and closed her communicator again.

# 

“It’s a different type of energy this time,” Sciences reported into the phone, “but we still can’t get a precise reading on the source. Whatever’s going on seems to be affecting the entire city, and maybe even further than that.”

“But it doesn’t seem to be doing anything harmful?” Political asked quickly.

“Not that we’ve been able to determine so far, but it’s playing havoc with any chronometers that are hooked into the sensor network. Some have stopped, others are running ahead at about one day every ten seconds, and a few are going backwards just as quickly. We’re trying to see if the different effects on the clocks might have something to do with the position of the scanners they’re linked to. If it works, we may be able to triangulate the center of the disturbance.”

“I’ve got people working the streets to see if they can spot anything,” Information added. “Nothing’s turned up so far.”

“Keep at it.”

# 

“I don’t see anything,” Uranus said, scanning around from the rooftop where she, Neptune, Mars, and Mercury were standing. The park before them and the city skyline all around seemed perfectly normal for a night in late February; cold but not utterly freezing, snow-covered and ice-rimmed but not buried entirely. The full moon was really spectacular, and Uranus smiled faintly at the similarity it currently bore to Usagi.

“It’s around here somewhere,” Mars insisted. “My head’s starting to feel like the inside of a drum with all this pounding.”

“I see it,” Neptune said. She was facing away from them and looking into her Mirror, turning it to catch the image of something over her shoulder. “They don’t appear to have upgraded their design yet,” she reported. “The nexus is still made entirely of that green material. I don’t see any units.”

Mercury glanced into the Aqua Mirror and then called both her computer and the Caduceus. A small slot in the base of the Caduceus’s handle whisked open, and Mercury inserted the computer into the hole, getting a definite ‘click’ as the device slid home and was locked into place. Mercury tugged at the earring which triggered her visor, and as it glowed into existence this time, a small blue disc materialized over her left ear, extending a slender microphone.

“Vocal command interface,” she explained quickly, tapping the side of the disc to trigger the uplink to the Caduceus. “Engage scan mode. Target forward, one hundred and thirty-five degree scanning area, all parameters; identify and display any life-signs currently present.”

The blue jewel atop the Caduceus glowed for a moment, and a grid pattern appeared on Mercury’s visor, overlaying everything she saw and adding a few things she couldn’t see, such as the outline of the mana nexus. Several indicators appeared as well, pointing out presences within or near the structure.

“Halt scan and standby.” Mercury turned to her friends. “It looks like there are eleven units in there, one of them a second-generation type. The barrier that’s keeping the nexus invisible reaches to the edge of the park, and so does a lot of the bioweave.”

“Their security cameras, then,” Neptune said. “It seems they haven’t quite given up on their attempts to get us on tape.”

Something red streaked down from the roof behind them and became Pluto as it slowed to a halt.

“You made good time,” Uranus noted lightly, moving away before Neptune had a chance to reach out and punch her in the arm again.

“Congratulations,” Pluto said, nodding at Mercury with a small smile. “Now, aren’t we a few heads short?”

“Hotaru has to keep clear of this one,” Mercury replied. “Her powers are dangerous enough already without adding in her trying to use them in an area of distorted space-time. ChibiUsa stayed behind to keep her company, and Luna’s keeping an eye on things. We called Mako-chan, but she’s got company of some sort and has her communicator switched to playback mode, so it looks like it’s just the five of us.”

Pluto nodded as she took that in. “So... did Luna happen to mention exactly how I’m supposed to stop this thing alone when it took the three of you to disable that first one?”

“As a matter of fact, she did. But first, we have to get that shield down.” Mercury glanced at Neptune.

“You’re _sure_ this is going to work?” Uranus asked.

“The Aqua Mirror can reveal illusions, and it also has the power to break them from a distance.” Mercury looked at Neptune. “Taking down an image that large is going to be hard, though, so be careful. Caly’ll be furious with me if you get hurt.”

Neptune smiled and then stepped to one side to give herself some room, looking at the area of the nexus with firm resolve as she gathered her strength. She wasn’t sure at first how to begin, so she looked into the Mirror... and images formed.

Neptune turned the Mirror towards the nexus and held it up in front of her face with both hands as she bowed her head. In her mind’s eye, two great waves were crashing together behind her, one swirling high over the other, which was itself twisting up into the first. She could hear the roar, smell the water, feel the spray...

“SUBMARINE...” Neptune turned through a slow circle as she raised the Mirror above her head, eyes still closed and thus unable to see the vaporous energy that trailed from the front of her Talisman and swirled around her; it brushed her face, and she felt it as an errant wavelet shattering on the rocks and splashing playfully against her cheeks, lifting her head back with a smile.

“...REFLECTION...” The trailing energy swirled into the glass, briefly creating the image of a whirlpool before it was absorbed, and the front of the Mirror shone a brighter and brighter blue; Neptune’s smile settled into a serene determination as she brought her arms forward sharply. In the same moment that the Mirror was again pointed at the nexus, Neptune opened her eyes and called out the final word:

“REVELATION!”

The energy-whirlpool reappeared in reverse as the forefront of a pillar of watery energy, spiraling out from the Mirror with explosive force and flashing through empty air. Out over the park, the blue energy smashed into part of a dome of crackling green force which hadn’t been there a second ago, and it spread out along the edge of the barrier, moving faster and further as Neptune kept up the attack.

Something gave, and the two conflicting energies both disappeared with a flash, a shattering chime, and a spray-like discharge of many hundreds of fast- fading motes of green and blue light. The mana nexus stood revealed, and Neptune lowered her Mirror.

“Are you okay?” Uranus asked quietly. “You look a little flushed.”

“I’m fine,” Neptune said, letting out a breath. “That was just... a bit rough at the end.”

After looking quickly to Neptune and then the park and the nexus, Pluto turned to Mercury. “And now that we’ve given away our location, the next part of this plan is...?”

“To start running.”

# 

“We’ve got a sighting! Something that looks like a tower of fungus just showed up in the park!”

The Information Director gestured for his excited subordinate to hand over the printout, calm down, and keep quiet, before he picked up the phone and dialed.

“Information here. There’s been a positive sighting.” He relayed the coordinates on the report and then listened. “You picked up a power spike in that region. Time?” There was a pause, and he nodded. “Just before the place appeared. Yes, I’d tend to agree. Yes. I’ll do that. Right.”

He hung up the phone and turned back to the other man. “Get in touch with our people in that sector and have them converge. I want to get as much information out of this incident as possible.”

“Yessir!” Watching the younger man race out of the office, the Director made a note to himself to speak to Resources about switching to a less caffeine-rich brand of coffee.

# 

Following the destruction of the invisibility shield, the units jumped out of their hiding places. Obeying the plan programmed into them by their creator, six of the first-generation units took up defensive positions around the nexus, while their four brethren accompanied the more powerful second-generation unit out in the direction from which the attack had come.

This unit, while primarily human in shape and size, currently looked more like a lump of dough than a human being. Its skin had taken on an unhealthy shade of grey as it hardened into a more damage-resistant configuration, and short spikes of bone jutted from its knees, elbows, and forearms.

“That’s a rather ugly piece of work.”

“Indeed.” Archon’s attention did not waver from the images held within the spherical construct of the scrying spell as he answered his apprentice’s remark. “Our early unit generations were designed for functionality rather than form; it was only later, as we developed the technology and tested its limits, that we became able to craft more... aesthetically pleasing shapes. The major advantage of these cruder designs is that their construction is quicker and less costly—and for battlefield applications, cost-effectiveness is really all that counts.”

The girl made a faint sound of agreement. “Why Time? I understand that you need energy, but everything in my grandmother’s books said that Time is harder to harness and less flexible in application than the other elements, and nothing you’ve taught me suggests otherwise.”

“Correct on all points. There was an unforeseen complication last week in the form of a temporal disturbance, and due to a lack of power for specialized devices in the Imperial City, I was not able to properly track down and identify the source of that disturbance. This nexus is helping to compensate for that incident by charging the equipment so that any further such disturbances can be isolated and neutralized.”

“The idea of playing around with Time like this makes my skin crawl,” the apprentice said with a shiver.

“You are not the only one who dislikes interfering with Time. I am not fully comfortable with it myself, and their Imperial Highnesses were both extremely reluctant to sanction this operation.”

“They’ve had a bad experience with Time, I take it.”

“To put it mildly.” The black eyes of Archon’s projected image narrowed as the scrying globe hummed softly.

“What was that?”

“The perimeter is under attack. There.” The scene in the globe showed rings of fire cutting through treelike stands of bioweave, slicing off and charring to uselessness several dozen of the eye-like red growths in a matter of seconds. A gesture from Archon’s hands caused the invisible, immaterial ‘sensor’ of the spell to begin searching for the cause of the damage, but the globe hummed a second time and instead showed a small forest of stalks and scanners, frozen under an inch of solid ice on the opposite side of the perimeter from the burned-out area.

“And now the advance group of units is under attack,” Archon noted, as the globe hummed again, at a slightly different pitch.

“You actually sound approving.”

“Professionalism, my dear. Respect your enemy’s skills, study his strengths so that you may learn from him, study his weakness so that you may defeat him, and remember him well when he is gone.”

“Or she,” the girl said, pointing at the globe. “Look.”

Archon had already seen the image, a tall woman with short blonde hair, curious attire, and a whistling sword that the archmage recognized even as it cut off the head of the unit that had been sending the image.

“Or she,” Archon admitted. “And so it seems that your assumption was correct after all—in which case the units and the nexus are quite certainly doomed.”

The girl looked at him blankly. “And you’re not upset about this?”

Archon looked up and smiled. “As I told you some weeks ago, I am not unfamiliar with Senshi. There are only two of them whose powers could affect a quick deactivation of a mana nexus set to draw on Time, and neither of those two is a factor here. I suspect a Senshi of Mars is there to take advantage of the bioweave’s vulnerability to flame, but by the time she is successful in disabling the nexus, we will have gained an optimum amount of energy.”

The globe hummed again. It was showing a point-of-view image from one of the many sensor nodes built into the nexus itself, a node trying to track the movement of a blindingly fast crimson streak that came racing in from the scorched area of the perimeter and almost literally flew up the side of the nexus, springing from ledge to outcropping to slightly-less-than-vertical-face at an impossible speed.

The blur came to a halt at the top of the nexus, on the edge of the platform between the spires, and the red energy bled away, some of it fading into the air and more being drawn up into the heart of the shifting mass of power contained by the spires. What was left behind was a tall, dark-haired young woman with an expressionless look on her face and eyes that were reflecting the eerie red light of the power crackling all around her.

Archon’s black eyes had narrowed; now they widened in a moment of shock that his apprentice could not fail to notice.

A shape leapt up from the other side of the nexus. It was a heavily-modified first-generation unit intended as a last line of defense, its shoulders and torso bristling with glowing red ‘eyes’ that could unleash enough firepower to knock down a respectable-sized house. The apprentice watched in amazement as the Senshi raised her staff, whispered something inaudible, and unleashed a blast of dark energy which—in virtually every sense of the word—blew the unit away. The attack struck the automaton’s elastic body in the midsection and threw it backwards some four meters; seconds later, the array of ‘eyes’ exploded en masse, incinerating the unit long before whatever was ultimately left of it hit the ground.

With one shot—ONE!—that Senshi had done with ease something the girl knew she would have had to use several of her own most powerful abilities to pull off—and she wasn’t done yet.

With the unit neutralized, the Senshi now turned her attention to the nexus. She gazed up at the center of the huge device’s power with an expression that clearly asked: Can I do this?

There was absolutely no trace of uncertainty or fear in that questioning look. It was more like the woman had just discovered that yes, she _could_ do this, and was asking the question out of wonder. She raised her staff, and the great jewel on the end erupted with crimson light, innumerable lines of energy which streaked all over, touching things that had been invisible and remained tantalizingly half-seen. She opened her mouth...

The spell-globe trembled violently as words of incredible volume left the Senshi’s lips. Archon’s image wavered along with the globe, while his apprentice clapped her hands to her ears and turned away.

The deafening noise continued for several long seconds, and when it stopped, the two words which followed were incredibly clear: “MOBIUS SPIN.”

Turning back to the image in surprise at the return of normal volume, the girl saw the Senshi’s staff—floating in the air before her and directly under the energy of the nexus—begin to spin. Whatever was happening there was too much for the scrying spell, and the globe imploded on itself; scant seconds later, there was a ripple of energy which both mages knew meant that the nexus had been destroyed.

Archon’s ghostly reflection stared down at the empty space where the globe had been for a long time, and then he vanished without a word to his apprentice. Somehow, that failed to surprise her. This little turn of events had to have been a big upset for her teacher, and it certainly hadn’t been much fun for her, either.

With that thought in mind, she headed for the bathroom to try and find some aspirin, and to make sure the unnatural silence filling her room wasn’t because her eardrums had burst. She knew they must be working because she’d heard those last two words, but she just wanted to make sure.

# 

To Uranus’s mind, it was even money as to which had actually kickstarted the mana nexus into coming apart at the seams: the sudden removal of its central energy, or the fact that it had taken the full force of Pluto’s volume-enhanced voice at the same time. Regardless, the thing was well and truly going down in flames. Explosions running along the sides blew off large sections of green debris, most of which disintegrated long before they hit the ground, while plumes of green-grey smoke erupted from the cracks left behind by those fallen bits and pieces, sweeping the trees on all sides with a rain of dust.

Whatever that green stuff really was, it didn’t hold together very long or very well without its energy. Uranus saw a hefty slab somewhat larger than her car split away from one of the decaying spires and go crashing down on a nearby tree. When the huge dust cloud cleared, the car-sized mass was completely gone and the tree remained standing, undamaged as far as Uranus could see. A similar sort of decay was overtaking the ‘welcome mat,’ with whatever green stalks and red clusters Mars and Mercury hadn’t already fried or frozen now tumbling in on themselves or falling into each other like a field of dominoes.

The units weren’t being quite so accommodating, but even better than two-to-one odds and the presence of the second-generation unit weren’t helping the automatons very much. They did not like Mars’s fire-based attacks at _all_; a couple of Fire Souls turned one of the things into a torch, and a Burning Mandala had left two more struggling to slap out the fiery gashes on their extremities. Neptune and Mercury had systematically corralled four of the things with soaking blasts before Mercury unleashed a Shabon Spray Freezing and turned the lot of them into popsicles. They were finishing that job with a combination Deep Submerge and Aqua Illusion, creating a pillar-sized jet of water which ploughed right through the line of flash-frozen freaks and reduced them to ice cubes, and from the smell of things, Mars had been successful in igniting those last two fungus-men.

*Which leaves me the no-man, here,* Uranus thought, blasting the more advanced unit with a World Shaking and then racing after the attack to start working on the unit with her sword while it was still too stunned to defend itself.

The thing’s mutated flesh was more resistant to her weapon’s edge than the stringy substance of its predecessors, and when Uranus struck, there was no blood. This was both a comfort and a bit disturbing; Uranus had no particular desire to get splashed by the contents of this or any other creature’s body—the way her luck ran, a typical monster’s blood was probably deadly poisonous, acidic, and riddled with disease, if not all three at once—but this unit still _looked_ human to some extent, and when the human body got cut with a sword, it was _supposed_ to bleed. The unit didn’t bleed or even bruise, and the way its body reacted to her blows, rippling away from blunt impacts and flying off in gooey chunks when slashed, made Uranus feel like she was fighting some kind of insidious Pillsbury Doughboy. And when you poked _this_ thing in the belly, it poked back, with digits that were more like knives than fingers.

Uranus swung down, the unit raised its left arm to block the falling Space Sword, and there was a crunch as the blade sank into the gooey flesh and struck the bone beneath. Uranus tugged, but bone spikes shot from the unit’s gashed palm, locking around the back of her sword and holding it fast as the creature drew back its free arm, long bone spikes telescoping out of its knuckles.

“SPACE SWORD BLASTER!”

This was probably the closest Uranus had ever been to her target when trying to use that attack, and the result of the force being unleashed almost before it had a chance to go anywhere was impressive. Bone splinters and globs of false flesh exploded away from her sword in every direction as the unit’s arm was disassembled from the elbow down. Still leaning down to add weight to a hold that no longer existed, the unit staggered to the left, and Uranus slid to the right, narrowly avoiding the bony claws that slashed past her face.

“That’s enough of this,” she muttered, taking her sword in both hands and raising it over her head.

She hesitated for a split second as a scene from her past burst into her mind. She was standing in a room aboard a ship... somewhere... on Earth? No, not on Earth... but not on the Moon, either, or Venus... Mercury didn’t have water oceans, Mars barely had _any_ water... it was somewhere else... and _not_ a ship in water... a ship in air...

# 

The skyship rocked disturbingly as another explosion went off along the lower hull. People shouted and grabbed whatever was handy to keep on their feet; someone’s hand locked around her arm and pulled back, hard, but she hardly budged. She’d been riding these ships for fifteen years, on and off, almost since infancy—since before learning to walk, even—and it would take a lot more to shake her than this.

“Where’s the hit?” the captain’s voice roared over the din as he fought with the helm to hold the ship steady. Atmospheric navigation was tricky even under ideal conditions, and it was a testament to the man’s experience that they hadn’t listed to one side from this or any of the previous blasts.

“Portside, sir! Looks like the fo’c’s’le!”

“Can’t be pirates, then,” the captain grated. “They’d’a gone for the sails first...” There was another thunderous explosion, and the ship rocked again. “Bloody blazing hells! Dakkun! Give me a hand with this thing before she rolls on us!” A burly crewman scrambled along the ladder-like row of handholds set into the floor until he reached his captain, then stood and set himself to helping right the ship again.

“S’got to be tempests, captain!” The young fellow who had spoken was pale, his eyes wide with near-panic as he braced himself against the deck for the next impact.

“D’you think I don’t know that after sixteen years in these skies, lad?!” The captain turned to the only passenger on the shielded storm deck—and one of the few people still standing—and shrugged. “Good lad there, but it’s his first voyage in your old lady’s skies. Probably didn’t believe in tempests any more than he did in daimons until about two minutes ago.”

Ariel smiled. “We’ll find him a daimon some other time, captain. For now, would you object if my friend and I chased off our uninvited guests?”

“By all means, lass. We’ve got some skyrigs in the...”

“We don’t need them,” Ariel said lightly, turning and sliding along the deck.

“You’re going out there like that?!” one of the crew demanded after her. “Naked against the storms?!”

Ariel looked back at him and grinned. “Only in your dreams, skyboy.” She continued on, and found Mercury waiting for her at the amidships atmospheric hatch. “I take it you heard?”

Mercury nodded. “You really _should_ take a skyrig, Ariel. I’ll float no matter what, but if you get knocked out... well, it’s a long way down, and I may not be able to catch up to you in time.”

“And spoil the fun?” Ariel opened the hatch, transforming with an exuberant yell as she jumped out into the open, yellow-tinted skies of Uranus. She plunged down for six or seven seconds, found a current, and rode it back up towards the ship.

As the crewman had said, that rattling blow had been to the ship’s port side, and Ariel could clearly make out the tempests now. They were storm-spirits, somewhat similar to Nereids in that their ‘bodies’ consisted of vapors and energy rather than solid matter, but tempests were about fifty times bigger than any Nereid and totally lacking in the shapeshifting powers, intellect, and gentleness which characterized the people of the innermost world. Tempests were dumb, strong, and violent things, dwelling in the ceaseless storm wind atmospheres of Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, generally unseen but every so often rising up from the lower levels to torment passing ships and their crews.

Tempests looked like roiling black thunderheads even when they weren’t angry, and this bunch stood out particularly clearly against the mostly white and yellow clouds as they hurled another lightning bolt against the ship—aimed at the hull, thankfully. The reinforced plating on a skyship could withstand quite a number of lightning strikes, but a hit to the delicate sails would be another matter entirely, and could easily strand the ship for hours or even days before repairs were affected or help arrived.

Mercury was already doing something about that. With her personal magnetic field interfacing with the planet’s as a means of propulsion, she didn’t need to rely on wind currents, and she had circled wide to get behind the tempests before unleashing a Shabon Spray at them. The next lightning bolt hit the mist and went off right in its creators’ metaphorical faces, startling them and alerting them to the possibility that they might not be alone out here.

Ariel adjusted her course and shot up above the level of ship, tempests, and Mercury, drew her sword, and slipped sideways out of the current. She fell like a stone, right into the middle of the tempest pack, the inherent magic of her sword doing far more damage to the cloudy beasts than the simple force of her passage. Less than a heartbeat after it started, the plunging attack was complete, a wide hole ringed by spitting arcs of electrical energy punched clean through the pack’s center.

Mercury flew into that hole next and resumed her natural form, expanding out to fill the void, and when her own complex energy fields came into contact with the cruder ones of the tempests, the brutes let out a howl as their power was sapped away. The pack divided and pulled away in all directions, turning as they did to glare at the blue mist with flashing red lightning-slits of eyes. For obvious enough reasons, tempests hated Nereids even more than humans, and these ones flashed and rumbled in the manner that betrayed a buildup towards more lightning bolts. Mercury might feed on electricity, but the levels these things could produce would hurt even her.

Below them, Ariel grinned and let fly with a World Shaking at the nearest tempest. The hurricane-force energy slammed into the cloudy entity and tore it apart, causing its allies to turn in stupefied astonishment and forget about their attack long enough for Mercury to climb out of range. That done, Ariel sought out the nearest thermal and began climbing again, before she dropped too far.

There was only a certain level in the Uranian atmosphere—or on Jupiter or Neptune—where the temperature, air pressure, and gaseous components were benign enough for a normal human to tolerate. Go too high, and you froze, suffocated, or suffered what skymen called the bursts, blood vessels near the surface of the skin rupturing in the critically low pressure; go too low, and you’d best start praying for the increased toxicity of the atmosphere to kill you before the rising atmospheric pressure imploded your body. And then there were the winds to consider. A Senshi had far superior tolerances for such things and could withstand the void of space itself if she had to, but a fall into the center of one of the gas giants would kill even a Senshi, even if it was _her_ planet. Well, except for Saturn—but then, a plunge into the center of Saturn was an even stupider idea, if for very different reasons.

So Ariel caught the thermal, turned on her back, and spread her arms and legs, catching the maximum force of the wind and beginning a rapid ascent towards the tempests, which were clustering together again. Not a bad idea; it made sure one of them was looking in each direction, making it impossible to sneak up on the pack as a whole from behind, but in their eagerness to get the Nereid they saw above them, the tempests had forgotten about the thing that had shot through them before.

The updraft carried her just a bit wide of the group—Ariel caught a glimpse of two sparking red eyes that seemed VERY surprised to see her—spoiling her initial plan of attack, so Ariel twisted in the wind and used her command of the air to affect a maneuver nobody else could have managed, creating a stable platform of air for herself. She felt it take shape beneath her feet and guided it out of the force of the thermal so that she was facing the tempest-pack. The nearest creature saw her, and she smiled at it and waved.

“’Bye.” Ariel took the Space Sword in both hands, held it high, and brought it down in a powerful arc, calling out...

# 

“SKY RENDER!”

The downward cut of the Space Sword left a wide wave of yellow energy in its wake, and that force expanded forward at terrific speed, creating a golden wall as thin as a hair which split the air with an ear-piercing shriek and seemed to drag the empty space along with it as it moved. The attack struck the second-generation unit, passed through it, and fizzled out a short distance beyond, the wide band of power thinning and tearing as if the drag of space was taking its toll, until it was no more.

For a moment, nothing else happened, and Uranus blinked, wondering if she’d done something wrong.

Then the unit fell apart, the left and right sides of its body peeling away from a hair-thin line running straight down its middle. The grey flesh began to crumble, as did the featurelessly simplistic bone beneath, and there was a sighing sort of sound as the whole thing became a pile of inert dust.

Uranus looked at the dust, then at her sword, but the motions were automatic, almost unconscious; her mind was busy with another startling revelation that had come out of that flash of memory.

*I was flying. I flew. No plane, no parachute, no ground... nothing but me and the wind...* She let out a long breath and shivered all over. *My god, what a rush... I wish Michi could have felt that...*

“Uranus?”

She looked up. Mercury. “Yeah?”

“Do you feel okay?”

“I feel fine.” That was a major understatement. “Just a helping hand from a flashback.” She cleared her throat. “So, are we done here?”

“Almost.” Mercury looked back to what was left of the mana nexus. It wasn’t so much ‘intact’ as it was ‘holding together,’ and as they watched, the last of its structural integrity failed, sending up a muted rumble and a broad cloud of dust and smoke as the thing caved in on itself.

Pluto wasn’t back with them, but Uranus didn’t have to ask where the older Senshi was; a crimson blur was jumping around inside the collapsing nexus, bouncing from compromised ledge to free-falling platform to the crumbling side of the structure with no apparent concern for the rain of debris all around or the rate at which the ground was getting closer.

The streak was swallowed up as the dust cloud rose higher, and then it burst back into view, cutting through the dust and across the ground. The red glow decelerated and faded away, leaving Pluto to walk out of it and the devastation beyond as casually as if... well, as if she were talking a stroll through the park.

“Okay,” Uranus admitted. “I’m impressed. Not a bad night’s work, Pluto.”

Pluto looked back over her shoulder at the sinking pile that had been the nexus, and which would soon crumble into nothing, and nodded in satisfaction, smiling a familiar smile which was, for once, not that much of a mystery.

“Not a bad night’s work at all,” she agreed.

# 

Perhaps it was the emotional feedback that came with viewing the world through a rat’s limited perspective, but Proteus felt a sudden urge to move as far away from these Senshi as it could get, as fast as it could go. It was a simple equation: power plus destruction equals danger, danger to the power of proximity equals fear, and fear plus danger equals run, run, run.

Proteus shook off the feeling and regretted that the eyes and ears of its rodent scouts in the park could only be enhanced so far. At the base of its personality remained the simplistic programming of the watcher unit, which had been ordered to locate and identify a vague threat to Atlantean interests and then gather all possible information on that threat for later use, but there was another reason for its desire to study the Senshi.

Proteus sought to recreate itself into something better than it was. It aspired to something along the lines of the human form in part because humans were the dominant species on this planet, and taking their form would enable the entity to blend in and disappear, but also because the basic strengths of the species—agility, higher brain functions, manual dexterity, environmental adaptability, and a long potential lifespan—were attractive. All it had to do was test the bodies it now controlled and develop the means to enhance their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.

The Senshi appeared human, but were superior in several ways, and Proteus knew that discovering exactly how that had been done could prove very useful in its own efforts.

Still, the entity admitted that it might be better off discarding the whole idea. Nothing it had access to at the moment could guarantee success in an attempt to capture and study a Senshi, and it had no reliable means of calculating just what _would_ be needed to achieve such a task. And there was still the matter of the unknown force that had wiped out its entire network in a few short hours; Proteus had no desire to encounter _that_ again, which it feared would be a strong possibility if it had any future dealings with the Senshi. It was ludicrous to think something with such destructive power had escaped their notice—or they its—which meant it was extremely likely to be allied to them in some way.

The rats in the park crept closer to what was left of the second- generation unit after the Senshi departed. One reached out with a tail that was no longer just a tail and scooped up some of the decaying biomatter. Proteus analyzed the sample, understood immediately how to counter the decay, and did so, preserving that and a few more scoops of the stuff for more detailed study. Then, with nothing else of use left, it recalled its scouts.

# 

“You say _Pluto_ was responsible for that light show?”

“All I know for sure is that it wasn’t Saturn,” Information replied. “This Senshi was tall, dark-haired, and carrying a staff of some kind; our records show Saturn to be quite a bit shorter, with a different hairstyle, and an unmistakably different weapon. Since the description of this new Senshi doesn’t match any image in our files, it’s either Pluto or one we’ve never heard of before.”

“And your people couldn’t get an image of her?” Sciences asked, sounding exasperated.

“The only ones close enough got their video recorders shattered by all the racket that went up when that tower went down.”

“There’s going to be a lot of people shopping for new windowpanes in the morning, too,” Media added.

“Shut up!” Sciences barked.

A hush fell over the room. Personnel turned to her colleague and said, “Not feeling well, dear?”

“If you must know, no, I’m not. All our mythology-based assumptions about Pluto and Saturn just went out the window. That tower was affecting _Time,_ and if Pluto was the one who shut it down, then that means her powers must be based on Time—which leaves us with no idea as to what kind of force Saturn’s abilities are meant to represent, let alone how to deal with it.”

“On the subject of ‘dealing with it’,” Political said, “how much progress has your division made?”

“Some.” Sciences regained some of her cool control as she spoke. “Since we don’t know the full extent or precise nature of their abilities, it’s simply not practical for us to try and design a single system capable of handling all the Senshi at once, so we’re focusing our efforts on ways to neutralize each Senshi on an individual level. The best capture plan we’ve come up with is a three- stage method: personal gear that resists or counters the powers of a single Senshi; short-term restraints uniquely designed to withstand her capabilities in the event of an escape attempt during transport; and a more powerful, long-term containment cell, built—like the restraints—for holding a specific Senshi.”

“I suppose it’d be too much to hope for that you have working prototypes of any of those yet,” Security rumbled.

“As a matter of fact, we do—but I seriously doubt they’ll be completely up to the task. It’s extremely likely that we’ll have to field test the equipment several times and modify it as we get a better idea of exactly what we’re up against.”

“I am _not_ sending people into a battle just to be your guinea pigs!”

“We already assess the performance of our equipment based on personnel reports,” Sciences replied sharply, “and we’ll continue to do so in any event— but as for the field testing I spoke of, I was thinking of a slightly more subtle approach. The moment we reveal our presence, the Senshi will have the opportunity to begin learning as much about _us_ as we do about _them,_ and I doubt it would take them long to realize the motivation behind wave after wave of ‘guinea pigs’ carrying devices which counter their powers.”

Security was silent, and Political spoke up. “What did you have in mind?”

# 

“NO!”

There was a short but thunderous detonation as Janus slammed a fist into the wall of their private chambers, discharging a blast of striated blue and green energy and leaving a deep imprint in the stone.

Archon’s report, made in private to avoid worrying the Lords, confirmed things that should have been utterly impossible. SENSHI were in that city, Senshi who were—to judge from what little evidence Archon had been able to present—more than twice as powerful as any of their predecessors. Worse, Pluto was with them, hidden and protected and apparently not only remembering the use of her powers, but improving on them.

“She wasn’t supposed to remember!” Janus grated, turning around and bringing a fist down on a table, splintering it in half. “The Court said Athena couldn’t regain any of her memories until her twenty-fifth birthday! That’s still over two years away!”

“We don’t know that for certain,” the female voice, Jenna, replied softly, the arm under her control reaching across to restrain the one under her brother’s direction before he hit something else. “Athena wasn’t imprisoned outside of Time the way we were, brother. Even if she wasn’t yet twenty-three the last time we saw her, she had over two millennia in which to leave the Time Gate and age those extra years. But she obviously hadn’t aged all the way to twenty-five in that time, or she would have remembered everything and come after us that first night. And since we’re still here, it’s safe to say she _hasn’t_ remembered everything. All we can say for certain is that she’s recalled—or perhaps been retaught—the use of her powers.”

Janus shook off his sister’s grasp and took a deep breath to calm himself. “You’re right, you’re right. As usual. I have to stop and think this through. Their exact words were, ‘Athena is permitted to remember herself at the end of her twenty-fourth year of life, on the day of her birth.’ Correct?”

“That is what I remember.”

“Good. Now, we checked the astrological charts as soon as there was enough power to reactivate the Hall of Stars, and Athena’s next birthday isn’t for...”

“The day on the modern calendar which corresponds astrologically to the day of Athena’s birth in _our_ era is October 29th. That’s two hundred and fifty-three days from now.”

Janus nodded. “Then that’s the soonest she can remember herself. Very well, then. We have two-hundred and fifty-two days to capture Athena and make sure, one way or the other, that she doesn’t remember.”

“Brother...”

“I will not accept any dissent from you on this, Jenna. I’ve only agreed to give this plan of yours a chance because Archon seems to think it can work without interfering with the Rise. Frankly, after what Athena did to us, I’m surprised you even bothered to try and protect her. _I_ was the one who was going to marry her, and I don’t feel the slightest inclination to be charitable to her now.”

“She was my friend a lot longer than she was your future Empress, Janus—and unlike you, I’ve haven’t let the fact that I’m angry with her blind me to the fact that _this_”—the left hand rose to brush the female side of the divided face—“would never have happened if either of us had done something besides stand by when Father ordered Serenity and the Senshi murdered. Athena would never have betrayed us if we hadn’t betrayed her first. Never.”

“So you keep on saying,” Janus muttered, sighing. “In any event, Archon’s report changes things. There’ll be enough trouble when the Lords find out Athena is apparently alive and well, but if even the slightest rumor of Senshi who are stronger than they ought to be gets to them, they’ll will start wondering _where_ these women came from and _how_ they could possibly be this strong. We can’t afford for the Rise to be stalled because of a debate over Serenity’s arguments against the mana nexi; we _need_ the power that they and the reactors provide now more than ever. We don’t stand a chance without it.”

“I know. But brother, if she was right...”

“_If_ she was right,” Janus said firmly, “it still took thousands of nexi thousands of years to do any real damage; a few dozen of them running for a few months won’t destroy the planet or the Seals. Particularly not at the rate the things are being taken out of commission right now.” Janus shook their head as they walked over to a metallic grey sphere set into one wall. “Afterwards... well, if we’re still here afterwards, then we’ll worry about the nexi.”

The right hand passed over the front of the globe, and a circular hole opened in the substance of the grey sphere. Within the small, dim space of the globe sat a tiny sculpture of fiery red and orange crystal, a lifelike effigy of a creature part majestic bird and part mystical fire, a tiny phoenix that appeared ready to alight from its perch and soar on its delicate, impossibly perfect wings.

“Two months,” Janus murmured, the softer left hand gently brushing the tip of the sculpture’s wing to feel the uncanny warmth contained within. “Two months of searching, and we still don’t know where the others are. Or the Egg.”

“It wouldn’t be any good to us right now even if we had it,” Jenna said. “You know that we can’t even think of hatching the Phoenix Egg without the rest of them.”

“I know, but at the very least, we could keep it safe. If someone tampers with it just the wrong way—if it even gets _near_ fire—all of this could very well end up being for nothing.”

“The Court said that... no, _Balance_ said that he’d _personally_ selected the guardian, and anyone he’d think highly enough of to entrust the protection of the Egg to _will_ protect it, no matter what.” The left hand reached up across the body and gently patted the male side of the face. “Wherever the Egg is and whoever has it, it’ll be safe until we come for it, brother.”

# 

The door to the three-bed-room slowly opened, and a dark shape slipped through the space between the door and the frame before softly pushing the door shut. There was a ‘click’ heralding the appearance of a flashlight beam, which cut through the darkness and began sweeping the room.

Getting a feel for the geography of the target site, Shingo grinned and set down the bag of stuff he’d carried in. This was it. He’d spent weeks planning the ultimate revenge on Setsuna, ever since she managed to beat him at his own game with the squirt gun in her purse. He still wasn’t sure just how she’d known to have one ready at the perfect moment like that, but it didn’t matter, because now she was going to PAY, big time.

He began emptying a complicated assortment of tools from his bag, among them springs, strings, weights, two of his best fully-loaded and fully-automatic squirt guns, and four water balloons, filled to just the right degree to guarantee a burst on impact, without making them too volatile to handle. He’d have to hurry, though; he still had to set up for the mass scatter-bombardment from his window.

Absently squishing one of the water balloons in his left hand—he found it helped him concentrate—Shingo took another look at the room to make sure he’d had it right. He hadn’t been able to step into this room since Usagi, ChibiUsa, and Setsuna had moved into it, and while he wasn’t overly concerned about a miscalculation hitting one of the other girls, he _was_ concerned about missing Setsuna. He’d been keeping a very close watch on her since that first day, noting that she reacted _very_ quickly to things, sometimes so fast it was like she knew they were coming before they’d even happened. A formidable opponent, but nothing he couldn’t handle with a little care.

She had really nice legs, too.

Shingo shook his head. *Focus! Keep your mind on the mission, and... hey, what’s that?*

The flashlight beam had passed something red and orange and sparkling up on the shelf over Usagi’s bed, and when he moved the light back for a second look, Shingo’s eyes widened. Not that he was an expert or anything, but that was hands-down _the_ most incredible piece of sculpture he’d ever seen. Usagi must have gotten it from that Mamoru person, and Shingo felt his personal approval rating of the guy go up a few grudging notches. Not that he forgave him; any jerk who went and got _his_ sister pregnant and then skipped town had better not expect to get away with it just with a rock on a ring and piece of glass. Although to be fair, the ‘rock’ was pretty sizable, and the ‘glass’ was nothing short of fantastic.

Shingo shook his head again and told himself that he obviously wasn’t thinking straight, and that he _really_ should get to work, but instead he stepped up onto the bed to get the extra altitude necessary for a good, long look at the fiery bird in its shattering crystal shell. The shimmering effect was even more amazing as the flashlight got closer, almost as if the bird were made of real fire rather than glass crystal, and the light and heat of the flashlight were getting that fire going again.

A sudden wish that Mika could see this was his first errant thought since entering the room that Shingo didn’t try to dismiss. Curious to see if the thing _felt_ as warm as it looked, he started to reach up.

The door opened suddenly, and Shingo blinked and tried to turn around when the lights flicked on. Unfortunately, his footing wasn’t the best; his legs got crossed, and he fell, twisting sideways and falling over the side of the bed. Shingo landed on the floor with no particular gentleness, and as the final insult, the water balloon he’d been holding burst, raining a brief but thorough soaking down on him.

A shadow appeared and looked down at him; Shingo looked up at his mother’s stern face and grinned weakly.

“Uh... hi, mom... I was... er... I was just...”

It was less than thirty seconds before Ikuko was hauling her son out of the room by one ear; Shingo cast a brief, accusatory glance at the crystal egg, which continued to shimmer alluringly up until the moment the lights went out again and the door closed.

# 

Makoto set down her tea, apologized to Kima, and headed back to the kitchen as the phone rang again.

“Moshimoshi?”

“Mako-chan, it’s me.”

“Hi, Ami-chan. Is the date going well?”

“Yes. The trip went a lot better than expected, actually. Listen, Mako-chan, we tried to get in touch with you earlier, and we got the message. Is your guest still there?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Why?”

“Well, there was a bit of a problem in the park that we had to deal with. Setsuna dealt with it, actually. Saturn’s going to take her back to Usagi, Minako, and Artemis at the mall, and since there really isn’t anything else that needs doing tonight, she offered to drop the rest of us at home as well. I’m just making sure whether it’s safe for her to open a door into the apartment.”

“No,” Makoto replied, glancing quickly towards the living room, “that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. You said Setsuna’s there with you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well as it turns out, my guest was hoping to be able to talk to her about something. Could you put her on the line for a minute?”

“Uh... sure. Just a moment.” There was a faint thump as Ami put the phone down and went to get Setsuna. Makoto smiled—Ami just wasn’t the type to yell down the hall for someone—and leaned out of the kitchen.

“Kima-san? Could you come here a moment?”

“Hello?”

“Setsuna,” Makoto said, making sure to speak loudly and clearly enough for Kima to hear, “hi. Did you enjoy the movie?”

“I only got to see the first half, but yes, I rather liked it.”

“Good. We’ll get your social life shaped up yet. Look, the reason I wanted to talk to you is that I have a guest here right now who wants to speak with you. It’s kind of a personal matter, and talking over the phone wouldn’t really do it justice, so would you mind it if she went over to Usagi-chan’s to talk to you in person?”

“I... I suppose... do I know this friend of yours?”

“Her name’s Fuucho Kima, but don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize it; you only met her that one time, and she didn’t introduce herself.” Makoto glanced at Kima, blushed slightly, and coughed. “So it’s okay with you if she stops by?”

“Yes. It’s five after seven now, and Hotaru-chan is going to drop me at the mall in a few minutes, so Usagi-chan and I ought to get home by seven- thirty...”

“Okay, seven-thirty it is. I’ll tell her. And Setsuna,” Makoto added, smiling, “tell Ami-chan I’ll leave my bedroom door shut tonight, so if she wants to sneak anyone in later, she can.”

“I’ll... tell her that.”

“Thanks. ‘Bye, Setsuna.” Makoto hung up the phone and turned to Kima. “Well, that’s that. She said she’ll be home by seven-thirty, so if you want, you can head over there any time.”

“You’re awfully eager to throw me out all of a sudden.”

“As a friend of mine couldn’t say, there’s no sense putting off until tomorrow what you can do today. Besides, you’re drinking all my good tea!” They both laughed for a moment, then stood there a bit awkwardly. “But, um... seriously,” Makoto said, rubbing her arm, “if you want to stick around for a little bit longer, I don’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t mind either,” Kima replied, “but you’re right. It took me a week to get up the nerve to come this far, and if I back off now, I may lose my momentum.”

Makoto nodded and set about gathering up the teacups while Kima got her coat and purse and slipped her shoes back on.

“Thank you for the tea,” Kima said, buttoning up her coat. “And for your time.”

“And for not attacking you again?”

Kima chuckled. “Yes, that especially.” She turned to the door, then stopped and turned back. “Makoto... I know this may sound a little strange, but have you ever given any thought to what sort of career you might want to go into?”

“Well, yeah, actually I have. When I was little, I wanted to work in a flower shop... like my mother did... but after a while I realized that I liked the plants I was helping to raise too much to be any good at selling them.”

“And now?”

“Now... now, I’m hoping to be a chef and open a restaurant. A real gourmet place, not one of these fast-food joints that you see everywhere these days. I _like_ cheeseburgers, but there’s something about a well-cooked meal...” Makoto folded her arms and thought back. “There was one time when my mother got really sick and had to stay home in bed for three days. She always made me a bowl of chicken soup when I wasn’t feeling good, so I went into the kitchen and did the same thing for her, and when I took it up to her, she gave me a smile that made me feel warm all over—just for a bowl of soup. I knew right then and there that I wanted to be able to see people happy like that all the time, so I began cooking all the time.” She rolled her eyes. “I needed the practice, you see; that first bowl of soup was _really_ bad. Still, I kept on trying, and I got better. That was... almost nine years ago...”

Privately amazed at the time that had gone by, Makoto counted off on her fingers. *Nine years... has it really been that long?* She shook her head and looked up at Kima. “But you were going to ask me something, weren’t you?”

“I was. It’s... well, I was just going to suggest that maybe you might want to give some thought to looking into counseling.”

*Counseling?* Makoto blinked. “You mean like in... _psychiatric_ counseling? Therapy and all that? ME?”

Kima nodded. “Makoto, neither of us had any reason to be able to sit down and be civil with each other when I got here, but... it was just so _easy_ to talk to you. You listened to me. You listened better than a lot of people I know who are my age or older, and you got me to talk about a lot more than I ever intended to. You’re not that much older than my daughter, but I was absolutely comfortable talking to you. That’s... that’s really an extraordinary gift.”

“Um... yeah...” Makoto blushed and looked at the floor, but not entirely out of embarrassment. “Usagi-chan says sometimes it’s like I’m trying to be everyone’s big sister. But it’s just the way I am; it’s not that special.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Kima opened up her purse and took out a small notepad and a pen, and quickly scribbled down a number and a name. “I have a friend who got into psychiatry when she was in college, and she works cases for the hospital, sometimes with staff, sometimes with patients. She’s also had a hand in a few of those peer counseling programs in the schools, and I think she’d like to meet you. Here.” Kima tore off the paper and handed it over. “Think it over for a few days and give her a call.”

Makoto took the paper and looked at it. “There’s two numbers here.”

“The one on the top is hers. Mine’s the other one.” Makoto glanced up, and Kima smiled somewhat uncertainly. “A woman with my attitude doesn’t exactly make a new friend every day.”

Makoto blinked and then slowly smiled back at her. “Neither do I.”

# 

The new sisters were sitting together on the couch again, so Ami felt Calypso jump a little bit when Setsuna came back into the room. Amnesia or not, this was _Pluto_; she had been a legend in the Silver Millennium among anyone who really knew anything about the Senshi, and she intimidated the Nereid just by being in the same room.

Calypso didn’t have quite the same effect on Setsuna as Setsuna had on her. To put it simply, she was just the latest oddity in an ongoing cavalcade of oddities that Setsuna had been dealing with since waking up in Ami’s house two months before. She herself had been around for a good two or three thousand years, and she was living with a girl who was the conscious reincarnation of a Princess from a thousand years back, and another girl who was the thousand years’ hence version of the first one’s currently unborn daughter.

Once Setsuna had successfully dealt with issues like _that_ without going insane, little things like Ami having brought home a nonhuman, shapeshifting, telepathic sister from that same bygone era were pretty much robbed of any shock value.

“We’d better get going, Hotaru-chan.”

Hotaru nodded; while the younger girl was transforming, Setsuna turned to Ami. “And Mako-chan... asked me to tell you something. Um... her exact words were ‘tell Ami-chan I’ll leave my bedroom door shut tonight, so if she wants to sneak anyone in later, she can.’”

“That,” Ami said in a level voice, “means she’s getting her guest out right now.”

“Not a word from you,” Michiru said quietly, catching Haruka’s shoulder under her fingertips.

“I’m ready,” Saturn said. She headed out to the foyer and slashed open a dimension door, one which looked _down_ at the roof of the mall from a point somewhere far enough above it that the entire place was visible. “Wait here for a minute, Setsuna. I’ll find a clear place down there and open another door, okay?”

Saturn stepped—or perhaps jumped—through the door and began to float gently down towards the mall as the portal swirled shut behind her. A few moments passed, and another door opened; Saturn was standing in front of a parking lot.

“No security cameras out here,” she explained. “And the lot itself is empty. You’ll have a bit more of a walk than if I’d set you down inside the mall, but nobody’ll take any real notice of you this way.”

“Nicely planned,” Setsuna congratulated her, stepping through and looking around with a satisfied nod. “Thank you, Saturn.”

Saturn curtsied and then stepped back into the foyer, closing the door behind her. She leaned to one side to glance into the living room. “Did you want to go back to Mako-chan’s right now, Ami-chan, or would you rather wait a few minutes?”

“Let’s make sure she’s had time to get her guest safely out of the way first.” Ami looked at Ryo, who had borrowed Luna’s icepack to deal with his own headache. “Did you want Saturn to drop you off at home as well, Ryo-kun?”

“Would you mind?” Ryo said hopefully, looking at Saturn. “It would really help, because the sooner I get home, the sooner I can crash for the next twelve hours.”

“What did you see, exactly?” Haruka asked. “Calypso was in such a rush to play with your mind that you didn’t mention the last few visions all that clearly.”

Ryo held out a hand and started ticking the visions off on his fingers. “Somebody walking around on one of the moons of Jupiter. A scene of Chiba-san standing next to a guy who looks like he could bench a small car with one hand, but with no sense of danger involved. A moonlit beach during the summer, with a boat coming right up to the shore. The moon wasn’t large enough to show me any details about the boat or anybody who might have been on it, though. A daytime earthquake, definitely during the summer, and of moderately impressive magnitude. Something in a very dark and very cold place, breaking—I couldn’t see what, or where—and a building collapsing, but not because of the earthquake; this’ll happen at night, and the buildings nearby looked okay. I think it’s an apartment building under construction.”

“Well,” Haruka said, “that was about as clear as mud.”

“Now that Ami-chan’s got the Caduceus and her sister back,” Saturn said, leaning casually on the Silence Glaive, “what exactly do we do next?”

“We keep training,” Luna replied, “and we start doing some research. Calypso’s suggestion about finding more Weapons is a good one for several reasons, and now that we know Rooky can find specific words in the Book, I’ll have Artemis assemble an inventory of all the Weapons that were in the arsenal so Rei knows what to tell Rooky to look for. Ami, since you have access to Mercury’s memories, I want you to put together a complete list of the major cities on each planet, and all the lunar colonies, and then start searching the archive for a way to track down missing Weapons. Rei will probably find the list at least a little useful, and if you can find anything that’ll let us locate Weapons from a distance, we can broaden the search.”

Ami nodded and turned to Saturn. “I’ll check to see if there’s anything on the dimension doors you might be able to use.”

“I also want you to collect whatever information you can about the four Talismans—specifically, their powers and properties. Be sure to go into detail about the scrying powers of the Aqua Mirror and the Garnet Orb.” Luna thought for a moment. “You should probably go ahead and read up on Gladius and the Book as well, just to make sure there aren’t any more surprises coming our way from either of them. Can you handle all that?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll be joining the others in the training from now on,” Luna added. Ami gave her an amused look. “Sorry; force of habit.” Luna fell silent. “That’s just about all I can think of... there really isn’t that much we can do right now except wait for the other side to make their next move, and do our best to counter it. So unless anybody has any ideas...” She waited, looking around, but all Luna got were shrugs and headshakes. “Then I guess for now, that’s that.”

“Okay,” Saturn said. “I guess I’ll go see if Mako-chan’s place is clear.” She smiled. “After all, we don’t want to deprive her of meeting Caly again, do we?”

# 

Usagi and Setsuna got off the bus less than a block from home. Minako and Artemis waved goodbye from the window as the vehicle moved off, and Usagi watched them go with a neutral expression.

“Concerned?” Setsuna asked.

“I don’t need to be psychic to know that I’m almost certainly going to regret _that_ at some point,” Usagi replied, indicating the departing bus—and two of its passengers—with a nod of her head. She sighed and started walking. “So. Ami-chan goes looking for a cure to her problem, and she comes back with it, a lifetime’s worth of Nereid memories crammed into her head, and a sister on one arm.”

“Yes. I believe they decided to drop by and visit you tomorrow.”

“Great.” Usagi looked at her older friend curiously. “And you? How do you feel now that you’ve graduated your first modern Senshi battle with flying colors?”

“Good,” Setsuna said, smiling. “I feel good.” They were silent after that until they reach the Tsukino house and saw an unfamiliar car parked out front. Usagi noted curiously that, while the lights were on, _their_ car was not in the driveway.

“Did Mako-chan mention anything about who this friend of hers was, or what she wanted to talk to you about?”

“Nothing specific beyond her name and the fact that I’ve met her before—recently, I’d guess, from the way Mako-chan was talking.”

“Well, let’s find out.”

They went inside. Usagi paused and looked back, calling for Luna but getting no response. After a moment, she shrugged and closed the door, knowing her mother would check a few more times later on.

“Mom?”

“In here, dear. We have a guest.”

“Yeah,” Usagi said, hanging up her coat and putting her shoes away, “Mako-chan mentioned we ought to expect...”

She stopped short as she came into the living room and saw Makoto’s ‘friend’ sitting on a chair. Usagi recognized her at once, and stood there, blinking and with her mouth hanging open. *The nurse?*

“I see you remember me,” Kima said. “Hello, Meiou-san.”

Setsuna nodded. “Fuucho-san.”

“Usagi-chan,” Ikuko said, “let’s leave them to talk in private. I want to speak to you in the kitchen for a moment.”

“Buh... whe... eh?” Ikuko turned Usagi around and gently directed her out into the kitchen, where—without the woman to stare at—she recovered from her surprise relatively quickly. “Mom, that was... Mako-chan actually _talked_ to her?”

“She did. Kima-san wanted to apologize to both Mako-chan and Setsuna for some of the things she said the last time you saw her. She came over here earlier and talked to me for a while, and I sent her over to see Mako-chan; she just got back a few minutes ago.” Ikuko crossed her arms. “Now, Usagi-chan... there’s something I’d like you to explain for me. How long have you known Setsuna could see the future?”

Usagi gaped at her mother and started making funny noises again.

 

# 

_(The Senshi have hijacked the Court’s furniture. Ami is sitting in Order’s podium, Minako in Chaos’, and Calypso is ‘sitting’ on the empty air between them, watching the proceedings with interest. Evil’s place is empty, Mars is polishing a spot off the top of Good’s worn-looking seat, and Makoto is sitting in Life’s leafy box; Death’s place is also empty. ChibiUsa, Hotaru, and Setsuna are over in the gallery where the three Times were sitting—the two younger girls doing their best Pluto-mysterious impressions, neither of which is quite as good as Setsuna’s—and Usagi is—of course—up in Balance’s judiciary spot. So is Luna, in cat form, sitting on the gavel to make sure Usagi can’t use it. Haruka, Michiru, Artemis, and Ryo are absent.)_

**Usagi** : I LIKE this setup of theirs... all right, this meeting is called to order.  _(she reaches for the gavel)_

**Luna**   _(without even opening her eyes)_ : Don’t even think about it.

**Usagi**   _(blinks, grins)_ : Hehe... ahem. In light of some past events, we’re here to make sure that a post-episode moral gets done this time, and done RIGHT. So, with that said... does anyone have any suggestions?

_(Silence reigns)_

**Usagi**   _(sweatdrop)_ : ..... Um... okay, that wasn’t quite the response I was hoping for... nobody has ANY ideas?

**Ami** : Well... maybe... ‘knowledge in the wrong hands is a dangerous weapon?’

_(lots of blinking ensues)_

**Makoto** : Where did you come up with that one?

**Ami** : Um... three places, I guess. Those ‘Directors’ are trying to get information that could be a real problem for us; Usagi’s in trouble now because her mother found out something we really didn’t want her to know; and Haruka and Michiru both learned some new tricks which sort of proved dangerous—for the other side, anyway.

_(traded glances)_

**Usagi** : I suppose that’ll do. Well, now that that’s done, where’s the pizza?

_(door opens. Artemis, Haruka, Michiru, and Ryo enter, the guys carrying several pizza boxes and bottles of pop between them.)_

**Haruka** : I still don’t see why we had to do the pickup and delivery run.

**Artemis** : Because, you’re the only one who has access to a car and knows how to drive it...  _(staggers to the left)_  Uh, could somebody help me with these?

14/02/01 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_Slowly getting back into the swing of things. Much writing time coming up this weekend and next week... let’s all hope I use it well._

_Well, the Phoenix Egg—which everybody MUST have figured out was important the very first time it showed up—is finally getting some more light shed on it. What IS the importance of the little sculpture, and how does the other, non-egg Phoenix fit in? What exactly is Janus after? Ah, questions, questions, questions..._

_More Silver Millennium tidbits for those of you who asked for them. In case anybody’s been wondering just how old the Senshi are in that era (at least in this story), it runs something like this, as of the last year in which Beryl and Metallia destroy everything:_   
  
_Pluto— about 1500 to 1600 years_   
_Ariel/Uranus— 34_   
_Mercury— 29_   
_Pandora/Saturn— 25_   
_Vestia/Mars— 19/20_   
_Princess Serenity— 19_   
_Ishtar/Venus— 19_   
_Amalthea/Jupiter— 19_   
_Larissa/Neptune— 14/15_

_They all have the same (or at least corresponding) birthdays. Ariel was the oldest because Uranus is one of the oldest Greek deities (precedes Saturn and Jupiter; he was Saturn’s father, if I remember right), and Haruka is the oldest Senshi now (except for Pluto); Mercury is next because the Nereids could control precisely when she would be born, and they did so as soon as somebody realized who Ariel was. Then Pandora, then the other Inner Senshi and Serenity, and finally Larissa._

_Ariel would have been about 18 or so in the flashback, and Mercury 13 (telepathy insures that Nereids mature FAST), while Pandora would be 8 and probably not even aware she’s Saturn. Serenity and the rest would be going through the terrible twos, and Larissa isn’t even a gleam in her mother’s eye just yet. (And again I pause to take protonic flak and beam sabre hits from people who support Haruka and Michiru having a romantic relationship in their past lives and are angry at me for suggesting otherwise. You think _you’re_ mad? Wait ‘til THEY find out...)_

_Up next:_   
_-March draws ever nearer;_   
_-The search for Weapons and other lost relics will pick up steam;_   
_-Still more disjointed clues as to what the Atlanteans are up to;_   
_-and the long-awaited public return of Sailor V!!!_


	20. Study Time, Cram Sessions, and A Couple of Giants In the Playground

# 

All things considered, last night had been just about the strangest in recent memory—and Makoto could remember some very strange nights.

After Kima departed, Makoto had cleaned up the remnants of the tea and then spent a lot of time looking at the phone numbers the woman had left. As a rule, the only people Makoto generally took phone numbers from after one meeting were cute guys; as another rule, she nearly never called those numbers, and always wound up throwing them out. She also tended not to take psychiatrists very seriously in any sense, not because she had anything against them, but because the whole idea was for the patient to have someone to confide in—and Makoto had several people to talk to when she was feeling down. Even if two of them were cats.

Once she got started with that line of thought, Makoto amused herself for a while by imagining how her old counsellor would have responded if Makoto had come in one day, pulled up a couch, and said something along the lines of:

“I’m feeling much better now, Tsuta-san, and I think this’ll be our last session. I have a lot of friends now that I can talk to about anything, and they understand my situation very well because they’ve all got voices of dead girls living part-time in their heads as well, and that’s perfectly normal for people who are the reincarnations of a bunch of magical warriors and a Princess of the Moon who all died over a thousand years ago. Sure, we have to put our necks on the block every now and then in the name of love and justice because all these monsters just can’t get it through their heads to leave us alone, but everybody needs a little aggravation in their lives, and we’ve got a couple of cats who’ve been able to tell us all _sorts_ of useful things...”

Any normal person who heard a story like that would immediately send for a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist would probably call the asylum not long after.

When the dimension door screeched open a few minutes later and deposited Saturn, Ami, Ryo, Rei, Luna, and another Ami just inside the door of the apartment, Makoto thought perhaps she might need a trip to the asylum after all—but only for the few moments Amalthea needed to give her a psychic kick in the head, helping her reincarnated self identify Mercury’s little sister.

From there, the night had gone all over the place, starting with Ami and Luna explaining to Makoto how Calypso had survived, leading into a discussion of what the Senshi were going to do for the foreseeable future, and at some point making mention of the fact that Makoto now had two roommates, but it would be no trouble at all since Caly didn’t need a bed or food, just proximity to Ami, water, and a little electricity every now and then...

Luna had taken off for home almost immediately when Makoto explained in turn about her ‘guest’, and how Ikuko apparently now knew about Setsuna’s ability to predict the future. Knowing as she did how absolutely incapable Usagi was of holding things back from her mother when directly confronted, Makoto could fully understand Luna’s panicked rush, but she was too busy trying to wrap her mind around Calypso to do more than wonder briefly if Ikuko was going to greet her as Jupiter the next time they ran into each other at the grocery store.

Ryo had spent about ten minutes saying goodbye to Ami before Saturn whisked him off to a point not far from his home, and then gone home herself. Rei departed towards nine, leaving Makoto with her roommates, the necessity of washing out her tea set again, and a mind absolutely swimming in the emotional fallout being generated by the two reunited sisters. Makoto’s head hit the pillow at about quarter to ten, and she had some very bizarre dreams that night, including one about an underground city of marble and crystal with a nearly perpetual fog drifting about its streets and skyways.

Upon waking some nine hours later with a perfectly intact recollection of that dream, Makoto immediately suspected that it was really a memory; she didn’t remember her dreams _that_ completely, and she knew her own imagination wasn’t quite vivid enough to come up with something like that in such realistic detail.

Tugging on her green housecoat as she stepped out of her bedroom, Makoto covered a yawn, shuffled into the kitchen, and got to work with breakfast. She popped three slices of bread into her four-slice toaster, got out the butter and honey, and then paused to blink blearily at the glowing slots of the toaster as she realized she didn’t know how Calypso liked her morning toast.

Of course, the fact was that Calypso didn’t _eat_ toast—or anything else solid, for that matter—whether it was morning, noon, or night, but it would be another five or six minutes before Makoto’s brain got far enough into its start- up routine to be able to remember that, so she padded down the hall to Ami’s room and knocked softly on the door.

“Ami-chan? Caly-chan?” The only response was a funny chiming sound. Blinking slowly, Makoto opened the door and looked in.

Ami was laying on her left side, slightly curled up; Calypso was laying on her right side, but otherwise in the same fetal position, and facing Ami. Their foreheads were almost touching, and Ami’s right hand was loosely joined with Caly’s left. In that light, and seeing as how Calypso had changed her ‘clothing’ to match Ami’s favorite blue pajamas last night, the only things to distinguish between the pair were that Ami was sleeping beneath the covers, while Calypso was sleeping above them, and slightly off the edge of the mattress. It wasn’t that big a bed, after all, but even though Calypso’s body was more than halfway over the side, she hadn’t fallen to the floor; she wasn’t even bobbing up and down. There was also a lot of light blue mist floating around, its movements apparently the source of the chiming noise, and it clung so closely to the sleeping figures that it was impossible to tell which of them was responsible for it.

Even with the oddities of the floating girl and the glowing mist to contend with, the kawaii-ness of the moment made Makoto smile and hug herself as an almost ridiculously warm feeling welled up inside her. She also woke up rather quickly and tugged her housecoat more firmly closed as a bit of the cool, damp mist drifted past and brushed against her leg.

*Mako-chan?* It sounded like Calypso’s voice, and sure enough, her eyes opened a moment later as she glanced down towards the door and smiled. The mist began to disappear, as did the odd noise. “Good morning, Mako-chan. And please, keep your voice down; Ami’s still asleep.”

“She’s usually an early riser.”

“Not today.” Calypso leaned over and kissed Ami on the forehead, then floated over the side of the bed and onto her feet. The mist had completly faded by the time her toes touched the carpet. “You see, I don’t sleep the same way you do; I put certain parts of my energy into a low-activity state and become more or less physically dormant, but I can keep my mind relatively conscious at the same time. Ami can do it, too, so we talked for a lot of the night even after she fell asleep, but it seems that it isn’t quite as restful for a human body as ordinary sleep, so she needs some time to catch up.” The Nereid made a shooing motion with her hands and herded Makoto out of the room.

Once they were out in the hall and the door was closed, Calypso looked at Makoto, added a blue copy of the green housecoat over her pajamas, and then asked what had brought Makoto in.

“I wanted to know how you took your toast.”

Calypso smiled. “I don’t eat your kind of food, Mako-chan.”

“I know.”

If anything, the Nereid’s smile grew. “Then why did you come to ask me how I liked my toast?”

“Quit teasing me, Caly. I’m not a morning person.” Makoto rubbed at her eyes. “What was the deal with the mist and that ringing noise you were making, anyway?”

“It happens sometimes when we try to sleep in a solid shape; we shut down too much of our energy to keep holding the body we’ve chosen, and start to turn back to our normal form. It’s a simple miscalculation to make, and it’s been ten centuries since the last time I tried to sleep in human shape, so I’m a little out of practice. As for that noise you heard, it was sort of like how you humans sometimes snore or talk in your sleep.”

“Okay. As long as you’re not sick or... or...” Makoto yawned again and had a thought in the middle of it. “It won’t hurt you if I turn on the toaster or the stove, will it?”

“Not unless I do something as silly as actually touching a burner or putting my head in the oven.” Calypso looked around at the apartment. “You’ve got the temperature in here set to the point where I’ll have to take in a bit more water than I can naturally absorb from the air to keep my balance, but a glass of water every day ought to be more than plenty. At least until summer gets here. I’ll probably have to drink as much as one of you, then.”

“Water won’t be a problem,” Makoto said as they entered the kitchen, “but how often will you have to eat? We do get charged for the electricity we use in our homes, you know.” The toast popped, and she got to work on it.

“Ami and I discussed that for quite a while,” Calypso admitted, floating up and sitting on the edge of the counter. “Nereids originally fed by tracking down electrical buildups in cloud formations, entering the clouds, and drawing in the energy. One meal like that would keep me going for two or three weeks, but I’ve never fed in that manner, and I’m not completely sure where I’d begin. It’s like how your ancestors used to hunt wild animals for meat; just because _they_ were able to do it doesn’t automatically mean _you_ can, and if you don’t know what you’re doing you’ll go hungry and possibly get hurt in the process. After all, even a Nereid can only take in so much electricity at one time. I’d be better off with a more gradual method of feeding, but I’ve got to find a suitable source first; what I took in at Michiru’s last night is already running down.”

Makoto looked up from the toast. “If you really need to eat...”

“No, it’s alright. After being linked to the Blue Hall for so long, I’ve got quite a lot of extra energy stored up. I won’t be in any sort of danger for another three or four of your weeks, so that gives me plenty of time to experiment with the available sources. Ami suggested we look into modern batteries, and she’s going to check the Lunar archives to see if there’s anything useful on this subject that she doesn’t already know about.” Calypso smiled speculatively and propped her chin on one hand. “Of course, I’m still hoping you’ll learn enough in the next month or so to feed me yourself.”

A confused look settled onto Makoto’s face. “Say that again?”

“I can absorb electricity whether it’s naturally occuring or artificially created,” Calypso said. “The natural type is the most nourishing because it’s pure, but it’s also tricky to get, while most artificial forms of electricity are only good as a temporary food source—and they tend to have side-effects or drawbacks. From the Nereid perspective, the power of a Senshi of Jupiter was just about the best meal around because it combined the pure energy of natural lightning with the more measured and controllable rate of feeding permitted by artificial energy sources.” Calypso beamed at her. “And we’d get a lovely hostess to prepare the meal, too.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Makoto replied, yawning again. “And I’m not too thrilled at the idea of throwing one of my attacks at a friend.”

“Neither am I, when you get down to it, but it’s not your attacks that I’m talking about. Just _being_ Jupiter causes a lot of electrical force to build up inside and around your body; if you were to stay transformed for two or three hours, I could make quite a good meal off of the normal discharge. Once you hit a certain point in your training, you’ll be able to manipulate electrical energy on a more precise level than the large amounts you use in your attacks; that’s what I’m hoping for.”

“I think you may have a bit of a wait, then. I don’t even get shocks from walking around on carpets that often, so I’m probably not going to be fixing you any high-voltage meals in the near future.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Calypso glanced at the nearest of Makoto’s many potted plants. “Do you have trouble growing plants?”

“Um... no. But what does that have to do with...”

“Plants tend to respond well when they’re regularly exposed to mild electrical fields,” Calypso said. “We used to have all kinds of interesting fungus and flowers adapted to the low light growing in the tunnels back home, and I always thought that half the reason the Venusian jungles were so overgrown was that the metal deposits in the mountains threw electromagnetic energy all over the place. And you wouldn’t _believe_ the size of the crops they could grow on the Jovian moons in a good season.”

“I might,” Makoto said faintly, briefly remembering taking walks through a field of something that looked like wheat but was about four meters tall... and she dimly recalled playing _inside_ some sort of enormous gourd as a very young child... she shook her head. “What does growing plants have to do with feeding you?”

“Well,” Calypso said, hopping down from her perch on the counter, “it’s pretty much a given that you’ve used your abilities to help these flowers in some fashion, even if you weren’t consciously aware of it. Senshi powers work on a more instinctive level than just about any other form of magic, so simple forms of them tend to manifest pretty early on in the girl’s life. If...”

Less than three steps away from the counter, Calypso was jerked to a halt by the metal handles of several drawers and cupboards that had become magnetically attached to the back of her housecoat. Makoto had to smile around a piece of toast as the Nereid turned and glared over her shoulder at the offending devices, then took hold of her housecoat and yanked it free with an annoyed huff that was both very Ami-like and yet very unlike Ami.

“Don’t laugh,” Calypso said warningly. “It can happen to you, too, eventually.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Makoto promised. “You were going to say something about the flowers?”

“I was going to suggest that since it’s extremely likely that you’ve already used your powers on plants in the past, learning to _consciously_ help them grow shouldn’t be too hard for you, so you should get some seeds and give it a try. If it works, you’ll be that much closer to really mastering your abilities—not to mention feeding me.”

At Calypso’s mention of seeds, Makoto immediately thought of the strange silver acorn she had received from Sasanna and her brother. They’d asked her to plant it, but she’d been so busy this past week with trying to get accustomed to going about her life while feeling other people’s emotions that she just hadn’t found the time to get around to fulfilling that request. And somehow she knew that she wouldn’t have any better luck this week, what with the exams and all. But next week was the beginning of spring break...

“I’ll be sure to give that a try,” Makoto said.

# 

“We’re going to get in trouble.”

“No we’re not.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Caly, you know that?”

Michiru was quite certain that this was both a dream and a memory. She felt extremely light, almost as if she were floating, but without water, and she was moving through a fairy-tale landscape where many of the trees had silver leaves and the Earth hung, huge and blue and white, in the starry sky above. She was moving through this no-longer existent forest inside a remembered body which was quite a bit smaller than her current one, following a girl who looked like Ami might have at age ten.

“It wasn’t a lie,” Calypso replied confidently. “You’re supposed to be training, right? Well, we’re going to work on your swimming. You’ll get plenty of exercise, _and_ you’ll be working closely with water. Doesn’t your mother always say training goes better when you Senshi have access to a ready supply of your specific element?”

“My mother _also_ says training alone isn’t any good, because you don’t have anybody to compare yourself to and see how much you still need to shape up.”

“That’s why _I’m_ here, silly.” Calypso shook her head. “You know, Lari, for a genius, you can be awfully slow-witted sometimes. But then again, I guess I can’t expect that heavy, solid brain of yours to let your thoughts run as smoothly as mine do.”

“At least _I_ can keep my mind on something,” Larissa said, hopping up on top of and then down from a low rock. “All it takes to change _your_ mind is a gust of wind. Not even Auntie Ishtar gets distracted as easily as you do.”

*’Auntie’ Ishtar?* Michiru thought.

“Oh yes she does! Even a hint of a handsome face is all it takes to make her completely forget about whatever she was doing!”

“Yes, but at least she’s consistent; _you_ get distracted by anything and everything that comes along.”

“I do not! And what’s that?” Calypso said, looking and pointing at something in the distance. Michiru turned to look at whatever the Nereid was indicating, no faster and no slower than her dreamed body, and she felt a blush that wasn’t precisely her own warming her cheeks.

“That was an evil thing to do, Caly.”

“Yes, it was, but you earned it. Ah, here we are.”

They had stopped at the edge of a water-filled crater perhaps three times the size of most swimming pools Michiru had ever seen, and somewhat deeper. While she—Larissa—set down the basket she had been carrying, Calypso went ahead and entered the water. It was a very peculiar but utterly fascinating sort of thing to watch, as the Nereid didn’t jump in or wade in, but instead propelled herself out over the surface and sank down slowly, just sort of melding with the pool as the illusion of the blue dress she had been ‘wearing’ flowed off of her equally illusory skin and left behind a pale blue sheen that covered the Nereid’s little-girl body like a wetsuit. Even if one looked very closely—which Michiru did—it was hard to tell where the water ended and the Nereid began.

Floating on her back, Calypso turned around and looked at Larissa. “The water’s fine. Are you coming in, or do I have to drag you?”

“Your definition of ‘fine’ nearly gave me a cold the last time,” Larissa replied, holding up the hem of her own dress as she tested the water with her toes. Michiru could feel the water herself, and even for something in a dream, it felt unearthly; she also caught a glimpse of Larissa’s reflection in the rippling surface of the pond, and was stunned by just how young the face she could see there really was. She was even more surprised when, after nodding in satisfaction, Larissa produced a transformation pen and assumed the form of a ChibiNeptune.

*She’s just a child.* The unreality of the dream-memory seemed to distort and waver at that thought, but Michiru didn’t stop thinking it. *She was so young... _I_ was so young... and they were already training me...?*

Larissa looked down at herself and furrowed her forehead in concentration, causing the skirt and shoes of her uniform to vanish, and the dream-world blurred again as Michiru tried to blink in astonishment at the child-Senshi’s demonstration of an ability she herself hadn’t ever stopped to think might exist—and then, with a loud yell and a louder splash, they were in the water.

If the touch of the water on her remembered toes had been unearthly, the feel of it all around her was indescribable. It was warm and cool at the same time, crystal clear and sparkling and just _light_, almost as light as air...

The dream blurred again, sharper than ever, as something about that memory of swimming struck Michiru as incredibly wrong. It wasn’t the pool or Calypso or her, it was... it was...

“YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOO!!!”

The dream flew apart as a familiar dark-haired cannonball splashed down in the middle of the waterbed and woke Michiru up all the way. There seemed to be a new element involved in the routine now, because in addition to the sloshing tossing and rippling of the waterbed, Hotaru’s enthusiastic hugs and kisses and shouting, and Haruka’s bellyaching grumbles and feeble threats, Michiru could hear someone laughing hysterically. She glanced at the bedroom door and saw that ChibiUsa was leaning against the doorframe for support, doubled over while all the little pink bunny rabbits on her pajamas came close to hopping away as she giggled and spluttered.

“What is _this_?” Haruka demanded, glaring at Hotaru and gesturing at ChibiUsa with a note of exasperation. “Are we a public spectacle, now?”

“Don’t be such a grouch,” Hotaru retorted, poking Haruka repeatedly in the stomach. “And just count your blessings that she turned down the offer to help me wake you two up.”

“Thank you for that,” Michiru said, nodding at ChibiUsa, who nodded back, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“It wasn’t that I think you two don’t love me,” she said after a few moments, in a voice that was getting out through a smile. “It’s just that I _know_ you don’t love me _enough_ to let me get away with that like you do Hotaru-chan.”

“Very true,” Michiru agreed. “Especially since we don’t even let _her_ get away with it.”

That was all the warning Hotaru got before Michiru grabbed her from behind and started tickling her in the ribs. Hotaru squirmed like crazy and laughed continuously as she tried to get away or tickle back.

“Alright,” Haruka muttered, “that’s all the manic cuteness I can stand at this hour.” She got out of bed, shrugging her housecoat on over her nightshirt on the way to the door—it took another effort for ChibiUsa not to laugh when she saw the yellow smiley face located dead center on the shirt—and waved dismissively back at Michiru and Hotaru. “Come on, kid. I’ll make you breakfast or something.”

ChibiUsa blinked as Haruka half-led, half-dragged her away. “You can cook?” she blurted.

“It depends on what you consider the definition of ‘cooking’ to be. If it can be popped in a toaster or nuked in a microwave or just torn from the wrapper and eaten, I can handle it, but that’s about as far as I’ve ever pushed my culinary abilities. I do make a killer coffee,” Haruka added, “but you’re too young for that, and you’re much too short to be able to afford having your growth stunted.”

“This from the woman who drinks coffee like a fish drinks water and still manages to push the six-foot-corner of the envelope.”

“I grew early. By the time I was your age, I...” Haruka paused mid-way down the stairs and frowned. “Refresh my memory; how old are you, again?”

“I’ll be thirteen this summer.”

“Right. Thirteen. Thanks.” Haruka shook her head. “It’s a wonder that I even bother to count birthdays anymore. I mean, on the one hand we’ve got you and Setsuna hopping around through Time, and on the other we’ve got Hotaru’s whole situation—_and_ we’ve got Luna, Artemis, and now Calypso to add to the mix. Not to mention the fact that except for you and Setsuna, we’re all the reincarnations of a bunch of dead women who’ve managed to get ourselves killed at least twice in the line of duty.”

“I can see where that might be confusing,” ChibiUsa agreed. She was quite familiar with ‘Hotaru’s whole situation’; in the several future birthday parties for Saturn that she’d attended, there was always just one candle on the cake. After being possessed by Mistress Nine, reborn as an infant, accelerated to childhood, and then getting killed and brought back _again_—and adding the stretch of time from modern Tokyo to Crystal Tokyo on top of that—not even Saturn was really sure how old she was anymore. “But just think about what a recommendation like ‘Killed in the line of duty—twice’ will do for your resume.”

At that, Haruka started laughing. It wasn’t really that funny, but she’d just gotten out of bed, so the chemical balance of her brain was still a bit off.

“Come on,” she chuckled, slapping ChibiUsa on the shoulder and nearly knocking her off her feet. “Let’s see if we can feed ourselves without incinerating the kitchen. I’m thinking you’ll want to get home early today so you can see Usagi-chan’s reaction when she meets Calypso face-to-face.”

# 

“Usagi-chan?”

“Goway.”

“Usagi-chan.”

“Leemelone.”

Setsuna sighed, moved around to one side of the bed, and lightly shook the halfway-sleeping girl’s shoulder. “Usagi,” she said firmly, “it’s time to get up. We have guests.”

“Mmmnphnm,” Usagi replied, inching away from Setsuna’s hand and burying her face in her pillow.

Sitting over on ChibiUsa’s unused bed, Luna shook her head. “You’re going about it the wrong way, Setsuna.”

“Oh?”

“You have to be direct. _Very_ direct,” Luna added, extending her claws for emphasis.

Setsuna thought about that, then reached out, yanked the covers away, and shouted “WAKE UP!” at Usagi from almost point-blank range.

“YIIIIIIAAAAAAAH!” Usagi jumped awake so fast that she very nearly hit the ceiling, and Luna toppled over sideways, overcome with laughter. She’d woken Usagi up by main force more times than she cared to recall, but she’d never had the opportunity to get such a perfect view of the entire wake-up process as this one, so she hadn’t realized until now just how funny it was to watch the whole thing play out.

“Don’t DO that!” Usagi demanded.

“Would you rather I had Luna stick you?”

Usagi glanced over at Luna, who was still laughing, rolling around on ChibiUsa’s bed and waving her paws in the air, and sighed. She pitched a pillow at her furry friend and then sat up, rubbing at her tired eyes.

“Please tell me last night was just a bad dream.”

“Last night was just a bad dream,” Setsuna said obediently, earning a bleary-eyed glare.

Ikuko had taken the news that Setsuna was prophetic entirely too calmly for Usagi’s peace of mind; the thing that had really upset her was that she had learned about it from someone other than her daughter. Ikuko did not like being lied to, particularly by the members of her family, but she wasn’t really angry. She had understood, even before she asked Usagi, why no one had told her about Setsuna’s ability—which was to say, she understood that it wasn’t the sort of thing most people could know about without making a major spectacle of, and that such behavior was something a woman trying to cope with a massive case of amnesia really didn’t need to deal with.

So no, Ikuko wasn’t angry that she hadn’t been told. What she was, was hurt—and disappointed. First that Usagi hadn’t trusted her enough to say something at the beginning, and then that nearly two months had failed to make Usagi or Setsuna talk to her about it.

All in all, Usagi thought she would have rather dealt with an angry mom than an injured one. When she got angry, Ikuko was terrifying in a way no monster could ever match, but Usagi had learned to deal with those fits of righteous indignation. After years of slacking off, fighting with her brother, and getting grades that were average at best, even after getting _pregnant_, this was the first indication Ikuko had _ever_ shown which suggested she was genuinely disappointed in her daughter, and Usagi had been at an almost total loss for how to handle it.

She had finally retreated to her room when Kima left—Setsuna hadn’t said exactly what she and the older woman had talked about for that whole hour, except that Kima had _not_ asked for anything remotely like a fortune-telling— only to get cornered by Luna and interrogated for another hour. Luna had been stuck outside during the entire first hour because she couldn’t very well transform in plain sight and let herself in, and nobody had opened the door until Kima left; Ikuko had banished Shingo to his room after catching him trying to boobytrap the other bedroom, and Kenji—catching wind of the fact that his wife wanted the first floor clear for a few hours that evening—had taken off to spend those few hours running some errands.

This left a rather irritated cat to sit out in the snow for the better part of an hour and freeze her whiskers off, so Luna was not in the best of moods when she started questioning Usagi. Their combined bad moods meant that they had come close to shouting at each other several times before Luna finally acknowledged that Usagi had done okay and admitted no Senshi secrets had been compromised, at which point Usagi went straight to bed and fell asleep, emotionally exhausted by the events of the night.

Now Setsuna was waking her up—Usagi glanced quickly at the clock and blinked when she saw 9:37 glowing back at her—and saying they had guests. Given what she’d been told about last night’s other events, Usagi guessed this meant that Ami had come to reintroduce her sister.

She must have said that part out loud, because Setsuna nodded and said, “And also to make sure you get to Hikawa on time.”

Usagi blinked. “Huh?”

“For the big day-long pre-exam study session?” Luna reminded her. “The one that’s only been in the works for the last month or so? The one Rei said you were going to attend even if she had to personally tie you up with your own hair and then drag you up to her place?”

A whining, whimpering noise crawled out of Usagi’s throat, but Setsuna dragged her out of bed nonetheless and steered her in the general direction of the bathroom. Usagi woke up a few more notches and became a great deal less pouty when her nose picked up on some of the tempting fragrances drifting up the stairs. Knowing that the smell of food would make sure Usagi didn’t try to go back to bed, Luna and Setsuna headed down to the kitchen.

Makoto had of course come with Ami, and she was helping Ikuko whip up brunch now. It was eerie to watch the two of them go at it, chatting, passing ingredients and implements back and forth, and barely looking at each other so they could pay attention to whatever they were doing. At the same time, they were giving Ami an impromptu cooking lesson, something which came as a bit of a surprise to Luna, who thought it must be the first time she’d ever seen Ami try her hand at cooking. She didn’t have the practiced skill of either Makoto or Ikuko, but neither had she burned anything so far.

After a moment, Luna’s eyes narrowed. There was something... odd... about Ami’s shirt. She realized the problem and suppressed an urge to groan in anticipation of a major disaster.

Ami was wearing two blouses. One of them was Calypso.

It wouldn’t be immediately obvious to most people, particularly not to those who weren’t acquainted with Nereid shapeshifting, but Luna was familiar with the species’ tricks, and moreover, she had received a great deal of training to help her spot things that weren’t what they appeared to be—even if it HAD all been more than a thousand years ago.

The signs were little things, but they were there. Because Calypso naturally and constantly produced her own internal light source, the facade of the shirt was exactly the same color all over, without any of the differences in shading that it should have had. The Nereid could have created believable shading with a little more effort, but then she might have had trouble keeping her assumed form in place to hide Ami’s real blouse. There was also a definite water-smell hanging around Ami, though Luna suspected she was the only non-Nereid in the room who could actually detect it.

On the plus side, Calypso didn’t seem to be having any trouble matching her movements to Ami’s; it was a common problem with Nereid disguises, but the fake fabric moved as realistically as anything anyone else in the room was wearing. Luna suspected that Calypso was managing that by keeping in close mental contact with Ami, thereby knowing exactly when and how she was about to move. There were also no traces of anti-gravity behavior in the folds of the blouse, and none of the many metal cooking utensils were getting up and throwing themselves at Ami because of a strongly localized electromagnetic field.

*Give me a little more credit than that, Luna.*

Recognizing the mental voice, Luna focused her thoughts. *Why in the names of the nine planets are you masquerading as a shirt, Calypso? I thought you’d decided to be a cat.*

*I did, but that was before I saw just how many people there were out there. I don’t think I’m quite up to facing that many psychic impressions at one time on my own just yet. I’m really rather surprised that Mako-chan, Rei, and my sister haven’t all gone crazy from dealing with it.*

*It depends on what you’re used to,* Ami put in silently. *And I warned you last night that this was a big city.* She frowned down at whatever mixture she was stirring around in the bowl.

*There’s a difference between knowing about something and actually experiencing it for yourself,* Calypso replied. *Speaking of which... tell her, Ami.*

*Tell me what?*

*Caly thinks the Phoenix Egg is alive,* Ami said simply.

Luna blinked. *Based on what?*

*We can all feel a presence of some kind in this house,* Calypso said. *Ami’s telepathic powers aren’t developed enough yet to pick it up unless I’m pointing it out to her, and even I can barely tell it’s there, but Makoto noticed it nearly half a block away. If telepathy can barely spot this thing while empathy picks it up right away, then its mind is operating below the level of conscious thought, either because it isn’t sentient or because it’s in a state of dormancy.*

*I suppose being cooped up inside an egg would certainly qualify as a state of dormancy,* Luna admitted, *and it’s not as if we know enough about that thing to dismiss the possibility that it might be a living being—but are you sure, Calypso?*

*Yes. The sense is coming from the room you and Setsuna and Usagi were in just a moment ago, so unless there’s _another_ mysterious object of unknown origin and purpose up there...*

*That’ll do, Caly.* “I think this is about as mixed as it’s going to get,” Ami said aloud.

“Then just pour some into the pan, dear.” Without looking away from the counter, Ikuko reached out and slapped Shingo’s hand away as he tried to filch a cherry from the fruit salad she was just about to add some apple slices to. Shingo shifted away from his mother and tried his luck at swiping a piece of bacon instead—and his other hand got lightly rapped on by the spatula Makoto was using to clear an earlier round of pancakes off the pan. Now affecting an injured expression as he nursed his wounded hand, Shingo headed for a stack of toast—and injury became despairing shock as Ami, encouraged by her mischievous sister, pushed the plate of toast back along the counter until it was well out of Shingo’s reach.

Shingo folded his arms and glared at the three cooks, then glanced briefly at the fridge before looking at Setsuna for a very long time. She looked back, folding her own arms and raising a quizzical eyebrow, and finally Shingo muttered something about starvation before tromping sulkily out of the kitchen.

“Nicely done, ladies,” Ikuko murmured. “But now,” she added, at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, “comes the real challenge.” She wiped her hands on her apron, then took it off and left the kitchen, intercepting Usagi at the bottom of the stairs.

They stood there, looking at each other in silence, and as she watched them from just inside the kitchen, it struck Luna that the only real physical resemblance between mother and daughter was in their eyes. It was one of the results of the somewhat unusual reincarnation the Senshi had been put through; just as no one on either side of Usagi’s family had ever had blonde hair, no one in Makoto’s family had ever grown quite so tall so quickly. These and other traits, both physical and mental, were important parts of who and what the Senshi had been, things that Serenity’s influence in the process of rebirth had ensured would remain intact; the Queen’s primary criteria in selecting the parents of each Senshi had been traits of similar character, not appearance.

Ikuko was perhaps the kindest woman Luna had met since Serenity herself, with the same strength of will hidden beneath the gentle exterior, and this had made her the ideal choice to be the mother of the reborn Moon Princess. It also meant that despite the many ways in which she and Usagi were different, they could still connect very strongly on an emotional level.

The simple proof of that was taking place right in front of Luna’s nose. Ikuko and Usagi were doing much more than just looking at each other; they were communicating on a level that was simpler and more powerful than words, exchanging in a single glance the same meaning of an entire conversation. With one look, they both apologized to each other for the actions that had led up to last night’s uncomfortable dialogue; in the same look, they forgave each other. Usagi came down the last few steps and gave her mother a heartfelt hug which was returned in full, and everything was alright again.

Out in the kitchen, Makoto’s soft sigh went unnoticed amidst the sizzle of pancake batter.

# 

“Forget it, Minako.”

“But it’s a lovely morning for a walk,” Minako protested. “It’s a sunny day, cool enough to wake you up, but not so cold that it freezes your nose...”

“I said no.”

“You always say no when I suggest something.”

“That’s because I know exactly how your mind works—and I’m _not_ going out there as a human just so you can parade ‘Arthur Knight’ in front of every girl from here to Hikawa.”

Hands on her hips, Minako stared at him in amazement. “Do you honestly believe I’m that petty?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

Minako put on a pouty look. “Fine. Be that way.” She sat down on her bed with one of the largest of her collection of stuffed toys and turned around so that her back was to Artemis. He blinked.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ve hurt my feelings with your callous male behavior,” Minako said in sulkily injured tones, “so I’m not going anywhere until you apologize.”

“For the love of...” Artemis sighed. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. It was rude and unkind of me to suggest that you’re that mean. Alright?”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?” Minako asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

Artemis facefaulted. “No!”

Minako went back to studying the head of her bed.

# 

A few minutes after the sound of the shower had stopped, Ami excused herself from the kitchen cleanup and headed up to do the formal introductions, with Luna following close behind her. It had taken quite a lot of arguing to stop Calypso from sneaking up to greet Usagi while she was in the shower, but Ami had managed to keep her shirt on—so to speak—until Usagi had a chance to get dressed herself.

“Usagi-chan?”

“Come in, Ami-chan.” Usagi was just stuffing her head through the neck of a sweater that would have been three or four sizes too large if she hadn’t been about six months along. Tugging her hair out, Usagi glanced at Ami and said, “Where is she?”

“Right here.” Ami indicated the second shirt with both hands, but there was a pause before it became mist and flowed to her right. When Calypso’s body soldified this time, she was wearing a much more formal version of the blue gown she had been mimicking when Ami first found her. The outfit now had wavelike swirls of white and silver running along the sides and sleeves, and it even included teardrop-shaped earrings, ocean-blue stones in icy silver settings.

“*Your Royal Highness,*” Calypso said, executing a smoothly flowing curtsey. Startled by the greeting, it took Usagi a moment to put together a reply.

“*Just ‘Usagi’ will do, Calypso.*” Her words started out a bit slow, but the pace picked up as Serenity’s childhood language lessons came back to her. “*We’re much less formal these days than we were on the Moon, and I’ve gotten used to the name over the last sixteen years.*”

“*I understand. Usagi.*” Calypso repeated the name with a very definite emphasis, and then she hesitated.

Serenity’s memories telling her what the Nereid was most likely thinking, Usagi smiled. “*Yes, Caly, you can give me a hug. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’ll break if you touch me.*”

As Calypso smiled and literally flew across the short distance to Usagi, Ami couldn’t help but once again be surprised by her sister’s need for physical contact. Their shared emotional moment back on Mercury she could understand completely, and given just how close Calypso and Larissa had been, the exuberant greeting of Michiru also made perfect sense. What Ami had been having some trouble figuring out was why Caly was being so physically emotional with the other Senshi; the tickling of Hotaru came to mind, as did the hug she had greeted Makoto with back at the apartment. Yes, their former lives had been her friends too, but she had certainly not been as close to them as she was to her sister or Larissa.

From Mercury’s memories, Ami understood that Nereids, at least in their natural form, did not have the capability to physically feel much of anything besides heat and humidity. From the memories and her own experiences with Calypso last night, she also knew that the telepathic species was capable of a far deeper form of contact than simple touch could ever provide—and she was still trying to find the proper words to adequately describe the sensation of looking into a person’s mind, of registering the shift of their thoughts as they looked back into yours, of sharing in everything they knew and believed and had experienced, even if it was just a little bit, for just a little while.

And yet, for all the power and understanding in that moment, there was a distinct lack of emotional feeling. The Nereids were telepaths, not empaths, so their mental powers were attuned to fact and theory, not mood and motivation. While their minds were joined, Ami had known what Calypso’s own feelings to any given memory or thought were, but she had not actually _felt_ them. When they both focused on the same thoughts rather than viewing everything all at once, their emotional connection had grown somewhat stronger, but only to about the same level Ami would have felt from a hug.

There was a simple, deeply moving quality in being able to physically touch. It was something the purely mental connection—as strongly moving as it was—could not duplicate, and for that reason, Nereids had always taken a deep satisfaction from existing in their solid shapes. The fact that their natural forms could not physically feel made touch all the more important to them—and after ten centuries of formless slumber beneath the Blue Hall, Ami knew that Calypso’s own personal need to feel things again went well beyond mere satisfaction. Every time she touched someone, Calypso was able to reassure herself that she was free of the disturbing, endless dreams that had been her only reality for such a very long time.

This particular round of reassurance got a slight boost when the ginzuishou pulsed rather noticeably inside the brooch hanging off Usagi’s sweater. She and Calypso both pulled apart and looked down in surprise—tinged with no small amount of awe in the Nereid’s case—and then Usagi smiled.

“*As strange as it may sound, I think _it’s_ happy to see you, too.*” She paused and then forced herself to speak in Japanese again. “And from now on, let’s try not to use thousands-of-years-old languages when we talk. It’ll get us in trouble if anyone else hears it. Besides,” Usagi added, glancing down at Luna, “I understand it sends Luna into spastic fits.”

Luna gave her a flat look while Calypso giggled. “If you’re quite finished having fun at my expense,” Luna said, “there’s something you ought to know.”

She explained what Calypso and Ami had said about the Phoenix Egg. Usagi listened before turning around and looking up at the little crystal statuette on the counter above her bed, folding her arms and drumming the fingers of her right hand along her left arm.

“It’s alive?”

“Yes,” Calypso said, drifting up to Usagi’s right while Ami walked up to her left. “At this distance, there’s no way to mistake it. It’s unconscious...” She paused and looked down at Usagi’s belly. “Or maybe I should say, it’s unborn. It has the same sort of almost-thought as this little one here.” Calypso lightly touched Usagi’s stomach.

“I see. Can you tell anything else about it?”

Calypso frowned. “It... makes me a little nervous,” she admitted. “I’m not entirely sure why.”

“A phoenix is supposed to be a creature of fire,” Ami said. “Maybe that’s what you’re feeling.”

“Do _you_ notice anything like that?” Usagi asked.

“No, but Caly’s much more sensitive to energy than I am.” Ami looked closely at the Egg and then shook her head. “I don’t feel anything from it.”

“You could scan it,” Usagi suggested.

“Not in here,” Ami replied, shaking her head again. “We don’t know anything about how it came to be inside that Egg, so we have to be open to the possibility that it was _put_ there. If that’s the case, it can also be set free, and we have no idea exactly _what_ might do that; it could be my computer’s scanning frequencies, a simple musical note, or anything in between. I’d rather not experiment with the possibility of releasing a fire-based entity we know nothing about while it’s in your house.”

Usagi made a face. “Good point.” She looked at the Egg again, and finally shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it for now. Although I have to imagine that if _that_”—she nodded towards the Egg—“were dangerous, _this_”— she indicated her brooch—“would have warned me by now.”

“The ginzuishou’s powerful,” Luna said, “not infallible.”

“True,” Usagi agreed, ignoring a faint pulse of what might have been protest from the crystal’s odd awareness, “but it’s had two months of close, daily contact with the Egg without any sort of bad reaction. That’ll do for me unless or until something else comes along to say otherwise.”

“You might want to ask Rei-chan if she’s noticed anything,” Calypso said. “Fire’s her element, after all, and she has much more experience at using and understanding her other abilities than Mako-chan does.”

“We’ll try that,” Usagi said. “Now, you’d better turn back into a shirt or something before Shingo comes along and hears us talking to you.”

Calypso nodded, swirled back towards Ami, and became a slightly off-color blouse again. Usagi watched the process curiously.

“Something wrong?” Ami asked.

“No, not _wrong_—but not all that long ago, the Mizuno Ami I’ve been hanging out with for the last three years would have squirmed just a little uncomfortably if somebody tried to get that close to her.”

Ami blushed. “This is different. Caly’s family.”

Being hugged by a shirt was a new experience for Ami—but not, she decided, an unpleasant one.

# 

Yuuichirou glanced into the heart of the shrine, where Rei was once again sitting in the middle of a deep meditative trance. It was a sight he’d seen many, many times in the past, but the crows were a new addition. All four birds were in there with her, the big one and the scrawny one both being watched by the other two—and looking back at their observers in turn—while all four of them kept an eye on Rei.

Although he liked to think of himself as a reasonably perceptive guy, Yuuichirou had to admit it would take a better mind than his to explain the behaviour of those four birds. He’d asked Grandpa, but the old man had given that particular shrug which said he didn’t know and wasn’t especially worried about finding an answer—something, Yuuichirou had noticed, that he did that a lot where Rei was concerned.

It would be pretty obvious to anybody who spent even a little time in her company that Rei was a special sort of girl—although exactly how special you thought she was depended on how long you were around her, and what sort of mood she was in at the time—and Yuuichirou had been hanging around Hikawa long enough to see her in just about every mood imaginable. He could close his eyes and see her happy or pensive, amused or annoyed, dreamy or angry...

Actually, he didn’t even have to close his eyes to see her angry. After all this time, Yuuichirou suspected that THAT particular image was burned into the back of his retinas or something—and _this_ was yet another thing he was trying to figure out, because it wasn’t like Rei was the first girl he’d ever been interested in. If you got right down to the numbers, Yuuichirou knew he’d dated several girls older than Rei was _now_ back before he’d even met her. All of them _combined_ had not given him even half the level of abuse Rei tended to unleash, and yet he found that he didn’t really mind. This, despite the fact that the most direct display of affection he’d gotten from her in three years were a few smiles and a friendly kiss on the cheek.

Or was it four years?

Yuuichirou shook his head as he turned and walked away. He’d occasionally lost track of the days back during those two years of college—the ones he was _still_ on hiatus from—but his brain must have a serious screw loose if he couldn’t remember what _year_ it was!

Yeah, an extra hole in the head would explain a lot of things. For one thing, there were Rei’s friends. At several points in his life, Yuuichirou would have given just about anything to have even _one_ pretty girl actually sit down and talk with him. Now, he kept running into a half-dozen extremely attractive young ladies day in and day out, and for some insane reason, he didn’t feel the slightest inclination to do anything about that.

Why was that? There was no question that, at least right at first, it had been the age issue. Yuuichirou hadn’t been anywhere near interested in a fourteen year-old girl since _he_ was fourteen—Rei had been fifteen for a few months the first time he laid eyes on her; to his mind, there were just some borders you did not go ANYWHERE near. All he had to do to reaffirm that was take a good look the mess Chiba-san had stumbled into with Usagi-chan. No matter how perfect the two of them seemed to be together, he wouldn’t want to be in Mamoru’s shoes when he finally got back from the States and had to answer to Usagi’s parents.

But now, three years later, what exactly was it that was holding him back from asking one of these girls out? Sure, Usagi-chan and Ami-chan were both spoken for, and there was something about Setsuna that told Yuuichirou she was seriously out of his league—not to mention something ELSE which told him that Tennou-san would quite cheerfully put him six feet under if he so much as looked at Michiru crosswise—but that still left Mina-chan and Mako-chan. Both of them were definitely not little girls anymore, and yet... nada. Why?

The ‘l’-word drifted out of the dark neural recess where it had been laying in wait for just such an opportunity to pounce, promptly getting pounced on by numerous defensive mechanisms and dragged to an even deeper, darker place than before. Scratching the back of his head, Yuuichirou wandered off to see to some of his chores, deciding along the way that he might as well make sure that the front steps were clear of snow.

Back in the shrine, Rei’s eyes opened wide. She turned around where she knelt and frowned in confusion when she didn’t see anyone at the door.

*I was sure...* Shaking her head, Rei rose, slowly stretching her legs and back. Unless she’d lost all track of time, she ought to have just enough of it left to have a shower and change before the others arrived. If they were going to spend the entire afternoon trying to cram several months’ worth of neglected learning into Usagi’s skull, she at least wanted to feel good before it started.

Shooing the crows away, Rei returned to her room, not completely closing the door to the fire room behind her as she went. But that was okay; a little draft wasn’t about to hurt the fire, and besides, the door slid shut by itself just as she was entering her room.

The four crows regarded this strange occurence before collectively ruffling their feathers and flying off. Rei looked back out of her room at them and frowned again, then went back inside muttering to herself.

# 

Haruka dropped ChibiUsa and Hotaru off at about twenty after ten, which made them just a few minutes too late to see Usagi’s first meeting with Calypso. Although the two younger girls were both disappointed about that, the leftovers from an Ikuko-Makoto brunch helped make up for it—and just because they were too late to see Usagi meet Calypso didn’t mean they’d missed all the morning’s entertainment.

There was some definite entertainment value to be had in watching Haruka try to resist Ikuko’s all-powerful Mother Factor. Nearly every person below the age of twenty who passed through the front door of the Tsukino household immediately became a target for this unstoppable force, which manifested itself in such horrifying forms as warm smiles, offers of freshly-baked snacks and refreshments of varying temperatures, and—most insidious of all—genuinely concerned questions about family, friends, and life in general.

It drove Haruka crazy. She did not _want_ to be mothered; she was well out of the phase of life where it was required, and she had gone to considerable lengths to project an outward attitude which would not in any way suggest she needed to be coddled or looked after. She did not need to be fed pancakes, no matter how delicious they were; she was fully capable of looking after herself, thank you very much, and she would have liked nothing more than to stand up and make this particular arguement to Ikuko until it stuck and the woman left her alone.

Instead, Haruka sat quietly at the table and ate the pancakes, shooting glances at everyone else and daring them to crack even the tiniest of smiles. Hotaru took that dare and grinned from ear to ear the entire time, and Makoto finally had to leave the kitchen before she burst out with everyone else’s suppressed laughter.

The torment only lasted a short time, no more than fifteen minutes. Or maybe twenty. Twenty-five at the most, but certainly no more than thirty. Well...

Haruka finally managed to make her escape by driving Usagi, Makoto, Ami, Luna, and Calypso up to Hikawa. She was perfectly calm on the outside, but the zero-to-sixty racing start which launched her car betrayed her rush to get away.

“It’s not like she does it out of spite or anything,” Usagi said.

Haruka glanced at her for a moment, but said nothing.

“It’s just how she tries to be friendly. You don’t have to take it personally, because she does the same thing to everybody who comes by. Sometimes she’s even had hot chocolate waiting for the paperboy or the mailman.”

Still nothing.

“And you can’t tell me you didn’t like those pancakes,” Makoto added. “You ate nearly as many of them as Usagi-chan did.”

A faint cough and a bit of a blush. Progress.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ami said, reaching forward and patting Haruka on the shoulder. “We don’t think any less of you or your whole tough-guy act.”

“Just drop it, alright?”

They finished the drive to Hikawa in silence. Yuuichirou was about halfway down the stairs with a broom when they arrived, and he waved. “So you’re a taxi service now?” he said to Haruka.

“If you even _think_ about comparing my car to a taxicab,” she warned him.

“...I know, I know; they’ll never find my body. And just how many red lights did you run getting here?”

“As long as they don’t catch me, it doesn’t matter.”

Yuuichirou shook his head. “Watch the stairs on your way up,” he cautioned. “There’s ice along a lot of the left side this morning.”

“Thanks for the ride,” Makoto said as she helped Usagi out of the front seat. Haruka mumbled something along the lines of ‘have a nice day studying,’ and the other girls nodded.

“I’m sure we will,” Ami said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Usagi asked innocently. “You know, just in case any pancake-monsters show up?”

Haruka gave her a dark look and then drove off.

“’Pancake monsters’?” Yuuichirou repeated.

“You had to be there.” Makoto looked down the street. “Has Mina-chan shown up yet?”

“Nope. Here, let me help you with those.” He took the extra bag full of books—which were actually Usagi’s books—that Makoto had been carrying, and then the considerably larger extra bag that Ami had been carrying—which were _her_ books. The girls took pity on Yuuichirou when they noticed the definite stagger the second bag put into his step, and didn’t add anything more to the load he was already carrying.

If it hadn’t been for the ice, he might even have made it all the way up the steps without falling.

# 

Something like one hundred and ten percent of the student population of Tokyo was engaged in study for this or that exam on this fine Sunday. One exception—and perhaps the ONLY exception—was up in her apartment, concentrating on something that no school had taught for the last three thousand years or so.

This wasn’t one of the detection spells she’d been using before. It was a more potent magic, refined and enhanced beyond the strength of the ones that had continuously been blocked by... by _something_ she still couldn’t identify, but which seemed to hang around THAT GIRL and her friends like an invisible, impenetrable shield.

At first, she’d thought it might have been some sort of reaction the magic was having to her own intensely negative feelings which was keeping her from observing them. But then she’d started running across other instances, other people and places that her spells either had trouble revealing or couldn’t locate at all, people and places she harbored no particular grudges against, and in some cases rather liked.

It reminded her of something Archon had said several times since their first meeting, that this entire area—all of Tokyo and perhaps even beyond—was the center of the single largest concentration of magical power on the face of the planet. There were certainly other areas where you could get an equally strong level of a specific sort of energy as here—fire energy was always very strong in active volcanoes, for instance—but there was no other place on Earth where ALL types of elemental power existed at such strong levels all at once. Or so Archon claimed, and she’d had no reason to doubt that he knew what he was talking about.

That much energy gathered in one spot had to be having some kind of effect on people, and she was forced to admit that this apparent anti-spell quality she kept running into might be one result of that sort of exposure.

This new spell ought to improve the situation, though. It was described in the memory crystal as ‘an infallible means to pierce the warding powers of an enemy and behold their secrets,’ and she’d already tested it on some of the other people and places that had resisted her spells, getting some promising results.

As she cast the spell, the image of a Shinto shrine began to take shape in the air before her. She recognized it; her other spells had shown her this place so many times over the last few months that she was surprised THEY weren’t all living there. The image began to draw in on part of the shrine, and she held her breath as it neared the point where all the other spells had fallen apart on her...

...and kept going, it was _working_, it was...

*WHAT WAS THAT?!*

The spell’s image flew apart in a shower of light as its creator lurched back, holding her head. There had been... the spell had come into contact with someTHING, a new force that wasn’t quite like anything she’d come across before, but which reminded her very strongly of the disembodied intellect she’d faced when summoning that ill-fated daimon a few weeks ago. She was sure that this new thing was alive, intelligent, and definitely not human—and she was also sure that it had felt her presence just as clearly as she’d registered its.

Could one—or all—of THEM be... be practicing magic? Was that new presence something THEY had summoned, just as she’d called the daimon?

“No,” the girl whispered, clutching the crystal which hung from her neck. “NO!”

# 

Secure in the knowledge that anyone who was headed for Rei’s room would have to walk across the creaking wooden floorboards of the walkway to reach the door, Calypso had resumed human shape and begun drifting about the room, examining things that caught her interest. That didn’t include any of the crows, who Rei thought must have gotten spooked by something earlier; she hadn’t seen them since they’d all flown off earlier this morning, but she didn’t mind their absence. Phobos and Deimos tended not to react well to strange things, and a blue-tinted girl floating up near the ceiling was certainly strange enough to set them off.

Rei herself was having a little trouble ignoring Calypso’s activities, but she thought she coped quite well with having a girl floating around over her head. Then Calypso let out a short sound of surprise—and she must have been VERY surprised, because she stopped floating, fell, and dissolved back into mist just as she hit Rei and Makoto.

All four Senshi and Luna stared at the Nereid in astonishment. “Caly?” Ami asked. “Are you okay?”

*You didn’t feel it?* Calypso asked back.

“Feel what?” Rei demanded.

*There was another mind here,* Calypso said, collecting herself and retaking human form sitting to Ami’s left, one hand to her head. “Just for a moment, but that was long enough for me to tell it wasn’t anyone I know—and that it wasn’t friendly.”

“Are you okay?” Ami repeated.

“I’m not hurt, just a little shaken up. Even momentary contact with a hostile mind can be... sort of unsettling.” Calypso took the opportunity to rest her head on her sister’s shoulder, and Ami put an arm around her. Makoto hid a smile; the Nereid’s face displayed every bit of grateful reassurance a younger sister ought to show when being comforted by her older sister, but there was a hint of sneaky satisfaction in her overall manner.

Caly was obviously aware of Ami’s general emotional reserve—there was no way she couldn’t be, not after both of them had spent last night inside each other’s minds—and she was just as obviously prepared to use every excuse in the book to get around it whenever it suited her.

“Awww,” Usagi said, holding her hands to one side of her face and blinking her suddenly huge eyes. “How cuuuuute!”

Ami blinked and blushed just a little bit, and then did something none of the other girls quite expected—she pulled down her right eyelid and stuck her tongue out at Usagi. The real kick of the moment was that Caly did the exact same thing, except from the left side instead of the right. Usagi looked as shocked as if she’d stepped into the receiving end of a Supreme Thunder, and Luna only slightly less so; Rei and Makoto both fell over laughing.

And then, to the sound of a cheerful, “Hey there!” the door slid open.

Everyone in the room freaked. Luna let out a “MEEEEEAAAAAARRR!” as she jumped four feet in the air from a sitting start, her fur standing on end all over while the girls shrieked collectively. Calypso’s initial instinct was to either revert to mist or fly up to the ceiling, but Ami’s recognition of the cheery voice helped her keep from doing both.

Minako and Artemis stood in the doorway, arm-in-arm and more than a little startled by the reception.

“Okay,” Minako said slowly, “that’s not _quite_ the reaction I was going for...”

“WHAT are you DOING?” Luna interrupted, looking mostly at Artemis.

“Suffering the consequences of Usagi’s creative impulses,” Artemis replied with a sigh. “And of my own seeming inability to say ‘no’ and make it stick.” He ushered Minako into the room and stepped inside as well, sliding the door closed behind himself.

“What are you talking about?” Luna demanded.

“You didn’t tell her, did you?” Minako looked at Usagi and shook her head with a disappointed sigh. “Oh, Usagi-chan...”

As everyone else turned to her, Usagi gulped. In light of all the other trouble she’d already had to occupy her mind last night, she’d completely forgotten to mention her ‘creative impulse’ at the theatre to Luna.

“Um... I—that is, we—sort of got spotted by some of the kids from school when we were at the movie last night. Su-chan and Ken-kun and their friends. Su-chan followed me when I went to get a drink and told me Aneiko was there too”— there were grimaces from Ami and Makoto at this, and a resigned glance at the ceiling/shake of the head combo from Rei—“and she’d seen us as well. I realized that if I didn’t come up with a story to explain Artemis and get it spread around, Aneiko _would_, so I... um... in a way... IsortofsaidhewasMinachansboyfriend.”

# 

In the kitchen, where he had been nursing the bruises from his crash landing on the stairs with some lunch, Yuuichirou looked up as the words, “YOU DID _WHAT_?!” rang out.

He didn’t quite recognize the voice, but it was coming from the direction of Rei’s room, and with Usagi here, a certain degree of shouting was only to be expected.

Yuuichirou put it out of his mind and turned back to his meal.

# 

*One of the problems with living in a big house,* Haruka reflected as she glanced into the living room, *is that when it’s empty, it’s too damn quiet for comfort.*

Right now, the house was close enough to emptiness as to make no difference, and it was very, very quiet indeed. Haruka was engaged in a room-by- room search for Michiru, all the while trying to ignore the unsettling impression that she was violating a tomb or committing some similar sacrilege.

It was times like this that Haruka found she missed the apartment they’d moved into while investigating the Mugen Academy. She’d grown up in a house with five other people living in it, so she was used to and even comfortable with crowded living conditions—not that she ever felt crowded by Michiru. Sure, the apartment was smaller than this huge place, but it had a certain cozy charm to it, and Haruka had gotten used to being able to tell where Michiru was just by looking through a doorway. If Michiru hadn’t been in the apartment, odds were she was at the pool—and on the rare occasions she went somewhere by herself, she made it a point to always tell Haruka where she was going. She still did. Every time.

Of course, she expected the same consideration from Haruka, which had led to a few problems here and there since, whether by bike or by car, half the time Haruka didn’t know herself where she might end up when she went out for a drive. It was sort of a case of the destination not being as important as the journey.

Michiru let her get away with it without comment, but Haruka wondered now if the woman’s habit of disappearing into one room and then not answering when Haruka called her name, forcing her partner to hunt for her one room at a time, was some petty form of revenge.

This particular hunt finally ended on the second floor, in the wide-windowed room where Michiru did most of her painting.

“That took quite a while,” Michiru said, not looking up from the canvas in front of her. “Do I dare hope that you’ve finally learned how to drive at a normal pace?”

“Usagi-chan’s mother and Mako-chan were in full cooking mode when we got there, and Tsukino-san caught me before I had a chance to get away.”

“Poor girl. And I’ll bet you had to suffer through an entire gourmet breakfast, too.”

Haruka chose not to answer that as she walked over to get a look at the picture. There wasn’t all that much to look at just yet, of course—even Michiru could only paint so much in half an hour—but what there was showed a small pond or lake with the first beginnings of a forest on its shores and some tall, mist-shrouded towers in the far background.

“I see you’ve been dreaming again. The Moon Kingdom, right?”

Michiru nodded. “It’s always been a good source of inspiration. And after everything that happened last night, it only makes sense that some things about our past would come back to me.”

“What sort of... things?”

“Childhood memories. A day spent with a friend, talking and swimming.” Michiru looked away from her painting briefly, smiling. “It seems that Minako—or rather, Ishtar—may have been my aunt.”

“Ouch. Any other familial revelations?”

“No—although based on some parental wisdoms Caly and I were quoting back and forth in the dream, I suspect Larissa’s mother and Ariel must have gotten along rather well. She seems to have talked a great deal like you do.”

“Good for her.” Haruka paused. “You seem to have... accepted... Calypso pretty fast.”

“Now don’t be like that,” Michiru chided.

“I’m not. Really, I’m not. It’s just that it was weeks before you stopped calling _me_ ‘Tennou-san’, but here you’ve known Calypso less than a day, and you’re already on a first-name basis.” Haruka frowned. “Assuming she actually _has_ a family name, of course.”

“It’s one day going on thirteen years,” Michiru replied. “Caly was Larissa’s friend for her entire life, and if Ami is enough like Mercury to be Caly’s sister again, then I’m enough like Larissa to be her friend again.” She smiled. “And even if I didn’t have Larissa’s memories, I think I’d still like to be Calypso’s friend. She’s an interesting, intelligent person, very friendly and very sweet. And she helped me get back to my paintings.”

“Yeah, I sort of noticed you were having trouble with that.” Haruka glanced at a small group of pictures stacked neatly against one wall to dry. One showed a school of dolphins chasing each other across the waves; another showed a river, flowing _up_ into the sky as a shower of stars; three more were of the same mountain lake, painted each time from a different angle. They wasn’t anything wrong with any of them; the dolphins looked like dolphins and the lake looked like a lake, but that reminded Haruka of a line she’d read a couple of years back, something written by a critic who had been reviewing Michiru’s paintings:

*A remarkable display in which the subjects catch the eye and stir the heart. The execution and technique is such that these are not merely images recreated from the artist’s imagination, but a creation taking place. Rather than mimic reality, these paintings ARE reality.*

Haruka understood what the guy had meant. Looking at Michiru’s finer paintings always gave her the sense that she could just step through the picture and enter whichever strange and mysterious world existed on the other side. The five paintings off to the side were technically flawless, but the incomplete dreamscape was somehow more believable than all of them.

“It was the tour,” Michiru sighed. “Six months on the road, performances every other night at the least... there just wasn’t any time at all for me to paint. Going back to doing _anything_ after a long break is never easy, and this is hard enough even when you have the right feel for it going.”

“I’d say you’re getting back to it. Look on the bright side; if you start to slip again, you can always ask Ami if she’ll loan Calypso out to you for a few days so she can pose for you.” Headed for the door, Haruka spoke back over her shoulder. “Imagine the creative possibilities with a model who can read your mind and then change shape at will to match what you’re looking for.”

“That’s not an entirely bad idea,” Michiru admitted, for some reason suddenly smiling and getting up from her painting. “But something you have to keep in mind is that appearance is only part of it; Caly can make herself look like anything she wants, but I’d still know it was her, and my feelings about her wouldn’t change—and that would get carried over into whatever I painted. If I wanted to convey a different feeling, I’d need a different model.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the artist, so I suppose I’ll have to take your word on that.”

“Haruka?”

“Yeah?” Haruka asked, turning around. Michiru had taken a seat by a blank canvas, and she pointed now to a wide, rectangular block across the room that she used as a stand for objects in still-lifes.

“Pose for me?”

Haruka laughed—once—but when she realized Michiru’s request was actually serious, she fell silent and actually blushed. “Er... well, I was actually going to...”

“Please?” There was a silence.

“Um... sure, Michi...” Halfway to the stand, Haruka gave Michiru a direct look with some of her usual attitude in it. “Just don’t expect me to turn myself into a human pretzel or anything weird like that for your amusement.”

“Of course not,” Michiru murmured, smiling as Haruka sat down on the block. “Sit back just a bit... there... turn to the left... hold it, that’s good... now just look forward...”

“Like this?” Haruka was leaning back on her hands as she sat, her body facing off to one side with her head turned at a small angle to regard Michiru.

“Perfect. Just like that.” Michiru nodded with a terrific smile. “Okay. Now take all your clothes off.”

The angle of her head changed as Haruka gave Michiru a flat look. Michiru chuckled softly to herself and began to paint.

# 

The afternoon passed very slowly for some people.

By the end of the first half-hour, Minako and Calypso were getting along famously—which was not entirely reassuring as far as Ami was concerned. She was happy that the other Senshi were accepting Calypso so easily, but there was a streak of what could most politely be called ‘adventurousness’ in both Minako’s and Calypso’s characters; either of them was capable of getting into plenty of trouble on her own, but together...

Even thinking about the degree of trouble one reborn Venusian—and deep down inside, in every way that was important, Minako was just as much a Venusian as Ishtar had been, although thankfully with better self-restraint and modesty—and one prankish, shapeshifting telepath might be able to create together made Ami nervous.

On the other hand, by the end of the first half-hour, Luna was still looking at Artemis as though she wanted to skin him alive and roll him in salt. This didn’t do anything to help Ami’s mood. Granted, Luna considered Artemis with lethal intent on an average of once a week, but this time she looked like she might actually follow through on it.

Ami wasn’t clear on exactly how Luna felt about Artemis; not even Minako and Makoto were sure of that, since Luna’s own mental powers and training allowed her to block theirs rather easily. Ami also wasn’t exactly the best judge of romantic matters, but if she had to hazard a guess based on what she’d observed, she’d have said Luna’s feelings for Artemis were somewhat stronger than friendship. The eventual existence of Diana sort of proved that, and it would also explain why Luna wasn’t taking Usagi’s little design particularly well.

With the two cats at odds like that, it was really a wonder that they got any studying done.

Elsewhere, ChibiUsa and Hotaru had quite a lot of fun over the course of the afternoon. With her thirtieth-century education, ChibiUsa had no need to study for anything except modern history, which took no more than an hour or so. Hotaru didn’t have to study either, though for different reasons. She might physically be a child, but Hotaru still retained all the knowledge she’d had before her reversion to infancy. When her elementary school teachers commented on how hard she worked in class, they had no idea that she was actually working on homework assignments Ami had gathered from her own courses and then passed along to Michiru and Haruka. That sort of advanced education left Hotaru severely overqualified for a first-grade class, but she went anyway just so she could be around other children.

Setsuna had planned to spend most of the afternoon working on some projects she’d brought home from the store. She did eventually get around to her work, but only after first having a long talk with Ikuko about everything that had happened last night. Setsuna found it interesting that the older woman didn’t seem to be bothered by her guest’s unusual talent, and when she commented on it, Ikuko just smiled.

“It’s really not that bizarre, Setsuna. I had a friend in high school whose mother studied Tarot cards, and she used to do readings for a bunch of us when we stopped by to visit; she was almost always right. There are several astrologers in town who all have very credible reputations, and then there’s Usagi’s friend Rei.”

Setsuna blinked. “You know about her?”

“Yes, I do. People have been going to her for years when they need help to find something, and the ‘maiden of Hikawa’ has become something of a local legend as a result. Although I have to admit that I’d pictured her as being quite a bit older—by about fifty years—so it took a while for me to make the connection when Usagi introduced us and said Rei lived at Hikawa.”

“They... never mentioned that you knew,” Setsuna said. “About Rei, I mean.”

“That’s probably because I’ve never told them that I know,” Ikuko replied. “I don’t see any reason to make a fuss just because Rei can do something other people can’t—and the same goes for you. So you can see the future sometimes; it didn’t stop you from burning that soup last week.”

“It also might not have warned me about Shingo’s little surprise until it was too late,” Setsuna added. “How _did_ you know he was up there, anyway?”

“It’s a mother’s duty to know every last little devious twist of her children’s minds,” Ikuko said, “and there is _nothing_ that goes on in this house that I don’t know about. For example, I can tell you for a fact that ChibiUsa and Hotaru haven’t been studying anything other than Usagi’s manga collection for at least half an hour now.”

“Oh?”

“Do you notice how quiet they’re being? If they were actually studying something, they’d be making a little bit of noise every now and then, but they’re trying not to make any sound at all now, which means they’re up to something besides studying and don’t want to get caught.”

“I see.” Setsuna thought for a moment. “I take it that the next step is to go upstairs and put the fear of Mom back into them?”

“You _do_ catch on quickly.”

# 

“It’s down here somewhere.”

“So’s half the electrical wiring in the city. Not to mention the dirt, the bugs, the rats...”

“You just be quiet about the rats. You know I can’t stand rats.”

The two city maintenance workers were walking through a dimly-lit access tunnel somewhere beneath the Juuban district, in search of the cause of intermittent brownouts which had been affecting several blocks on the surface for the last few hours. As of yet, they hadn’t found anything.

But something had found them.

Hidden in the shadows of the piping and electrical wiring running along the walls and ceiling, Proteus’ sensor nodes watched the progress of the two humans. Several tunnels over, the main bulk of the entity crawled slowly and steadily away from the relatively fast-moving humans, accompanied by the vast majority of its mutated rat drones and the clustered pods which held its human experiments.

One of these pods was shattered, its insides slick with the residues of the thing that had been housed inside but was now free, a thing that had been human not too long ago but was now something considerably more.

Proteus watched with satisfaction as the two workers found the charred bodies of several rats and the exposed electrical wiring the creatures had partially chewed through. It watched as a strange, dust-heavy mist floated towards the pair from further down the tunnel while they worked, and it watched as their motions became vague, confused, and slowed gradually towards sleep.

Out of the unlighted distance came the figure of an ordinary, if very sick-looking woman, who walked up to the two workers and began issuing orders, to which they nodded slowly. They attended to the damaged wires and then headed back the way they had come, the woman following close behind them.

*All in all,* Proteus thought, *a promising beginning.* The Nanako-unit’s unexpected developments—some very complex changes in the bodily systems which produced pheromones, among other things—seemed to be every bit as potent as expected. The two workers would escort the unit back to the surface and report that they’d found a sick and injured woman down in these tunnels. The woman would quickly be taken to a hospital, where the next phase of the plan could begin—and even if anything went wrong, by the time the unit reached the surface, Proteus would have two new test subjects to work with.

That was easily worth the price of a few rats.

# 

Rei had an unpleasant dream that night.

She found herself standing in the shrine’s courtyard, dressed in the usual white and red garment that went with her duties—but it was the middle of the night, and the place appeared totally deserted. A heavy mist hung in the air, blotting out almost everything except for the nearest buildings, the arch at the entrance, and the sliver of the crescent moon far overhead.

There was something moving in the mist, something which left little swirling eddies in its wake but never truly seemed to appear no matter how closely she looked for it. Not even a vague blur took shape among the fog, but Rei was still absolutely certain that whatever it was, it was out there. Watching her.

Calypso’s mention of something unfriendly trying to spy on them that afternoon came back to Rei now with remarkable clarity, but it didn’t make whatever ought to be in the mist any easier to see.

In reality, while Rei lay asleep in bed, her face drawn into the beginnings of fear, anger, and the will to wake up from what she was realizing was a dream, mist was rising from the cold stones of the courtyard. Thin and pale, the mist glowed strangely in the light of the full moon.

In Rei’s room, the sleeping crows suddenly woke up and cawed in fright as the symbols on the cover of the Book of Ages shone with a bright white energy. Rei did not wake up; instead, she made a strange sound and then relaxed as the disturbing dream fell apart and faded away.

Outside, the mist dissolved.

# 

Usagi yawned prodigiously as she and her friends walked to school.

“Didn’t get enough sleep last night?” Naru asked.

“There’s no...”—Usagi paused for another yawn—“...such thing as ‘enough sleep’, Naru-chan. Particularly not after being stuck in a room with Ami-chan and Mako-chan and Rei and this blonde crash-bomber for almost eight solid hours of study.”

Naru looked at Minako in amazement. “You mean you actually got her to sit still for eight hours?”

“It was more like six and a half hours,” Minako admitted. “We broke for a late lunch and had a few other interruptions here and there. After all, even Rome wasn’t burned in a day.”

“That’s ‘built’,” Umino corrected. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Minako thought about that. “Yeah, that works too—but I was thinking of that Nero guy who was supposed to have set fire to the city. Haruna-sensei said it burned for a day and a night and on into the next day, didn’t she?”

Umino blinked. “Um... actually, I think she did.” He suddenly looked very worried, as well he should; Minako making sense at any time was a cause for concern, but especially on the morning of a final exam.

“Never mind,” Naru said. “Would one of those ‘interruptions’ you mentioned happen to have a name, white hair, and be about this tall?” She indicated a point about six feet in the air.

“Where did _you_ hear about him?” Usagi asked. Umino cleared his throat, and Usagi rolled her eyes. “Silly me. Sorry; all of yesterday’s book-learning seems to have pushed out everything else I’m supposed to know.”

“We forgive you,” Naru said. Umino nodded at the same time; then Naru turned back to Minako. “So what’s he like?”

Minako shook her head. “Not before a test, Naru-chan. I’ll tell you all about Arthur-kun after school, but not until then.”

Usagi covered a doom-fearing sigh by pointing down the street. “There’re Ami-chan and Mako-chan—and Ryo-kun, too.”

“Good,” Minako said, smiling. “Now we can be sure you won’t get away.”

“If I survive this week,” Usagi said, “I’ll remember that you were making fun of me in my hour of need, Minako.”

“You said that last year.”

“And I meant it then, too.”

“Is she threatening vengeance upon anyone who teases her during exams again?” Ami asked as she, Ryo, and Makoto walked up.

“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Makoto said.

“That’s what it was,” Minako confirmed.

“Well,” Ami said, “then I guess she’s on schedule.”

“You have a schedule for her?” Ryo asked in surprise. Ami, Makoto, Minako, Naru, and Umino all nodded.

“Gripe and groan in the morning...” Minako began.

“...make feeble threats and gloomy proclamations on the way to school...” Naru continued.

“...try to run away at the front door...” Umino noted calmly.

“...stage a panic attack as a last resort once in class...” Makoto added.

“...and then write the exam,” Ami concluded. “We’ve been told that Usagi-chan’s pre-exam behavior pattern hasn’t changed noticeably since she was in the second grade—which is when Umino-san originally outlined the process.”

Usagi huffed and tried to storm off down the sidewalk, but the others kept pace with her quite easily.

“So,” Naru said, “are the rest of you having another long study session after this morning’s exam?”

Ami nodded. “That’s the plan for the week. You and Umino-san are more than welcome to join us, if you’d like.”

*Does that mean I’m going to have to stay as a shirt every day this week?* Calypso protested.

*Hush, Caly.*

Naru was shaking her head. “Thanks, but I did my share of trying to help Usagi-chan study, and I more than had my fill of it.”

“Traitor,” Usagi grumbled.

“And I love you, too,” Naru replied, smiling and patting Usagi on the shoulder.

“Careful,” Makoto commented. “She may bite.”

She didn’t, of course, but there was a definite growl in Usagi’s response.

# 

Rei got off to a slow start that morning. While not one of her mind-punishing future-revealing prophetic visions, that dream still hadn’t been fun, and the feeling of being watched hadn’t entirely left her upon waking, which made the walk to school very uncomfortable.

She met up with Himeko, Keiko, and Anya quite by chance, and after the initial greeting, they all moved along in a silence that was just a bit on the sombre side.

“Just how hard do the teachers here mark the finals?” Anya finally asked, showing more nervousness than Rei could recall seeing in the short time she’d known the girl.

“No harder than they mark everything else,” Himeko assured her.

“Which is to say, the smallest mistake costs ten percent.” Keiko was nervous too, considerably more so than Anya; though usually calm and confident about everything—in her own quiet and bizarrely humorous way—when it came to her marks, Keiko absolutely flew to pieces with worry.

“Now don’t start thinking like that,” Himeko said. “You’ve got to be positive, Keiko. If you _think_ something bad’s going to happen, then it’s much more likely to—right, Rei-san?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry, Himeko-san; I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”

“I said...”

“Cawp!”

Himeko gave a start, Anya blinked in surprise, and Keiko actually squeaked at the coarse avian interruption. Rei recognized the sound and wasn’t particularly surprised to hear it; she’d been expecting something like this to happen sooner or later, and turning around, she could clearly see Rooky perched atop a nearby length of wall. She was a bit startled to see Phobos, Deimos, and even Thrax not too far behind the smaller crow.

“Er... Rei-san?” Himeko asked hesitantly. “Is it just my imagination, or are those birds looking at you?”

“It’s not your imagination,” Rei said absently, walking over until she was only a few feet from Rooky. She looked the little loudmouth straight in the eye and made sure he understood she wasn’t happy to see him here—and she didn’t spare the others, either. Phobos and Deimos had the grace to look a little ashamed of themselves—although other than a few zookeepers, Rei was probably the only person in Tokyo who could tell when a crow was feeling ashamed—while Rooky put on his best ‘Rooky’s very sorry’ expression. Thrax met the glare with his usual regal indifference.

“That has got to be the biggest crow I’ve ever seen,” Anya said.

“Awp!”

“And that has to be the scrawniest,” Keiko added, looking at Rooky. He looked back at her and ‘cawp’-ed again, then fluttered down to Rei and perched lightly on the arm she held out. He looked like he wanted very badly to say something, but mindful of Rei’s threat to never speak to him again if he talked in public, Rooky managed to stay nonverbal. In spite of the lack of words, there was an unmistakeable kind of affectionate worry about his manner, and Rei guessed that her feathered friends had picked up on her troubled mood.

“I’m fine,” she said quietly. “Go home.”

Rooky cawed long and low, but then did as he was told and flew off. The other three followed suit, Thrax last, and only after a look which Rei was absolutely certain meant the big raven wanted her to talk to Rooky soon.

“How... did you do that?” Himeko’s question sounded very much as though she were asking for confirmation that Rei _had_ done something in addition to asking how she’d done it.

“I take it you... know... those birds?” Anya asked, ignoring Himeko.

“They live with me,” Rei replied, frowning faintly. “I look after them, and they look after me, but they haven’t tried to follow me to school since...” She fell silent and shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s get going before we’re late.”

“Hush,” Keiko said softly, reaching out and putting a restraining hand on Himeko’s arm as Rei moved quickly out of earshot.

“But...”

“Just let it go, Hime-chan.”

Anya looked at the two of them. “You know something about this, don’t you, Keiko?”

“I do,” Keiko agreed, suddenly looking almost fierce and not at all humorous, “and if either of you repeat what I’m about to say to ANYONE, I swear I will make your lives a living hell for it.”

Himeko and Anya both blinked—Himeko actually backed up a step—but they agreed not to tell anyone whatever Keiko told them—and they meant it.

# 

> KEIKO’S STORY
> 
> Rei and I have known each other for quite a long time. We’ve been going to the same schools our entire lives, and even if we haven’t ever been especially close friends, we know each other well enough to like each other. I think I’m the only person at T*A who knew her back then, so nobody else except me knows about her early childhood—and if I find out to the contrary after this, you two are going to regret it.
> 
> (“We’re not going to tell anyone,” Anya said firmly.)
> 
> (“Yeah, what do you want us to do? Make a ritualistic blood pact or something?”)
> 
> (“Don’t tempt me.”)
> 
> (“.....”)
> 
> (“Go on, Keiko.”)
> 
> When she was little, Rei wasn’t very much like she is now. She had some problems paying attention for long periods of time, so her marks in a lot of subjects weren’t always very good. She had a really short temper about that and a lot of other things, and even if she didn’t hit anybody, she could shout loud enough to make it hurt. Her appearance wasn’t much to be proud about, either; she chewed her nails a lot, and she absolutely hated her hair, so she never took care of it. You could say she was the proverbial ugly duckling.
> 
> (“And the birds?” Himeko asked cautiously.)
> 
> (“I’ll get to that.”)
> 
> Rei had these spells sometimes when she’d stop paying attention to everything else. They weren’t something she could control—they just happened— but she told me one time that she liked them, because it was quiet when that happened, warm and safe. She said that sometimes it felt almost like she was flying, and one day she climbed a tree in the schoolyard and jumped trying to fly. She didn’t break anything except her pride, but nobody laughed at her for it because when she came to school the very next day, there was a crow following her.
> 
> I don’t think she ever gave it a name, but the bird was never very far away from her after that. It’s the bigger of the two medium-sized ones we saw just now.
> 
> (“How long ago was this?” Anya asked, blinking in surprise.)
> 
> (“Close to ten years by now, I’d say. But just listen, alright?”)
> 
> The crow wasn’t especially affectionate towards Rei, but it did let her feed it and pet it sometimes, and it wouldn’t let anybody else near that I ever saw. Most of the other kids started making fun of her because she was spending so much time with that bird, and some of the boys got jealous and tried to catch the crow. That was the only time I’ve ever seen Rei actually hit someone. She didn’t get into too much trouble, and the boys left the bird alone afterwards, so things were fairly normal for a while. At least until her mother died.
> 
> (Himeko covered her mouth, and Anya briefly closed her eyes.)
> 
> You didn’t know that, did you? Not many people do; most of them are too spellbound by her to intrude on her private life, and she never talks about it. NEVER.
> 
> That was when she went to live with her grandfather. Her mother had been the one taking care of her up until then, and her father was too busy with his political career to really give her the attention she needed. He could have hired a nanny or something, I suppose, but he’s the sort of man who has very definite opinions about things, and one of them is that a child should be raised by her family.
> 
> Hikawa’s fairly far from where her father lives, so Rei transfered to another school that was closer. I didn’t see her again until we both came to T*A a few years later. She’d changed so much by then that I almost didn’t recognize her, and she kept on changing. I first heard about ‘the mystic maiden’ about a year later, and when I went up there to see if it was true or not, I saw another crow in addition to the first.

# 

“’Mystic maiden’?” Anya said, frowning.

“It’s not a slogan,” Keiko said. “Rei can see things with her mind. She helped find a little boy one time, and you saw how she reacted when that... thing... ran past us a couple weeks ago. She knew it was coming even before it showed up.”

“I knew about _that_,” Himeko said. “Half the school knows about it by now -but how do the crows fit into it?”

“I don’t really know,” Keiko admitted, “and I’ve never seen those other two before today, but I’m not about to ask where they came from or why any of them listen to her like that. For whatever reason, those birds are important to Rei, and nobody else has any right to go poking their noses into why unless she wants them to. Right?” She all but bit that ‘t’ off, and Anya and Himeko both nodded quickly. “Good. Now let’s hurry up before we’re late.”

# 

It was lunchtime, and Hotaru was sitting a bit glumly in one of the swings in her school’s snow-dusted playground. One of the drawbacks in her unique situation was that, since students at the elementary level didn’t write the kind of exams junior and senior high students endured at this time every year, they attended regular classes—with lesser tests—for the last week or so before the spring break. This meant that Hotaru was going to miss out on a whole week’s worth of afternoons in which she could be spending time with her friends.

Oh well. Most of them were probably going to be very busy studying anyway, and ChibiUsa was going to have to at least give the impression she was studying. Even more so after Ikuko and Setsuna had caught them in the middle of some of Usagi’s—or more likely Rei’s—manga. So on the whole, she probably wasn’t really missing anything. And if she’d been at home, Michiru would have been almost sure to pick up on the ‘educational trial by fire’ feeling that was filling most of the city, and take steps. Hotaru wanted more of her advanced homework about as much as she wanted to turn back into a baby again.

“Something wrong, Hotaru-chan?”

Hotaru looked up and saw a boy she didn’t recognize sitting on one of the nearby teeter-totters, his knees tucked up to his chin. She figured he must be from another class, although she thought it was odd she hadn’t noticed him before. With those grey eyes and that absolutely grey hair, he really ought to have stood out more...

*Wait a minute. Grey hair and eyes...* Hotaru took a closer look at the boy. “You need a better disguise.”

The ‘boy’ blinked in surprise and then sighed a very grown-up sigh when he realized she knew who—or rather, what—he was. “You’re always one of the hardest to fool, Saturn. Even more so than Pluto, sometimes.”

“I have a unique perspective,” Hotaru replied. “You’re Balance, right? What do you want?”

“We needed to talk to you and make sure of some things,” another voice said. Hotaru turned around and nearly fell off her swing when she saw three little girls who all looked like Setsuna sitting in various places on the jungle gym. She watched them for a moment and then glanced at Balance.

“The rest of you aren’t going to pop up, are they?”

“No. Only the four of us can exist in your world with any kind of normalcy—and _they_ have to be all together to do it,” he added with a nod towards the three faces of Time, one of whom had decided to hang upside-down from the jungle gym and seemed to be having fun in the process. Balance blinked at her and then shook his head. “The other six are too strongly polarized to manifest like this.”

“Chaos could do it,” the little girl in the center said.

Balance thought about that. “Granted—but not likely for long enough to get anything done.”

“No,” the little girl on the left said immediately, looking at Hotaru.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking about it,” the one on the right said.

“We’re not going to tell you why we look like Setsuna,” the little girl in the center said. “Or why she’s in her current condition.”

“But you’ll find out eventually,” the one on the left added.

Hotaru looked at Balance. “Do they always talk like that?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“And why are you here, again?”

“Because you present us with a bit of a problem,” Balance said. “Not only are you one of the most powerful beings in the mortal world, but you also represent a force that is very powerful in _our_ world. As you’ve recently discovered, Saturn is not so much the Senshi of absolute destruction and death as she is the Senshi of movement and change. Your power is based on the replacement—whether steady or severe—of everything that is by everything that is yet to be, and that makes you hard to predict, even for us.”

“As long as you believed the power of Saturn was the power of death,” the central girl said, “you treated it in a specific way, and we could take that into account and plan for it. But now that you are beginning to accept your power for what it truly is and can fully be, equally creative and destructive, it makes calculating your actions much trickier. We are coming to a time when a number of critical events will take place, and there are certain events in which you will be present that your new attitude about Saturn could cause some problems, so we decided the best way to deal with the situation was to speak with you directly.”

“Just to speak with me?” Hotaru said cautiously.

“Evil’s first suggestion was to take the Silence Glaive away from you for a while,” Balance admitted. “In the long run, though, that would have caused more problems than it solved—so yes, we’re just here to speak with you. We’ll talk, you’ll listen, and hopefully we’ll agree on something by the end.”

“I think the word for it is ‘diplomacy’,” Hotaru said. “So what did you want me to do?”

“It’s more a question of what we want you _not_ to do.”

 

# 

_(Fade in to an empty and silent studio. After panning around for a moment, the camera reveals an audio cassette recorder with a Post-It note bearing the words ’Push Play’ stuck to it.)_

**Usagi’s voice** : Konnichi-wa, minna! Since we all have to write our exams, we’re not available to do this segment at the usual time. Michiru could have done it, except that she’s in one of those artsy creative moods which can’t be interrupted, and which has dragged Haruka along with her. Setsuna has work, Luna and Artemis are having a little... um... ‘discussion’ about his new secret identity, and Hotaru’s busy with Balance and the three Times, so we left this recording.

**Makoto’s voice** : All the references to homework and study have made the moral of this episode so obvious that it’s probably making some of you physically ill, so we won’t repeat it any more than we have to.

**Minako’s voice** : And since that’s out of the way, this segment’s over and done in a fraction of the usual time!

**Rei’s voice** : Now if only we could do this this quickly every other time.

**Ami’s voice** : We could, but if you look at the fine print in our contracts, you’ll see we get paid more for every line...

_(There is a pause, and then the recorder begins to smoke from the sheer number of voices that start talking all at once.)_

18/03/01

_Okay, I don’t know WHAT happened to delay this one so long. I’m disgusted with myself. But now that it IS done, I’m on to the next part. And no, I’m not going to talk much more about exams. I apologize almost as profusely for getting into them this much as I do for the delay in getting this episode out._

_In the future:_   
_-Spring break begins;_   
_-Lots of things already hinted at should begin to make more sense;_   
_-Insert your favorite speculation here._


	21. Dinner with a Senshi (Or Three) and The Return of Sailor V!

# 

The pale, sickly woman lay silently on the bed in the observation ward. A week’s worth of tests had failed to determine exactly what it was that had caused her to slip into this comatose state, and all the while, the woman’s mutated body was steadily pumping massive quantities of hypnotic pheromones and infectious spores into the air. Like all hospitals, this one had an extensive series of air filters to slow and prevent the spread of airborne disease agents, but as good as those filters were, Proteus’s creation was better. The pheromones attacked the living beings, distracting and confusing them while the spores ate away at the filters and spread further. Here and there, fleshy sacs grown from the drifting spores hung in the dark corners and unseen spaces of the air ducts and pumped out more chemicals, spreading and speeding the takeover.

Proteus had reviewed its progress in the last week and been very pleased to note that its selection of captured humans had already doubled in size. True, the control over these new subjects was not yet total, and most of them were patients whose injury-taxed immune systems could not stand up under extended exposure to the spores, but even a healthy individual could be snared with time. As for the unhealthy, they might be too weak to be useful right now, but repairing their bodies would be no trouble at all once Proteus achieved the proper degree of control.

There was one thing the entity was puzzled about. This was the same hospital where its first experimental subject, Hiroshi, had been taken following his defeat, but there was no trace of the man in the building. Hospital records showed that he had been moved to a different facility, but Proteus had checked that and turned up nothing.

It wasn’t sure exactly why it wanted to know what had happened to Hiroshi’s body, but Proteus decided to keep looking. The next phase of its plan was not scheduled to begin for several days yet, so it had time to spare.

# 

A meeting had been called in the Great Hall, but none of the Lords or Ladies were present, and even the guardsmen had been dismissed. Given the delicate nature of the discussion, Lord Draco had not been informed of the meeting either, which left Janus and Jenna alone with their three closest advisors and the silent, black-armored warrior.

Watching the replay of what had transpired barely a week ago, Cestus stood with his arms folded, his left hand raised to scratch idly at the lower end of the scar that ran across his face. Even with the surprise of seeing Senshi, his face remained expressionless until the point in the assault when the red blur of motion ascended the nexus and solidified into a young woman with a very, very familiar face. At that moment, Cestus glanced at the far side of the throne out of the corner of his eye, and grinned wickedly.

Lilith’s choice of attire today was a dress of pale green and gold ribbons over a lushly mature body with brilliant golden hair, but the sight of Athena alive and well so totally stunned her that a ripple of distortion passed through the entire facade.

“She...!” Whatever else Lilith had intended to say, she fell silent as Janus reached out and caught her wrist in a brief but firm grip. The eye of the Princess looked up to Cestus, but it was the Prince’s voice which spoke.

“You can appreciate now why we’ve chosen to keep this back from the Lords.”

“Yes, your Highness.” Cestus turned his attention back to the images, which had advanced to the collapse of the nexus. “It also explains why our operations in that city have been running into so much trouble. Do we know for certain how many Senshi are active?”

“Not precisely.” Archon paused. “As it happens, I’ve located an ally within the city, and I’ve been drawing on her knowledge of history to try and piece together what happened after the Fall.”

“Exactly what sort of ‘ally’ are we talking about here?” Jenna asked curiously.

“Rather a young one, Highness, but potentially extremely useful. She’s had possession of a functional memory crystal for several years now, and she managed to teach herself an impressive array of spells with it. I’ve since been giving her proper instruction, and I must say that her progress has been remarkable.”

“She’s right on top of the supernexus,” Cestus said. “Spellcasting in that kind of environment would be about as difficult as picking flowers in the middle of summer—hardly what I’d call an indication of talent.”

“Granted,” Janus said, raising a hand to forestall an argument, “but we will defer to Archon’s judgment in such a matter.” Cestus and the archmage both bowed. “Continue, Archon.”

“I mentioned the girl now, Highness, because she was aware of the Senshi long before our return. From her account, they have been active in that city for the past three years, and it seems that there are more of them than were present in our time.”

“’More?’” Cestus asked sharply.

“You don’t mean to say these savages have activated _Saturn,_ do you?” Lilith said, looking terribly nervous.

“No,” Archon replied, raising his hands in a gesture of reassurance, “not Saturn. But from what I have been told, as many as four Greater Senshi unknown in our age have been seen in this city. My apprentice also knew of the existence of Pluto, if only vaguely, and she had inferred the existence of a Senshi of Saturn, but she knew nothing about either of them, nor had she ever heard of an appearance by Saturn.”

“I see.” Janus and Jenna looked the archmage. “And you did not mention any of this before because...?”

“Until very recently, I had no direct proof. And _until_ I had seen the Senshi for myself, I must admit that I gave the girl’s story little to no credit.” The two similar but different eyes considered Archon in silence, and then the divided head nodded.

“Just as we would have given _your_ claim of Senshi no real weight without something to substantiate it. Very well. What remains now is to determine exactly how we will deal with the situation.”

“If I remember correctly,” Cestus said, “it takes a unit of at least the fourth generation to present any sort of serious threat to a well-trained Senshi. I don’t suppose our reserves are sufficient to produce the force we’d need for a direct engagement?”

Archon shook his head. “Assembling the new nexi has stretched our resources to the limit. I can’t produce advanced units without either canceling the production of nexi or going into our critical reserves. Either would hamper our efforts to complete the Rise.”

“_That_ must not happen,” Janus said.

Cestus bowed. “I understand, my Prince. Then it seems there’s no choice except for me to go to Tokyo myself and oversee the next operation.” The red- haired fighter looked at Archon. “Can I count on any support from your mysterious protegee?”

“Possibly. Her knowledge of battle magic is not up to the task of confronting Senshi, but she’s proved quite adept at summoning spells. A few well-placed daimons could be all the distraction we need for the nexi to reach normal operating levels. Even ten minutes of standard operation would yield a sizable boost to our reserves.”

Jenna made a face. “Daimons, Archon?”

“Given the peculiar nature of this situation, Highness, yes. If we wish to keep the existence and involvement of the Senshi a secret, we cannot use our own people, and our current force of units is simply unequal to the task. We’ve already seen that we cannot rely on elementals, and I know of no creatures in the upper planes who would consent to attack a Senshi and be strong enough to be effective. At least not without creating some serious complications. That leaves the lower-planar entities, of whom only daimons are powerful enough to do the job.” The archmage paused. “The other reason I recommend using daimons is that there’s been a recent power shift in their world—one of the old daimon lords and most of its minions were destroyed—and it has the rest of them scrambling for position. They’re all much too preoccupied with seizing whatever power they can to have any time to spare for plotting over how to invade our world again.”

“Just make sure your apprentice knows enough to keep the ones she summons on a short leash,” Jenna said. “At least until the Senshi find them and get rid of them.”

“Of course, Highness.”

Watching the images replay again, Cestus chuckled. “That might not take them very long. Athena seems to have trained this new generation pretty well.”

“We all knew there were undoubtedly reasons _other_ than the presence of the supernexus that led the Court to send Athena to Tokyo,” Janus said, “and a group of Senshi she’d trained herself are just the sort of allies the Court would have selected for her. Even with her memories gone, the rest wouldn’t hesitate to come to the aid of their leader.”

“Actually, your Highness... from what I’ve been told, Pluto is _not_ the leader of this particular group of Senshi.”

That set everyone except the black knight back a bit. “Then who is?” Cestus demanded.

# 

“And that’s time,” Haruna announced. “Pencils down.”

There was the usual assortment of sounds from the students. Some let out quick breaths, relieved that—for better or worse—the nightmare was now over. Others sighed, thinking about the questions they weren’t completely sure they’d answered right; a few groaned, thinking of the questions that they KNEW they hadn’t answered right, if at all.

Then someone snored. Absolute silence fell as the entire class stopped and turned, and the hush continued for almost ten whole seconds before people started covering chuckles.

In the aisle seat of the third row from the back, over on the left side of the room, Usagi had fallen asleep. There was no mistaking it; she was slumped back in her chair, her hands were folded lightly over her belly, and her head was down. Minako, the nearest of the Senshi, leaned over and prodded Usagi in the shoulder, to no effect. She poked again and added a firm, “Usagi, wake up.” Nothing.

“Don’t tell me she slept through the entire test,” Haruna said, getting up from her desk and walking over.

“Actually,” Minako replied, looking down at Usagi’s exam, “I think she finished it.”

“You’re kidding.” Haruna was not the only one to say it, but the evidence was sitting on the desk in front of the softly-snoring blonde. The exam booklet was closed, the extra sheets for answering the multiple-choice questions were tucked neatly inside the front cover, and the little ‘Time Finished’ box had ’11:08’ penciled into it. Three pencils—one with a broken tip where the other two were merely worn down to nubs—and a much-used eraser completed the picture. To judge by the time in the box, Usagi had been done for a good twenty minutes, and probably sleeping for at least ten of those.

*Make that fifteen,* Haruna thought, hearing a louder snore as she collected the exam booklet and quickly flipped through it. There was certainly enough writing in the thing to suggest that Usagi had completed the short answer and essay questions, and the multiple choice sheets were all filled out as well.

“Uncanny,” Haruna murmured, shaking her head. “Well, I guess you girls can wake her up and take her home, then.”

They nodded and handed over their own exams. Ami’s included an entire extra booklet, and Haruna expected both it and the first one to be filled to capacity with answers that were neatly spaced, triple-checked, and error-free-if-not-better. Where Haruna figured that Usagi had been snoozing away the last quarter of an hour, she also estimated that Ami had been proofreading her answers for at least twice that long.

In point of fact, Ami had not been doing anything related to her exam for the better part of the last hour. The actual writing had only taken her about half of the three-hour exam period, and she’d rounded out the second hour with her usual checks and corrections. All the rest of the time had been spent talking to Calypso, who was again—as she had every day this week—tagging along disguised as part of her sister’s attire.

Monday morning had been a bit rough. It was the first time Ami had tried to write a test since her recovery, and she had been worried that her new compatibility with Mercury might have given her some sort of unfair advantage—or a severe distraction in the form of old memories. Fortunately, neither proved to be the case, but _un_fortunately, she had a curious Nereid to contend with. Caly wanted to know what all this exam business was about, so she was—figuratively if not physically—looking over Ami’s shoulder the entire time. Worse yet, after being asleep for all those centuries, Caly was seriously out of practice at dealing with being around large numbers of humans, so she kept picking stray thoughts out of the air without even meaning to.

Every little *Hmmm, I see,* or *They don’t REALLY believe that, do they?* or similar remark had been a distraction, and Ami was glad that her first exam had been Math, because it was much easier to go from question to question and deal with Caly’s running commentary as it came than it would have been to get interrupted while in the middle of writing an essay for History or English.

There was no help for it, though. Caly was starting to come to grips with the modern world, but she was still a _very_ long way from getting over the ordeal of her long sleep, and she needed periodic reassurances that all was well. That meant that she needed to be near Ami, and _that_ meant she had plenty of time in which to improve her impersonation of the top half of a Juuban girl’s uniform. Just for the sake of variety, the Nereid had tried mimicking the skirt on Thursday, but Ami—unable to get over the fact that she would have been sitting on her sister—had told Caly to go back to being a shirt.

If dealing with a sentient and psychic second set of clothes during finals had been Ami’s particular challenge for the week, the other girls had been enduring their own problems.

They had gone up to Hikawa Monday afternoon and found Rei setting ofudas up everywhere, with a particular emphasis on her room and the Book of Ages, the front cover of which had been plastered over with the paper wards. She explained about the bad dream she’d had the night before, and how her birds had been behaving oddly—and then she had Rooky tell them what he’d told her.

“Something not-here is here! Things move! Door closes by self! Rooky sees! Others see! The pretty Rei-dii has a bad dream, worms on Book glow, bad dream goes away and pretty Rei-dii sleeps! Rooky knows about the thing that is not-here, Rooky tells the pretty Rei-dii, pretty Rei-dii says Book moves by self! Awp!”

Minako and Artemis had not been thrilled to hear that the Book had moved again, and said so. Actually, it hadn’t; the movement Rei had admitted to Rooky and the other crows had been the same one she’d called Minako about, and she’d said so. Usagi, Luna, Makoto, and Ami had all demanded to know what the others were talking about, and while they argued about the foolishness of keeping important information like this back from the group, Calypso amused herself by taking the shape of a blue-tinted crow and perching alongside the others. Curiously, none of the birds made any objection to the shapeshifter’s presence, but then, they had no need to raise a ruckus for their own amusement when one was already well underway on the floor.

Minako’s problem for the week was Artemis—or rather, Arthur. Although as far as Ami could see, it was very much the other way around. Half the girls in school had descended by the end of the second day to ask about the mystery man, and Minako was absolutely loving every second of it. She was inventing new twists and turns in Arthur’s sterling character every five minutes, making him out to be only a few steps short of divinity-made-flesh. Fortunately for Artemis, he wouldn’t have to be anything but his usual cheerful self if anyone happened to meet him, since everyone was already well-acquainted with Minako’s tendency to exaggerate favorably whenever she described someone she liked. Not that she lied, of course; she just sort of... pushed the limits of the truth. So Artemis didn’t _exactly_ have hair like the moonlight; it was white, right? What was the harm in taking a little poetic license?

But even setting aside Minako’s indulging her inner poet-lariat, Artemis was clearly not looking forward to the spring break. Minako had cut him some slack by saying that “Arthur-kun said didn’t want to distract me from my tests, so he’s been spending the week seeing some of the sights on his own. Isn’t that sweet?” But with the History exam now over and done, that particular grace period was just about up, and Artemis had been looking more and more frantic with each passing day because of it.

Under other circumstances, Ami would have enjoyed seeing Artemis at his wits’ end, but she was becoming increasingly concerned about Makoto. Before their jaunt back in Time, Makoto had probably slept an average of seven hours a night, but her average for the last couple of weeks since their return was closer to nine hours a night than to eight. Factor in the catnaps she’d been taking in the afternoons all this week, and the average bumped up towards ten hours of sleep a day. That just wasn’t normal for Makoto.

The problem was, Ami had begun to suspect that it wasn’t empathic strain that was wearing Makoto down. Mercury had known a few human empaths in her day, and none of them had ever experienced anything like this increasing drowsiness, not even if they were living in one of the big Martian cities, any one of which had been about as heavily populated as Tokyo. But then what was the problem?

Ami briefly forgot about that and smiled when she looked at Makoto now; she was wide awake and helping Minako try to wake Usagi up. Usagi’s particular trial for the week was no big challenge to figure out, and now that it was over, she appeared to be ready to start her vacation, regardless of what anyone else said.

*We’ll see about that,* Calypso said. *Put your hand on her.*

Ami did that, walking over and touching Usagi’s elbow to hide the fact that part of the sleeve of her shirt—her second, self-aware, shapeshifting shirt—was flowing down her arm to touch Usagi’s. There was a pause, the mental equivalent of drawing a deep breath before shouting...

...and Usagi’s eyes flew open, her next snore coming out in a strangled mess ahead of the words, “I’m awake! I didn’t mean to fall asleep!”

“Take it easy, girl.” Minako caught her by the shoulders before she could stand up. “It’s over.”

“OVER?!” Usagi gasped, beginning to struggle fiercely. “It can’t be over! I’m not finished! I...”

“It’s okay!” Makoto said, trying to sound reassuring—not an easy task when you’re holding somebody down. “We all saw Haruna-sensei look through the exam book. You finished the test before you fell asleep! It’s done!”

“It’s... done?” Usagi paused. “Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, I remember now.” The tension went right out of her. “Sorry. It’s just that when I woke up, for a second I thought I was back in one of those bad dreams where you always have to give a report in front of the class...”

“...but you can’t remember what you want to say...” Makoto said.

“...and you can’t seem to find your way to the right classroom,” Minako added, nodding.

“...and you always stop and realize you’re only wearing your underwear,” Ami finished. The other three girls looked up at her, wide-eyed and blinking. “What?”

“I’ve never had a dream like _that,_” Usagi said slowly, while Minako and Makoto made sounds of agreement.

*What are you blushing about _this_ time, sister?*

# 

Rei did not meet them at the usual place, but that wasn’t surprising. Like Ami, she had a tendency to finish her exams well ahead of the buzzer, but she also preferred to leave as soon as the teacher would allow, and she wasn’t about to wait an hour or more for the rest of them to arrive.

Their plan for this afternoon was to cruise around the mall and do as little as possible, unless it was shopping. Naru and Umino headed off together after promising to meet up with the rest of them, and Minako left not long after that, marching home with the air of an invading army to see if she could wrangle Artemis into making his next official public appearance as Arthur. That was going to take some serious wrangling, but they all had their money on Minako.

This left Ami, Makoto, Usagi, and Ryo walking along, with Calypso riding in tow. Usagi and Makoto quickly dropped back, taking a new, blue-tinted scarf along with them around Usagi’s neck and watching with happy smiles—and, Makoto noted, a definite sense of happiness from the scarf—as Ami and Ryo inevitably drifted towards each other. It didn’t take long at all for the two of them to start holding hands.

“It’s really nice to see them like this, isn’t it?” Usagi sighed.

*Yes it is,* Calypso agreed, with something that sounded like a sigh of her own. *This never could have happened for her before.*

“Why not? Don’t Nereids fall in love?”

*Oh, we do, but...* Calypso hesitated. *Humans don’t generally start getting romantic until they reach a certain age—usually somewhere in the teens, right?*

“Right...”

*Well, that ‘certain age’ normally comes a lot later in life for Nereids than for humans. Usually somewhere in our fifth or sixth decade.*

“Do you mean you’d be _fifty_ before you even went out on a date?” Makoto asked in shock.

*Well... we didn’t court in quite the same fashion that you do, but yes, I guess you could put it that way.*

“Don’t tell Mina-chan,” Makoto said. “She’d have a heart attack.”

Usagi was frowning. “Caly, back on the Moon... well... I’m sure I remember seeing Mercury with one or two men...”

*My sister grew up much faster than other Nereids. All the Mercuries did, and it made it almost impossible for them to really form strong ties with others of our kind. They tried not to let themselves fall in love with humans, either, partly because they knew how much it would hurt to outlive their mates and children and maybe even grandchildren, and partly because... um...*

“Because why?” Usagi asked.

*Er... let’s just say that the... mechanics... of interspecies romance are a bit complicated. Particularly later on, when things get... um... physical. Do you understand?*

“Uh, yeah.” Usagi was blushing, and she thought Makoto was too.

*It’s no small trick to be able to hold a solid form under emotional stress,* Calypso noted, *but _that_ sort of stress is REALLY distracting. It took Mercury nearly two years to figure it out, and she needed a _lot_ of help from Ishtar before...*

“Caly,” Usagi said, her cheeks flaming, “we really don’t need to know.”

*Oh. Right. Sorry.* If Calypso had been in human form just then, she probably would have blushed in turn and coughed. *But as I was saying, those relationships my sister had back then weren’t terribly serious. She was just a little lonely, that’s all. It wasn’t anything she would have mindlinked over.*

“How serious _is_ that, anyway?” Makoto asked. “Luna told us a little bit about it that first night, but I think she might have been leaving a few things out.”

*‘Serious’ may be an understatement for it, Mako-chan. The mindlink was the only form of mental contact we had that allowed us to exchange strong emotional imagery with each other, and it was used as part of our version of a wedding.*

Usagi came to a complete stop. “Did you say ‘wedding?’”

*Yes, I did, and no, it doesn’t mean that they’re married.* Calypso paused. *Not exactly.*

“‘Not exactly?’”

*Ami and I talked about this for quite a while that first night. _Nereids_ mindlinked to their mates, but _human_ telepaths often linked to other people they cared about; regardless of what she used to be, my sister is human _now,_ and she’s linked to a human, so we decided it doesn’t count. Not yet, anyway.*

“‘NOT YET?!’”

*Yes, not yet. And keep your voice down before they hear you.* Once again, Calypso seemed to sigh in some manner. *There’s no way to remove the mindlink short of a degree of psychic surgery that no one alive could possibly pull off, but it’ll only grow as far as they’re both willing to let it. That was a trick human telepaths had that we could never manage. I guess it’s because empathy comes more easily to you, so you can project, receive, or block out emotions better than we can. The point is, a mindlink between close friends is different from a link between lovers. They’ll always be in each other’s thoughts now, but it’s up to the two of them to decide just how far they want to take the relationship.*

They were all silent for a while after that. Makoto and Usagi picked up their pace a bit as the Tsukino house drew near, and inside the gate, Usagi unwound the scarf and looped it about Ami’s shoulders, startling her. While Calypso slid under Ami’s coat and went back to imitating her shirt, Usagi opened the door.

“I’m home, Mom.”

“Hello, dear,” Ikuko’s voice said from the kitchen. “How’d it go?”

“I think I left half my brain cells behind,” Usagi groaned, “and my stomach’s completely empty.”

“I was just about to put some chicken and noodles on. You can have a salad while you wait for that—and would the rest of you like anything while she’s stuffing herself?” Ikuko still hadn’t come out of the kitchen when she asked that, but seeing as how Usagi hadn’t been alone for more than ten minutes at a time in the last six months, it was a well-educated assumption that she had company now.

“Just something to drink will be fine, Ikuko-san,” Ami replied with a nod to Luna, who had just come down the stairs.

“Is ChibiUsa home?” Usagi asked, hanging up her coat.

“Not yet. Why?”

“Well, they’re having a big re-opening sale at the mall today for all the stores that had to be closed the other week. We were planning to head out to take advantage of that as soon as Rei gets here, and I thought ChibiUsa might like to come along.”

“I see.” Ikuko came out of the kitchen with one eyebrow raised. “And this is the part where I say ‘that was very thoughtful of you, Usagi-chan,’ and then you agree that it was and try to filch some extra money out of me, right?”

“Uh...” There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it!” Usagi said brightly, and hurried to the door. Rei and ChibiUsa were out front, neither of them looking particularly happy; the reason for that was standing between them.

Shingo looked like he’d been through a riot. His school uniform was wet and streaked with mud, rumpled all over, and one sleeve was hanging from a tear. His left eye was black to the point where it had swollen shut, his lower lip was split and bleeding, and the only reason his nose wasn’t bleeding as well seemed to be because his nostrils were already clotted up. There was also a nasty bruise forming up on his forehead, just above the hairline.

Usagi suddenly became very aware of her mother’s presence looming up behind her. Thanks to the usual teenage growth spurts, Ikuko wasn’t that much taller than either of her children anymore, but right now Usagi would not have been surprised to turn around and see her mother standing some twenty feet tall.

“Inside, Shingo.” The voice was the sort that could give monsters lessons on how to scare people. Ami, Ryo, Luna, and Makoto looked in from the living room and collectively paled. Ikuko watched Shingo and his escorts enter the house, and when Rei closed the door, Ikuko said, “Talk.”

“I got in a fight,” Shingo said shortly.

“_Don’t_ take that tone with me, young man. I want to know who, and why, and you are going to _tell_ me. Then you are going to go get cleaned up while I call your principal and arrange for you to apologize to-”

“No.”

Ikuko blinked, and everybody else in the room winced. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not going to apologize to them, mother. They deserved it.”

“’They,’” Ikuko repeated, glancing past Shingo.

“I passed one who was running in the other direction,” ChibiUsa said quickly, “and I saw two more heading off down another street. Rei-chan was with Shingo when I got there, so I guess she broke it up.”

“I didn’t break up anything,” Rei said, shaking her head. “I was on my way here when I heard a lot of shouting, and I saw what was left of the fight when I went around a corner. One of the other boys was already running away at that point, the second was holding his nose, and Shingo was wrestling with the third until he slipped on the snow and lost his hold. The last two took off in a hurry then. He won’t say why,” Rei added, folding her arms and looking firmly at Shingo, “but while they were running, he shouted at them to take something back.”

“You should be old enough by now not to pick a fight just because someone says something about you,” Ikuko said.

“It wasn’t...” Shingo began.

“It wasn’t what?”

“Never mind,” he mumbled, glancing around quickly and then looking at the floor. It wasn’t Shingo’s usual guilty face; he looked more like he was trying to hide something than trying to squeeze some sympathy out of the crowd, and when Usagi noticed that Shingo was being very careful not to look at her, it all clicked.

“What did they say about me, Shingo?” Everyone looked at her in surprise, then slowly turned their attentions back to Shingo, who had a rather embarrassed expression on his face. It had only been a guess, but the blush told Usagi she’d guessed correctly. “Well?”

One of Shingo’s feet took a dig at the floor. “I’m not going to repeat it, Usagi.”

“It can’t have been very important, then. Mom’s right; you ought to know better than to get into a fight for no better reason than what someone says.”

“They were asking for it!” Shingo half-shouted, looking up at her. “They’ve been making up stories about you for months and saying... and saying... they’re lying about you, I’m sick of putting up with it, and if they won’t shut up on their own, I’ll make them!”

That was probably the closest Shingo had ever come to saying ‘I love you’ to his sister, and from the way pride, embarrassment, and sheer stubbornness were chasing each other across his face, he was getting ready for Usagi to tease him about it.

Instead, Usagi’s face lit up with a warm, slow smile. She walked up to Shingo, hugged him with no regard at all for the mud, and whispered, “Thank you,” before giving him a sisterly kiss on the cheek.

The other girls gave the scene a collective “Awww.” Shingo’s face turned redder than a tomato.

# 

There was nobody in the house when Minako got home—or so it appeared. She smiled, thinking of the two cans’ worth of tuna fish she’d left on a plate in the kitchen last night, a plate which had literally been licked clean by the time she came downstairs this morning, leaving an absolutely stuffed cat snoozing on her bed. Artemis simply could not resist tuna, and a big meal always left him drowsier than usual. If her calculations were correct, he would still have been snoring when her parents went off to work, locking the doors behind them.

So in other words, Artemis was trapped in the house.

Minako frowned. *Of course, he _could_ have changed shape and just let himself out... but is he smart enough to have thought of that after having a panic attack from realizing I’d set him up? More importantly, has he even woken up yet?*

Being very careful to make as little sound as possible, Minako crept up the stairs, and about halfway to the top, she stopped and smiled anew at the sound of slow, soft breathing. It was a promising development, and sure enough, when she got to her room, Artemis was still asleep on the bed—if not in quite the same place he’d been earlier—curled up on one side with his left front paw on top of his head.

Still making no noise, Minako gathered up a change of clothes and a few other items, then tiptoed down the hallway to the bathroom, for a quick shower that wouldn’t wake Artemis up ahead of schedule.

# 

“You fell ASLEEP during an EXAM?!”

“It was just at the end,” Usagi snapped back at Rei. “I was already finished, and I didn’t even snore until _after_ Haruna called for the tests, so nyah!”

“Now come on,” Makoto said, hoping to stop the tongue war right then and there. “The idea of this afternoon is to relax, remember?”

Usagi and Rei both gave her grim looks, then muttered noises of truce and looked away from each other.

“Good.” Makoto’s satisfied nod turned into a prodigious yawn. “Whoa. Excuse me.”

“And are you also suffering from post-traumatic exhaustion?” ChibiUsa asked with a small smile.

“Maybe,” Makoto admitted. “But I’m sure I’ll feel _much_ better once we hit the mall.”

“I should warn you about that,” Ami said quietly to Ryo. “They’re very likely to try and use you as a walking luggage rack.”

“I didn’t need psychic powers to see _that_ one coming,” Ryo said with a roll of his eyes, “but as it happens, I have a foolproof plan to prevent just such a terrible fate. Of course,” he added, looking at her hopefully, “it hinges entirely upon your willingness to join me in vanishing into the crowd and then go enjoy lunch.”

“An intriguing proposal,” Ami replied in her most scientific tone of voice. “But how do you intend to get away without the others spotting us?”

“I’m still working on that part.”

*I could help with that,* Calypso offered. Then there was a long pause. *Er... that is... if you two don’t mind me tagging along with you when you go...*

Ami and Ryo exchanged a look, and—through the mindlink—a bit of a thought as well. “Go on,” Ryo said.

*Well, as long as you two stay close together like this, I can surround both of you and make you look like two totally different people—_and_ I can disguise your mental signatures as well, so even Mako-chan and Luna won’t notice it when you leave. As long as you don’t say anything, of course.*

Again, Ami and Ryo looked at each other. “I _suppose_ we can make room for one more,” Ryo said slowly, “but only if you make Ami-chan a redhead.”

There was a _very_ peculiar sound as Ami stopped and rounded on her boyfriend. Right after the sound, the word *RED?!* shot out of her mind, crossed space, and lodged in his head with a solid, psychic thunk.

“Would you rather I asked for purple?” Ryo asked innocently. The impression left by the thought-word barely fazed him; it had already happened three times in the last week, quiet proof that their mental bond was getting stronger.

“And I suppose you’ll want my eyes to be _green,_ too?”

“Redheads _are_ supposed to have green eyes, aren’t they?” He was teasing her, of course. He happened to like Ami’s hair just the way it was, and he was very fond of her blue eyes, but he also knew that while she might not show it, Ami was _also_ very partial to her own hair and eye color.

*You mean like this?*

“CALY!”

Too late—and Ami’s shout turned everybody else around just in time to see a blue haze sweep up around her head, leaving behind eyes every bit as green as Makoto’s, and fiery red hair to boot.

“What the...” Makoto began.

Ami gave them all a fierce look that would have done any redhead proud, and then she held out her right hand and said, “Mirror,” in a sharp tone. More mist coiled down her arm and gathered in her palm, forming a small mirror. Ami regarded her reflection for a few moments, brushing her hair back from her face at one point and giving a grudging nod to acknowledge that it wasn’t a _complete_ disaster.

Then she turned to Ryo, smiled a scary little smile, and thought something to Calypso. The mirror and makeover disintegrated at once, and the resulting mist flowed over to Ryo before he had a chance to say anything; when it faded away, _his_ eyes were now blue. He also had a lot more hair than before, all of it a brilliant yellow that almost seemed to glow, and every last strand sticking up from his head in a wild, spiky do.

Makoto, Rei, and Usagi all bit their lower lips to keep from laughing; ChibiUsa just blinked. Ryo looked at them all and then sighed and tried to get a look at his hair, but the style was well out of his field of view, despite all its frills, and finally he sighed a second time.

“All right, Ami-chan, I give up. What have you had your sister do to me?”

Blue mist drifted down to the ground and moved a short distance behind Ryo before piling up into the shape of a tall mirror. He didn’t notice it until Ami told him to turn around—and when he saw his reflection, he jumped. Usagi couldn’t stop herself from laughing this time, and the glare Ryo sent at her was so perfectly in-character for that look that Makoto started laughing, too. Ryo watched them for a moment and then shook his head and turned back to Ami.

“You don’t actually _watch_ this...?”

“_I_ don’t, but Mako-chan has most of the episodes on tape.”

Ryo glanced at Makoto—who shrugged—and he sighed. “Why am I not surprised? Okay, Ami-chan, you win. Now call her off before someone sees me—or that mirror.”

“Oh,” Usagi said, “I don’t know. I mean, yes, there’s no question that the _mirror_ has to go, but I think you look good as a blond. Rei?”

“Well...” Rei made a show of considering Ryo as the mirror behind him dissolved. “It _is_ very striking. Mako-chan?”

“_I_ like it, but maybe we ought to wait and get Mina-chan’s opinion.”

“Come on.” Ryo wasn’t _quite_ begging, but he was close. “This qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Caly,” Ami said, “you can stop now. I think Ryo-kun’s learned his lesson.” Calypso waited a moment longer and then ended the illusion. Ryo watched the mist flow back to Ami and then patted his hair a couple of times just to make sure it was back to normal.

“I don’t get it,” ChibiUsa admitted.

*Neither do I,* Calypso said.

“Mako-chan can tell both of you all about Super Saiya-jins,” Ami replied. “Apparently, they all look like her senpai.”

“Ohhh,” ChibiUsa said, turning to smile at Makoto, who was giving Ami a flat look.

*Her what?* Calypso asked, now even more confused.

# 

They hooked up with Naru and Umino at Osa-P. Minako was supposed to meet them here as well, but Artemis was apparently being difficult, because there was no sign of either of them. This was not a problem at all; the girls were more than willing to kill some time checking out the store’s latest goods, and Ryo and Umino were more than willing to let them, since every minute spent browsing here was one less minute that could be spent roaming the mall, using the guys as pack mules.

“And is there anything I could interest either of you gentlemen in?” Mrs. Osaka asked with a faint smile.

“You haven’t sold the one we talked about, have you?” Umino countered immediately.

“No, it’s still here. He’s saving up for a very particular present for Naru-chan’s next birthday,” she explained to Ryo. “As her mother, I’m very pleased with his taste and financial good sense, but as a saleswoman, I’m _extremely_ put out that he won’t buy anything else from me.”

Ryo nodded. Both Naru’s mother and Umino waited for him to speak, and were a bit surprised when he blinked and shook his head instead, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Have you ever seen a doctor about that?” Umino asked. It had been quite impossible to hide all the symptoms of Ryo’s visions at school, and his come-and-go headaches had been common knowledge by the end of the first week.

“A few times,” Ryo admitted, “when I was little. They didn’t find anything wrong, and even at the worst, an aspirin is all the medication I need, so...” He shrugged and then smiled at Mrs. Osaka. “Too bad that you don’t sell any of those little meditation crystals.”

“Too bad,” she agreed. “I guess that’s one of the drawbacks of specialization.”

*Ryo-kun? Ami would like to know what you saw.*

*Artemis, getting attacked by some big rats. There were quite a few of them, and they were out on a street, so I’m guessing they’re not your average sewer rat.* The glass door slid open then, and Ryo looked up. *Speaking of Artemis...*

The first image that popped into Ryo’s mind when he saw Minako and Artemis walk through the front door was that of a sheriff escorting a condemned man to the gallows. Minako had obviously taken a few minutes to get cleaned up and changed, and even though she was all but hanging off of Artemis’s left arm, there was a purposeful air about her that lent an almost royal air to her attire. Artemis, his Silver Millennium-make clothes being much too conspicuous for everyday wear, had most definitely dressed down for the occasion. He was wearing a slightly creased, low-collar white shirt, faded blue jeans and a matching jean jacket, what looked like a pair of last year’s bestselling sneakers, and the furtive, desperate air of a man at the end of his rope, ready to run even though he knows it’s almost certainly hopeless.

The words, “Look what the cat dragged in,” were out of Ryo’s mouth, loud enough for everyone to hear, before he had a chance to think about it. Artemis shot him a venomous look that disappeared without a trace the instant other people started to look at him, and Minako just beamed like the sun at noon as she started making the introductions.

Although he was perfectly fluent in Japanese, ‘Arthur’ now spoke with an accent that was just slightly slow and decorated here and there with hints of English. He was unfailingly polite and absolutely charming as Minako introduced him to Naru, her mother, and Umino, and when Mrs. Osaka asked how the two knew each other—as they had known she almost certainly would—he repeated the cover story of having met Minako during her time in England with no indication at all that it was anything but the truth.

“And what brings you to Tokyo?” Mrs. Osaka asked, once again not unexpectedly.

“Some well-timed mail and a large plane. Mina-chan and I have been writing back and forth to one another since she left England, and her last letter got to me right when I was finishing up the winter term at college. To tell the truth, I’d been getting kind of bored with the campus at home, and it occurred to me that if I could sell my father on the idea of transferring to a foreign university, I could score myself a plane trip and the chance to visit an old friend all at once.” He raised his arms. “And here I am.”

“Big as life and twice as loud,” Minako said.

“That’s ‘twice as ugly,’” Artemis and Umino said automatically, at the same time, and with a sidelong glance at one another.

“Whatever.” Taking a look around, Minako nodded. “So now that everybody’s here and acquainted, shall we hit the mall, or what?”

“Out of curiosity,” Ryo asked casually, looking up from a study of something in one of the display cases, “what happens if we say ‘no?’”

Every female head in the room—even Naru’s and her mother’s—turned toward him. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see Caly create a pair of eyes for herself somewhere on Ami’s coat so she could join in.

“Do you _really_ want an answer to that?” Makoto asked pleasantly.

“Just making sure.”

They all said goodbye to Osaka-san and then left Osa-P with Usagi and Rei leading. Naru, Umino, Artemis, and Minako were next—Umino asking Artemis about his major at college—while Makoto and ChibiUsa followed. Ami, Ryo, and Calypso brought up the rear, and Ryo had to fight down a laugh when he heard Artemis say he was majoring in business and economics, with some math, computer sciences, and cultural classes on the side.

“It _is_ just a little hard to believe if you know him, isn’t it?” Ami murmured.

“Just a little,” Ryo agreed. “So... are we...”

“Caly’s making minor adjustments to our appearances already,” Ami said. “This way, nobody who looks at us will see two totally different people suddenly appear where we’re standing. Just keep going on like normal until you hear her signal.”

Ryo looked at Ami, noticing that she did indeed look a bit different in some very minor ways. She was also smiling, on the inside as well as on the outside. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

It was impossible to deny that she was taking a certain degree of pleasure from the idea of essentially disappearing in plain view of her friends, so Ami didn’t bother to. “Nereids loved to play hide and seek, Ryo-kun, and I was probably the best that there was. I went to Serenity’s thirteenth birthday as the wrapping of one of her presents, and I attended her seventeenth as Ishtar’s dress.” Although at Ishtar’s request, she’d stopped being the dress after about the first half hour, at which point the sunny-haired Venusian’s real ‘dress’ had been revealed—along with a lot of other things—but Ryo didn’t need to know that.

“As long as you don’t go trying to hide from _me_...”

“I won’t.” Ami smiled and walked a little closer to him. “No more than you deserve it, anyway.”

He chose not to answer that. Over the next several minutes, the two of them slowed their pace, gradually falling back from the others, and each time Ryo took a quick glance, Ami looked just a bit more different than the last time. By the time they neared mall, the girl next to him looked like Ami in much the same way that a porpoise looks like a dolphin—which is to say, similar in some very general respects, but really entirely different.

Calypso’s choice of disguise for her sister included much longer hair—which was still blue—and an entirely different set of clothes. The face was a few years older, and Ryo had to look very closely at to see any traces of Ami in it—except in her eyes, which were unchanged.

An image popped into his mind then, of what he assumed must be his ‘new look.’ If it was, Caly had done about the same degree of alteration for him as for Ami: the hair was the same length, but with a blue tint that closely matched Ami’s; the face was older; the clothes were all completely new; and the eyes were again unchanged.

*What do you think?*

“It’s very nice, Caly,” Ami reassured her. “The blue in Ryo-kun’s hair is an interesting choice, and I like that you didn’t change our eyes.”

“I’m rather glad for that too,” Ryo agreed. “It makes it easier to remind myself that it’s you in there. Good job, Caly.”

There was a moment in which Ryo felt a funny tingling and a very light pressure all over. *Thank you. Now, shall we go?*

When the others reached the mall and went one way, heading for a door, Ami and Ryo changed course and literally walked right past them.

“You realize, of course,” Ami said lightly, “that they’re going to be _very_ cross with us later.”

“Only if they find us. Caly, how long can you keep this up?”

*Indefinitely, as long as you two don’t move too fast or too far apart. Keep this pace and distance and we’ll be fine.*

“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Ryo said confidently.

Several meters away, the others had reached the door and were going in. Artemis, pressed into service as the doorman, blinked as Umino and the girls moved past him and he realized that the group was two bodies smaller than it had been when they left Osa-P.

“Something wrong, Arthur-kun?” Minako asked.

“Uh, yeah... where are Mizuno-san and Urawa-san?”

Everyone blinked and looked around. “They were right behind us when we left Osa-P,” Makoto objected.

“Yes,” ChibiUsa agreed, “but they’re gone now.” Everyone looked around a second time, but Ami and Ryo were most definitely gone.

“I don’t believe it.” Usagi’s voice was flat and low, and then it climbed into a screech. “They _DITCHED_ us! The two of them!”

“You know,” Minako said thoughtfully, “I think they did at that.” She mulled it over and then smiled. “Outstanding. Just out-STAND-ing.” She raised her voice and yelled out into the parking lot, “WAY TO GO, AMI-CHAN!”

A couple of passing shoppers turned around and blinked at her; Minako waved at them, smiling hugely as she took one last look around at the outside world and nodded with satisfaction that everything about it seemed to be just right. Then she turned around, dropping the huge smile in favor of a totally different sort of smile.

“Right,” she said, catching Artemis by the arm. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but _I’m_ still here to shop.”

# 

Hotaru was in a pouty mood when Haruka arrived to pick her up from her last day of class—alone. She had really been hoping ChibiUsa would be there to meet her as well, but now it was evident that her best friend felt she had better things to do with her time.

The bad mood did not go unnoticed. “Something wrong, pint-sized?”

“Yes,” Hotaru replied shortly, as she climbed into the car.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Haruka shrugged and gunned the engine. She drove a little slower than usual, expecting that she’d need to focus some of her attention on Hotaru before they got very far; being a parent was much easier at fifty kilometers an hour than at a hundred, and if it turned into one of those Senshi talks, she might have to stop the car entirely to deal with it.

They were about three blocks from the elementary school when Hotaru started talking.

“What’s a tempest?”

“A big storm. Lots of wind, usually with rain, snow, or hail.”

“I _know_ that. I meant, what are ‘the’ tempests? The ones you and Michiru-mama were talking about the other day.”

Haruka slowed down and thought back. Michiru had been harassing her into posing for paintings all this week, two or three hours every day, and they spent most of that time talking about whatever came to mind. The last three days or so, the topic had been their memories of their past lives. Calypso’s return had started all the Senshi remembering things about their former selves, and Michiru’s theory was that if they talked to each other, they could draw the memories out more easily. She had reasoned that a slow and steady recollection in a safe and comfortable environment would be much less likely to cause them problems than the sudden battle-triggered flashbacks, and every memory they talked to the surface was one less to jump out of nowhere at them during a fight.

So far, Haruka didn’t see any particular signs of remembrance, either in herself or in Michiru, but she humored her. Talking kept her own mind occupied and stopped her from dwelling on the fact that after a couple of hours of sitting on a flat block, her ass hurt like hell.

Two days ago, they had been discussing the details of what had drifted through Haruka’s memory during the fight with the last batch of units. Ships sailing the skies of the gas giants... storm-spirits dwelling within the endless clouds... Uranus, flying... working with Mercury... and with no sign, not even the slightest thought, of Neptune.

Haruka was beginning to wonder about that. Mercury’s presence, she was quite certain, had not been a typical thing. It didn’t have the feel of the other details in that memory, the sense of Ariel’s perceptions which told Haruka that this thing was normal, and this other thing might be familiar, but Mercury was not either. She was an Inner Senshi, and the inner system was where her duty was supposed to be. More than that, she was a Nereid, and not a very old one at that. However advanced her telepathic mind might have been, her nebulous body was not quite so far along, and there would have been a limit as to just how long she could have tolerated the climates in the outer system, so very different from the ones she was used to. Her presence on the skyship that day suggested something along the lines of a training mission, or possibly just a visit with a friend. There were echoes in Ariel’s memory that said she had liked Mercury, for many of the same reasons that Haruka liked Ami.

And there was another factor to it, a thing that was distinctly Ariel’s: she had been the first Senshi of her generation. The only one, until the Nereids convened and produced Mercury. The thing hanging around Mercury in Ariel’s memories was a blend of loneliness and the feeling which took it away, the feeling of belonging.

Neptune’s—Larrisa’s—absence, now, an absence as much in Ariel’s memories at the time as in Haruka’s memory of the physical fact _of_ that time... well, she was still trying to figure that one out. And hoping like mad that her old life wouldn’t turn out to have been some sort of pedophile. She was used to being the older of the two of them, but there was a limit as to how MUCH older...

None of which was what Hotaru had asked. Haruka put her thoughts aside and explained what she could recall about the tempests as she navigated the streets. They weren’t like daimons or youma or any of the other unnatural creatures that the Senshi had run into in the modern world, but in their own way, they could be just as much trouble.

Hotaru listened quietly. “If they were so dangerous, why didn’t we do something about them?”

“Well, for one thing, nobody was completely sure where they lived, or how they reproduced, or anything much like that. There was no guarantee that wiping out every tempest in existence would stop more of them from showing up later. Besides, Hotaru... they really just weren’t worth the trouble. Sure, they’d kill if they could, but they couldn’t leave the planets, and they didn’t come up into the higher atmospheres very often. They were more like a force of nature than an enemy, just another sort of storm for the ships to roll with. We had bigger problems to worry about.”

The little Senshi fell silent. “What if there was a way to deal with all of them at once? Daimons, youma, tempests—all the things that like to hurt and destroy. What if there was a way to make them all go away and keep them out forever? Like a huge shield. Do you think that would be a good idea?”

Haruka blinked and then almost took her attention off the road to look at Hotaru. “What are you up to?” she demanded.

“I’m not up to anything. Honest. I just... I just want to know what you think about the idea, that’s all. If it was your choice, if you could put up a big shield around the whole planet—the whole system, even—that would keep all the monsters out, would you do it?”

Haruka gave her a suspicious glance but thought it over. Finally, she said, “No. I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like hiding, for starters, and because I _like_ a good fight every now and then... but mostly, I just think it’s a bad idea. Staying cooped up in one safe place all the time, never getting hurt, never getting put in danger, never getting scared... that’s just not _life,_ Hotaru. Individual people who try to shut out the world end up in a bad way, and large groups who try the same thing end up even worse. Places that try to isolate themselves from everything else end up either feared or ignored; if people are afraid of you, they’ll find a way to come after you sooner or later, and if they ignore you, you get left further and further behind while the rest of the world goes on. They advance while you stagnate, and eventually you die. I’d rather see an endangered world that was really alive than a totally protected world that was dying like that.”

“Oh.”

“Now what brought this up?”

“Nothing... I was just... it’s nothing. Never mind.” They drove on in silence for another two blocks, and were pulling into the driveway at home before Hotaru spoke again. “I talked to Balance and Time at school the other day.”

# 

Upstairs in her studio, Michiru frowned as she looked up from the nearly-complete painting of a woman whose shoulder-length blonde hair and flowing white wings trailed behind her as she soared through a sky of blue and gold. The noise that had disturbed her was familiar; she had known Haruka too long to not recognize the sound of tires squealing against tar as a vehicle screeched to a stop.

# 

Still disguised beneath Calypso’s shrouding body, Ami and Ryo sat at ease together in the mall’s central court. Ami had set up a program in her computer to block any attempts to use the communicators’ tracers to find her, insuring secrecy, and they had made the most of it over the last three hours.

They had eaten lunch in one of the places in the food court, where Calypso had tried a glass of cherry soda and almost lost control of her illusion because of some bizarre color-shifting chemical reaction between her body and the sugary carbonated beverage. Nearly every part of her created disguises had briefly flipped to another color—Ami’s hair becoming red again in the process, Ryo’s turning a sort of grey—and then flickered through a rainbow strobe effect before Caly managed to expel all of the soda from her body and back into its cup. They’d been sitting in the back, fortunately, and the only person nearby had been a twenty-something janitor who was too caught up in his work and the tunes of his Discman to notice them.

After that, they had checked out the usual places—bookstores and computer stores, of course, but also a novelty gift shop where Ami almost had to physically threaten Ryo before he agreed not to buy her a coffee mug with something as tacky as “World’s Smartest Girlfriend” emblazoned across the side. Then it was the charm shop, where she and Calypso held a ‘loud’ telepathic conversation about the possible merits of buying Ryo his own crystal ball.

They had started running across the other Senshi at the second bookstore. Rei seemed to have been giving some serious thought to actually buying something, but Usagi was moving up and down the aisles and examining each and every customer, not even stopping to look at the section with the manga. Well, not for more than a minute or two. Ami and Ryo had been careful to stay out of both girls’ ways and to not say anything until the pair had walked out, Usagi looking rather miffed about not having found them.

Minako, Artemis, Naru, and Umino had all been at the computer shop, and then they’d passed ChibiUsa and Makoto at one of the food stands. Every time they saw the others, there seemed to be just one or two more bags, half of which Artemis was stuck with. To his credit, he didn’t seem to be tiring under the load, or even complaining about it. Not verbally, anyway.

By contrast, as the three of them sat near a quietly splashing fountain, Ami yawned. Ryo looked at her in amazement.

“You’re actually tired after a mere three-hour shopping spree?”

“Sort of. Usagi-chan and Mina-chan may have been born to shop, but my talents lie in other directions—and it’s been a long week.”

“You seemed to do well enough for yourself,” he said, glancing down at three bags.

Ami smiled. “I’ve had good teachers. Mina-chan swears she won’t rest until I can cruise a mall for a minimum of four hours, and that spending no more than half an hour in bookstores.”

“Remind me to be conveniently elsewhere on the day of _that_ particular exam.” Ryo shifted as Ami poked him in the ribs. “So where to next?”

“Actually, I was thinking that maybe we ought to stop by and visit Setsuna. That boutique that hired her is here somewhere, and I’m curious to see how she does in a real-world situation. After that, we should probably find the others, confess to our vile treachery, and then go home. Does that sound okay, Caly?”

*Very. I think I’ve pushed my limits far enough for one day—and I would like a chance to read those books you bought. There’s very little left in Mako-chan’s apartment that I haven’t read yet, and she wasn’t entirely thrilled when she found me going through her cookbooks the other day.*

“What was that?” Ryo asked as they set out.

“The cookbooks? Well, Caly’s curious, you see, and...”

“No, I got that part, but what was she saying about ‘limits?’ We haven’t been hurting her by making her create this illusion, have we?”

Warmth flowed across the mindlink in synch with Ami’s smile. “That’s very thoughtful of you to be concerned about her, Ryo-kun, but it’s not maintaining the illusion that’s wearing Caly out; it’s being around all these minds and not being able to reach out to them.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” he admitted.

*Imagine for a moment that you’ve been asked to keep your eyes closed all the time,* Calypso said into Ryo’s mind. *There’s absolutely nothing _wrong_ with your eyes, you’re just not allowed to use them. You try to keep them shut, but every time your other senses inform you of something nearby, your automatic instinct is to try and see what it is. That’s very much the sort of situation I’m in, but I don’t have eyes or ears or any of the other specialized sensory organs that you do. My _entire_ being detects these things, so when I try to block something out, it puts a drain on my whole self. It’s fairly small, and it’s been growing less and less with each day of practice I get, but it still wears me out after a while.*

“Oh.” Ryo paused. “I take it that it wasn’t like this for you during the Silver Millennium?”

*No, it wasn’t. Everyone at home was either a Nereid or fully aware of us and our capabilities, and nobody came to Mercury if they couldn’t accept and deal with us on our own terms. My visits to the Moon weren’t very difficult either, because I spent most of my time in the palace, and a lot of the people there either had the mental training to shield their own thoughts or magic that would do the job for them. And I had my sister to help me; she always knows how to deal with this sort of situation better than I do.*

“It comes of having lived nearly a quarter century among humans,” Ami said, “and then living another sixteen and a half years _as_ one.”

“And our lowly species has been brightened on both occasions by your deigning to grace us with your divine presence,” Ryo said.

*OH, HUSH.* That came through very clearly, in two separate voices which both failed to hide their amusement. Ryo hushed.

They found the store in relatively short order. There were four or five customers wandering about and checking out the selection, with some assistance from two store employees who were not Setsuna. Ami, Ryo, and Calypso could all faintly hear the sound of two women shouting at each other in the back room, but neither of those muffled voices sounded as if they belonged to Setsuna.

“Do you suppose she’s on a break?” Ryo asked.

“Maybe, but she might be working in the back. We’ll mingle and wait to see if she comes out. Besides, I’d like to take a look at some of the dresses.”

“Now how did I know you were going to say that?”

They spent almost fifteen minutes looking at the selection, and Ryo found it oddly amusing how Ami and Calypso argued back and forth over the different styles the whole time. A shapeshifter whose natural form didn’t even wear clothes might not have been Ryo’s first choice for a fashion consultant, but Caly had some very definite opinions about style, which she backed up with extremely convincing arguments.

The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to Ryo for Nereids to have such a pronounced interest in fashion. Granted, they wouldn’t have needed to buy clothes, since they could instantly create anything they wanted their human forms to wear, but if they were going to mingle with humans, then they’d have to be up-to-date on the latest trends. And even if Calypso had started out with a fashion sense one thousand years behind the times, she’d been hanging around with her sister’s modern memories—and Minako—for the last week. ‘Nuff said.

It was also worth a few smiles to note that, without exception, every single dress the two sisters looked at was either blue, blue-green, or white— all the colors of water. Ryo toyed with the notion of suggesting a red dress, just to see their reactions, but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

*It’ll hang off your shoulders all wrong,* Calypso insisted.

“Fine,” Ami said. “What about this one?” She indicated a blue dress.

*No good. The top’s too short and the skirt’s too long for it to fit right on you. Try the green one next to... no, forget it. The skirt on that one’s much too wide.*

“Glad you caught that. Now, _this_ one...”

“The color’s perfect for you, Ami-chan,” Setsuna’s voice said from right behind them, “but it’d be too loose across the shoulders.”

“Do you really thi-YIIII!” Ami jumped and spun in the same movement. “You...! How did...” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, then let it go, reopened her eyes, and very clearly and calmly, said, “Setsuna. Hello. Would you mind telling us how you saw through Caly’s illusion?”

“Is _that_ how you’re doing this?” Setsuna asked, looking at the two of them closely. “I honestly couldn’t think of how you’d managed it. You’re very good, Calypso.”

*Thank you, Setsuna. But how did you know it was Ami?*

“I didn’t. I knew it was _Ryo_. The Garnet Orb reacts to his presence every time we move within about ten meters of each other, and it gave a tug just a minute ago.” She squinted at Ryo. “If I ask, the Orb lets me see Time-energy, and you’ve got a rather dignified sort of halo of it. So does Rei-chan, but nobody else that I’ve met so far seems to. Not anyone in this time, anyway.”

“Lucky us.”

“Once I knew it was Ryo,” Setsuna continued, turning back to Ami, “it was reasonable to assume that it was you with him—and I heard you talking when I got close.”

“Caly did warn us that she couldn’t do anything to disguise our voices,” Ami admitted.

“Which I can take to mean that you were both being very quiet when you snuck away from Usagi-chan and the others. Yes,” Setsuna said, smiling at their expressions, “I already knew. ChibiUsa and Mako-chan stopped by two hours and fifty-one minutes ago to tell me that you’d pulled a disappearing act of some sort, and Usagi-chan and Rei-chan came along forty-three minutes after that. I have to say, Usagi-chan seemed to be _very_ irritated with both of you.”

“Do you suppose she’ll get over it after she’s forced us to apologize and we’ve told her that we were going to say ‘sorry’ anyway?” Ryo asked. He looked at Ami and Setsuna; they looked back at him, and he sighed. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. So, Setsuna. How’s life treating you these days?”

“Nice try,” Setsuna said, raising her communicator. “Usagi-chan?”

“Setsuna? Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ve found Ami-chan and Ryo-kun.” The silence which followed this announcement was more frightening than a lot of the other reactions Ami and Ryo could think of. “Usagi-chan?”

“Are you still at work, Setsuna?” Now it was the tone of barely-restrained eagerness which was disturbing.

“Not for much longer. Round up the others and meet us at the south door in about ten minutes, okay? Hanna and Annah make enough noise for any one place to deal with without us adding to it.”

“Okay.”

Ryo looked at Setsuna’s wrist with a neutral expression as she closed her communicator. “If I tried to run right now,” he said, “you’d catch me, break my kneecaps, and drag me back to her, wouldn’t you?”

“Something like that,” Setsuna said, smiling as she went into the back room again. The muted sounds of shouting ended abruptly, and there were several moments of peace before Setsuna came out with her purse under one arm and a briefcase in her other hand. “Let’s go.”

They were just stepping out of the store when the shouting started up again. “Are they always like that?” Ami asked, looking back over her shoulder.

“Not always. They don’t usually yell at each other for more than an hour each day, and seldom for more than ten minutes at a stretch. There are plenty of snappish remarks and hard looks to fill in the spaces, of course. It’s rather like being around Usagi-chan and ChibiUsa—or Usagi-chan and Rei-chan—for several hours each day.”

Ryo chuckled. “And that, in and of itself, _hasn’t_ driven you completely insane?”

“I learned how to tune it out at the Tsukino house—and Hanna and Annah are really very good at their work. I have all the technical skill and inspired vision, but they’re just as good, and you should see how well they can handle the customers. I can learn a lot from them, and I think that and the fact that they hired me without any references beyond Ikuko-chan’s good word entitles them to a little leeway. Besides, great artists are supposed to be eccentric, aren’t they?”

“Michiru might want to argue with you about that point,” Ami said, “and Haruka would probably agree with you just out of habit, but I suppose you’re right. Most of the Nereid race were artists of one sort or another, and even I have to admit we were a little weird sometimes.”

*Hey.*

“Well, we were...”

“Speaking of weird,” Ryo interrupted, “are you reversing this disguise at all, Caly? Not that I haven’t been enjoying myself, it’s just that if Umino-san and Naru-san see us while we’re _not_ us...”

*I’m taking care of it. You’ll have to deal with Usagi-chan on your own, though.*

“Don’t remind me.”

“This _was_ your idea,” Ami pointed out to him.

“Okay, but then doesn’t that make it _your_ responsibility to come up with a way to get us out of it?”

Ami gave him a long, chilly look. “You owe me for this, Ryo-kun.”

Usagi and the others were waiting outside. ‘Arthur’ was still with them, shackled to Minako and loaded up with bags, but Naru and Umino seemed to have pulled a disappearing act of their own. Ryo recalled a snatch of conversation overheard earlier at Osa-P, something about Osaka-san needing an extra pair of hands for the afternoon, and guessed Naru had left to go help her mother out.

“Heads up,” Minako said, smiling as she turned around and spotted them. “Escaped bandits at three o’clock.”

“Actually,” Artemis said, “if they’re coming at us from behind and on a level plane, then it ought to be nine o’clock...”

“You need to get your watch fixed,” Minako replied cheerfully. “Nice job, Setsuna. How did you catch them?”

“Actually, they walked into the store and waited for me to see them.”

“Oh, so it was a _voluntary_ surrender... well, if you two would like to confess to anything, Rei-chan’s right here.”

Usagi had her arms folded in an ominous fashion. “Did you two have a good time?”

“Yes,” Ami replied, “we did. And no, I’ve decided that I’m not going to apologize. You’ve blown the rest of us off without warning a hundred times to spend time with Mamoru-san, so you’ve got absolutely no cause to complain when one of us does the same.”

Usagi opened her mouth, closed it, and then said, “That’s not the point.”

“Oh? Then what is?”

“The point... the point is... it’s...” Usagi floundered for the point for several seconds. Then their communicators beeped. Rei was the first to answer.

“Are the others with you, Rei?” The voice was Michiru’s.

“Yes, and Setsuna is, too. We’re at the mall. Is something wrong?”

“Hotaru has something you need to hear. Is it safe for her to open a door to your location?”

“Can’t she just say it over the communicator?” Usagi asked.

“Trust me, this is something you’ll want to be sitting down for.”

Usagi let out a long, slow breath. “Michiru, please don’t take this too personally, but your timing stinks.”

“Pay no attention to her,” Minako said. “She’s just enduring a fit of jealousy because Ami-chan got to spend some quality time with Ryo-kun this afternoon, while _her_ boyfriend is clear around the planet.”

The other end of the signal was momentarily silent. “What have you girls been up to?” Michiru asked curiously.

“Never mind,” Usagi said flatly.

“Tell Hotaru to be ready to open a door at the same place that she dropped me off the other night,” Setsuna said. “We’ll signal when it’s clear on this end.”

“Consider it done.”

# 

“They didn’t say all that much, really.” Hotaru was sitting on the couch with ChibiUsa and Setsuna to either side and every eye in the room fixed on her. “Balance did most of the talking, and the three Times threw comments in every now and then. There were a couple of times there that I would have said they were more interested in playing on the monkey bars than talking to me.”

“Godlike beings... who enjoy playing on monkey bars.” Ryo said the words slowly. “Okay, on some level I find that very disturbing.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Haruka shrugged. “It sort of appeals to me.”

“We can have a theological debate later,” Ami said. “Go on, Hotaru-chan. What did Balance say?”

“Well, for one thing, he showed me how to fine-tune the dimension door. Apparently, there was some sort of inter-dimensional rule that I was getting close to breaking from using the doors too often and with too much energy. From the way he was acting, I think I’m going to be using that trick pretty often in the near future—which probably means we have a few more interplanetary road trips ahead of us.”

“I call shotgun for the next one,” Minako said immediately.

“You may want to rethink that,” Hotaru told her. “Balance said that one of the problems with the way I was using the dimension door was that it was doing something to Saturn—the planet, I mean. That got me thinking about everything I’ve learned about it recently, and, well... with the dimensional warp and all... I kind of have this nasty feeling that the outer solar system may not be as empty as it ought to be.”

“Things did tend to come out of the warp on a fairly regular basis back in our day,” Artemis admitted with a sour look. “Not even Beryl’s stunt with the mana bombs would have changed that for more than a century or two, and since there hasn’t been anyone out there to greet the new arrivals...” He shook his head.

Haruka looked at Hotaru. “This is what prompted those suggestions in the car, isn’t it?”

“What suggestions?” Michiru asked.

“Our curious little firefly here wanted to know why the Moon Kingdom never made any effort to get rid of the tempests and the other native menaces we had to deal with. And then she proposed that we stick the entire solar system into a giant, monster-proof snowglobe.”

“That’d be one _big_ snowglobe,” Ryo noted.

“Could we even do something like that?” Setsuna asked curiously.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Artemis said. “Most of the planets in the Silver Millennium had planetary shields and defense networks of one sort or another— Mars was an absolute fortress—but they were all based on technological or magical devices. The only trick in the Senshi arsenal that comes close to that would be a group shield, and I’d be really surprised if even all nine of you working together could cover Tokyo with any sort of effectiveness. Still,” he added, “we might want to do some research and see what we find before we go zipping around the rest of the system.”

“You think Hotaru-chan might be right about us not being the only things out there?” Minako asked.

“Best case scenario is that we go out there and either find nothing alive, or at least nothing that’s hostile and capable of following us back home. Worst case scenario is that we find a thriving society of flesh-rending horrors that make daimons look like playful kittens, whose only reasons for _not_ having invaded Earth already are that they don’t see it or us as being worth the time and effort. That might change if we start poking around in their backyard and have to fight our way out at some point. Let’s face it; this is a pretty big planet, and we don’t exactly have a lot of resources on hand to protect it. A planet-wide shield to keep any unwanted visitors out would be great, but I’d settle for an early warning system so we’d at least know what was coming down, and where.”

Usagi frowned. “I don’t remember ever hearing about anything like that, Artemis... Ami? Caly?” The two sisters shook their heads.

“It’s called the Silent Shield,” Hotaru said, looking at her feet.

Once again, all eyes settled on her. “Did Balance tell you about this, too?” Haruka demanded.

“Sort of,” Hotaru admitted, still looking down. “I have some memories of Pandora using it, but Balance told me the details of how it works. I think he has the same worries Artemis does about something following us home.”

“How exactly does this Shield work?” Ami said. “What does it do?”

“Um... it can do a lot of things, actually.” Hotaru was still looking at her feet for some reason. “The basic form is a sphere of energy that radiates out from the Senshi of Saturn and works pretty much like the Silent Wall, but the energy involved can be changed to create different effects. One version makes things inside the Shield invisible, and that’s what I’ve been using when I hide our training sessions. Another version...”

“Hotaru,” Michiru interrupted, “look at me.” Hotaru did that, eventually. “You’re trying to hide something about this Shield from us,” Michiru said, “and frankly, you’re not doing a very good job of it.”

“I can... I can make the Shield large enough to cover the Earth,” Hotaru blurted, “and I can set it up so that it’ll run without me having to hold it in place all the time, but... the Senshi is always inside the Shield when it’s first created, and if she makes it beyond a certain size, she has to stay inside to keep it together. If I Shield the whole planet, I won’t be able to leave without bringing the Shield down. And even if I’m not actively guiding it, the energy for a self-sustaining Shield will still come from my powers as Saturn. As long as a Shield is in place, everything else I can do will be weakened. I’m not sure by how much, but for a planet-sized Shield...”

“So then we won’t ask you to make a Shield to keep things out,” ChibiUsa said, taking her hand. “Just one that’ll warn you if something does happen to come along, so you’ll know where we’ll have to go to deal with it. That’ll take less energy, right? And it’s not like you have to make it right this second; after all, we’re not going anywhere until Rei-chan pulls something out of the Book, are we?”

“No,” Hotaru agreed, smiling and squeezing ChibiUsa’s hand. “But... there’s one other thing about the Shield you ought to know. It lets me do—this.”

Hotaru turned into Saturn. She didn’t use her transformation pen or even move from where she was sitting; she just sort of grew up on the spot, her clothes changing into Saturn’s uniform. She didn’t even let go of ChibiUsa’s hand; her own hand simply expanded in size, the glove appearing around it. There was no light show, and even though she was touching her friend the entire time, ChibiUsa felt absolutely nothing except how her hand went from touching flesh to touching whatever soft, semi-indestructible fabric the Senshi gloves were made from.

“And,” Saturn said, “it also lets me do this.”

She changed again, this time into the form of the Tomoe Hotaru that they’d first met all those months ago. She was not as slenderly fragile or as pale as she had been back then, and on the whole she looked much healthier, but everything else was the same, right down to the black leotard and violet skirt ensemble she had favored.

“Saturn is the power of change,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the chaotic, uncontrolled change that causes destruction, but I can even it out to heal—or do this, at least to myself. Physically, I can be as old or as young as I want.” She looked at Haruka and Michiru, who both seemed a bit stunned, and she tried to smile. It came out rather shaky. “I... I’ll have to be little sometimes to keep anyone from asking questions... and I don’t really think I’m ready to grow up for good yet, but... it’s very hard to be little when I’m really not... up here”—she touched her forehead—“so would you two... would you mind if... at home, sometimes... I wasn’t?”

Michiru gave her a sympathetic look and a gentle smile, nodding ever so slightly.

“If you jump on us like that even _once,_” Haruka warned, pointing at Hotaru.

Hotaru laughed—sort of. It was just as shaky as her smile, and for a moment it seemed as though she might start crying. ChibiUsa gave her hand a return squeeze, and Setsuna put an arm around her slender shoulders. Hotaru smiled at both of them.

“What do you suppose this little age-defying trick does to your prediction, Setsuna?” Ryo seemed faintly amused. “The one about Hotaru-chan having a baby, I mean.”

Now it was _his_ turn to get stared at by everyone in the room. Hotaru blushed and made a squeaky, hiccupping sound.

“Uh-uh,” Minako objected, shaking her head. “Not gonna happen. Not for years yet.”

“What makes you such an expert?” Ryo asked.

“Speaking as the duly anointed Goddess of Love, I am NOT going to take on the task of finding a boyfriend and potential future husband for ANOTHER one of these maniacs until I’ve gotten Mako-chan and Rei-chan fixed up properly—and after I do _that,_ I’m going to find a guy for myself. I’m sorry, Hotaru-chan, but you’re just going to have to wait your turn, and that’s that.”

Makoto and Rei both started giving Minako the classic narrowed-eyes gaze, but Haruka glanced at Artemis. “And what would you call him, then?”

“That would be ‘showpiece,’” Artemis said. “Rei, if I can drag you away from plotting accidents for Mina-chan for just a second, could you tell us whether or not you’ve made any progress with the Book recently?”

“Some.” Reluctantly, Rei pulled her eyes away from Minako. “So far, I’ve been able to confirm that twenty-six of the Weapons in that list you gave me have been destroyed, all of them things you’d labeled as minor devices. Nothing good or bad has turned up on any of the major ones yet, but I’ve been having Rooky search for information about the royal armory. If I can find out what was in it when Beryl attacked, I might be able to trim the list down a bit more.”

“How long _is_ this mysterious inventory?” Ami asked.

“The list Artemis gave me included seventy-nine items,” Rei said, “and maybe half of those were general headings for things that we either all had one of—like our communicators—or there were several laying around waiting to be used. I think it worked out to about two hundred in total.”

There was a silence. “That’s a lot of Weapons,” Haruka finally said. “And you say that you’ve managed to take twenty-six things off the list...?”

“Twenty-six that were destroyed, yes. Four of those items were groups of identical equipment, which add another ten or fifteen pieces to the list. And when you include the things we already have—our communicators, all of Ami-chan’s gear, the four Talismans—the total number is around sixty or so—which still leaves about three-quarters of the list to sort through.” Rei made a face. “I’m starting to feel like an accountant or something...”

“Don’t worry,” Minako said. “If we notice you leaning towards tweed jackets and bow ties, we’ll interfere.”

“That’s ‘intervene,’” Artemis corrected.

“Same difference. So,” she continued, looking around at everyone and marking items off on her fingers, “Hotaru-chan can create an early morning system just in case we rustle any interplanetary featherheads who might come looking for some back pay, and Rei-chan’s steadily illuminating false leads so we can keep our trips to a minimum. Does that cover all the new Senshi business?”

Artemis let out a long-suffering sigh and shook his head in defeat at the multiple manglings of the spoken word. “Yes, Mina-chan,” he said wearily, “I think that covers everything for today. That and a reminder that since the exams are now officially over, you’ve all got another training session tonight.”

“Which makes it my turn to babysit Full Moon there for the evening,” Haruka noted, casually shrugging off Usagi’s flat look.

“But that’s everything?” Minako repeated. The others nodded, and then so did she. “Good. Now for the important stuff—namely,” and here she turned to smile at Ami and Ryo, “a detailed explanation of how you two spent this entire afternoon.”

“That’s going to have to wait,” Ami said. “Caly needs a rest after spending a whole day out in public”—she shot a mental warning to Calypso to keep her mouth shut—“and Ryo-kun should really be headed home by now anyway.”

“Hotaru-chan can drop him at home later,” Minako countered.

“Actually,” Ryo said, taking a quick look at his watch, “my folks ought to be getting home from work right about now, so I can’t very well just appear in my room from out of nowhere.”

“She can drop you _near_ your place, then.”

“Well,” Hotaru said, “I _could_ do that, but I think this afternoon sort of proved how tricky it is to use the dimension door. I can’t really put the opening in a public place with any degree of safety or secrecy unless someone’s there to coordinate, so it’s probably better if Ryo-kun catches the bus.”

“Now just a minute,” Minako said, turning to argue with Hotaru. “Are you telling me that you can open a hole that leads to the other side of the solar system, but you can’t open one that leads just a few blocks away?”

“It’s not that simple,” Hotaru said. She started to explain what she knew about the mechanics and dangers of inter-dimensional travel, and then began to argue with Minako over them—and while they were doing that, Ami and Ryo snuck out of the living room.

“Mina-chan’s train of thought never gets very far off that track, does it?” Ryo said quietly.

“Not really, no. I’m not sure if she’s like that because she’s Venus or if she’s Venus because she’s like that, but Ishtar was the same way. She soaked up palace gossip so fast I used to think she must have a telepathic bead on it, and if there was even the _slightest_ hint that somebody was having love trouble...”

“Venus to the rescue?” Ryo guessed, taking his coat out of the closet.

“Exactly.”

“Then I suppose the best thing we can do is to never let her get the mistaken impression that there’s any trouble between us, right?”

“Right,” Ami agreed.

“We have to make sure that she doesn’t perceive any reason to give us her special attention. We have to seem like we’re completely happy.”

“Precisely.”

“Then in that case, are you doing anything tomorrow night?”

“That’s... what? Well, no, I wasn’t really...” Ami stopped and looked at Ryo, the first hints of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“We _do_ still have that tentatively rescheduled dinner date to take care of,” Ryo pointed out. He considered something that came across the mindbond then. “Is that a yes?”

“That depends; were you asking?”

“Well... yeah.” Ryo suddenly became unsure of himself. “I mean... that is, if you don’t want to leave Calypso by herself just yet, I underst-”

Ami put her finger over Ryo’s lips, silencing him. “I’d love to have dinner with you, Ryo-kun. Meet me at Mako-chan’s at about six, okay?” She smiled, and it seemed to dazzle Ryo completely, because it took him five whole seconds to blink, blush, and nod.

“Got it. Mako-chan’s at six. Um... okay. See you then.”

Ami watched him leave, even going so far as to peer out the window and then wave back when he turned and saw her and waved. Then she turned around, her smile decreasing somewhat as she fixed a firm gaze on the wall between her and the living room and said, “You can all come out now.”

There was a pause, and then Minako came out of the living room, alone. Ami was surprised at that—the only ones she _hadn’t_ expected to see were Artemis, Michiru, and Setsuna—and her amazement must have shown on her face.

“Your sister has excellent hearing and a _very_ handy talent for illusions,” Minako explained. Her face took on a critical expression. “You passed up a perfectly good opportunity to kiss him, you know.”

“I know.” Ami couldn’t help it as the smile grew on her face, and she had to work to keep from giggling. Part of her mind was in full enthusiastic/overjoyed/silly mode; the other part was taking note of it, remembering how the same thing had happened when she talked to her mother about a date with Ryo the previous week, and wondering if this was going to be a permanent condition. “I have a date.”

“That you do,” Minako agreed, smiling back and then giving Ami a hug. “And if you’ll pardon my English, it’s about bloody time.” Ami gave the self-appointed Love Goddess a poke in the ribs; Minako seemed to ignore it as she led Ami back to the living room. “The question now,” she added, “is ‘do you have anything to wear?’”

The bottom suddenly fell out of Ami’s stomach.

# 

All in all, it was a quiet evening at the Tsukino household.

Usagi had called home at about four to inform her mother that she, ChibiUsa, and Setsuna were over at Makoto’s apartment and wouldn’t be back until later. Even over the phone, Ikuko had clearly heard Makoto driving Usagi away from one kind of food or another, and she had also been able to catch the noise of a heated argument in progress somewhere in the background. When Ikuko commented on it, Usagi told her it was just the rest of the girls helping Ami with a little problem.

Aside from a shower and a hasty supper, Shingo spent most of the night in his room. Just because he wasn’t in trouble for sticking up for his sister didn’t mean he was excused for fighting—one of several things Ikuko made sure to have Kenji go upstairs and tell the boy when he came home from work. After talking with their son for half an hour, Kenji came back downstairs with a look of pride that made Ikuko smile and roll her eyes. Yes, she admitted to herself that she was proud of Shingo, too; he had done the right thing by standing up for his sister, and he was accepting the consequences for his actions without any of the usual squirming or excuses.

That said, Ikuko suspected that Kenji’s smile had more than a little to do with the fact that his son had faced down three-to-one odds and won.

With half of the hungry mouths out of the way, Ikuko was finished with the dishes in record time, which left her in a rare moment when she honestly didn’t have anything to do. She decided to spend that time reading, and for the better part of three hours, that was what she did. She did get up once when she noticed that Luna wanted to go out, but the next time Ikuko looked up from the pages of her book, the clock had advanced to just short of ten, and Usagi was coming through the front door with Luna in her arms and ChibiUsa and Setsuna behind, both of them bogged down with shopping bags from that afternoon.

“Welcome home, girls.”

“Hi, Mom,” the trio said in unison. Ikuko sighed and glanced heavenwards, and therefore missed seeing Luna do the same.

*I had a feeling that tonight was going too smoothly,* Ikuko said to herself, closing her book and getting up from the couch. “So what was this mysterious problem of Ami-chan’s that took all of you a good six hours to solve and still left you three in such a good mood?”

“Fashion crisis,” Usagi replied. “She let it slip that she has a date tomorrow night, and Mina-chan decided to ‘help’ by finding the perfect outfit for the occasion.” She shook her head. At Minako’s insistence, Hotaru had opened up a dimension door to Makoto’s apartment, and Minako and Calypso—her designated Special Assistant Junior Goddess of Love for the afternoon—had herded Ami along, bringing her back several times so the others could comment on this or that outfit. Everyone else had their own ideas, of course, and things had rapidly gone out of control. “It snowballed from there.”

“Despite all your best efforts to the contrary, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” ChibiUsa agreed. “Poor youuuu...” The word turned into a massive yawn, after which she stood there blinking. “Okay, I think I’ll go to bed now.” She gave Ikuko a hug, yawned again, and then made her way up the stairs, dragging a couple of bags’ worth of purchases lazily along behind her.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Usagi said, covering a smaller yawn and then slowly shifting her back. It had been a long day; first the exam, then the shopping and all the walking that went with it, and then the fashion crusade. She’d followed the others through another dimension door—placed snugly against the back wall of Hikawa to avoid notice or accidents—and spent a certain amount of time being slightly cold but very much amused as she watched the training session unfold. That was before they stuck her in Rei’s room, surrounded by a miniature version of the Silent Shield that would keep her there and unnoticed by Yuuichirou or Grandpa. She’d passed the time then by showing some of her favorite titles in Rei’s manga collection to Calypso, and also by casually leafing through the Book of Ages and trying to make sense of the garbled symbols inside.

It occurred to Usagi that she didn’t know for certain if she’d closed the Book or not after her unproductive study session, but she shook her head. Rei would notice it for sure, and besides, it was still just a book. Leaving it open wouldn’t be the end of the world.

# 

Even with the post-training shower, Rei barely managed to stay awake long enough to put on her nightgown and collapse into bed. The four crows looked at her curiously from their perches for a time before—with a casual glance at his companions—Thrax hopped down from his place and ghosted across the room to the bed. He reached down and caught the sheets in his strong beak, gradually pulling them up to cover Rei’s shoulders, then took wing once more and returning to his perch. The big raven looked at the other birds a second time; Phobos and Deimos affected an air of suspicion-tinged indifference, and Rooky just croaked a soft, jealous note. Eventually, they all fell asleep as well.

Over on the table, the Book of Ages lay open, the symbols on its two exposed pages continuing their slow but ceaseless dance of appearances, disappearances, and reappearances.

Towards midnight, when Rei and her feathered friends were all far into sleep, the pages of the open Book and a number of the ofudas still hanging about the room wavered as if touched by a light, passing breeze. Rei reacted immediately, shifting in her sleep with a tiny sound of concern as a sense of _unnatural_ penetrated into her dreams, but then the pages of the Book glowed, and the symbols on them swirled around into a whirlpool of words, sinking back into the blank paper. With great speed and utter silence, the pages of the Book flipped back to the beginning, and then the front cover flipped up, closing the ancient volume once more. The glow ceased abruptly, the wards lay still against the walls, and Rei relaxed, drifting into another dream.

# 

For the third time, Ryo reached up to knock on the door, then suddenly withdrew his hand, turned, and began pacing back and forth along the walkway, muttering to himself and occasionally gesturing. This _was_ his first official DATE-date with Ami, after all, and he wanted everything to go just right—and was scared halfway out of his mind that it would go the other way entirely.

“What _is_ that boy waiting for?” Venus asked of no one in particular. She was lurking atop a nearby roof, looking down at Makoto’s apartment door and tapping her foot in annoyance at the delay. She knew Ami and Ryo had some problems in the romance department, but Ryo’s sudden door-dysfunction made Venus worry for the future; if he couldn’t even muster the will to knock on a door and get the fall going...

*Making sure these two work out may take all of my powers as the Ai no Megami,* Venus thought, *but I won’t give up until I’m certain... and whoa to any monster that raises so much as an antenna within ten blocks of them tonight... ah, here we go.*

Ryo was finally knocking on the door. At first, nothing happened, and Venus had a momentary flash of panic that Ami might be going through her own start/stop hesitation sequence on the other side of the door. *Mako-chan, don’t fail me now...*

Down below, Ryo was thinking along similar lines as an upsurge of irrational nervous-boyfriend panic seized him. The words “What if...” rolled through his mind like a hundred of his worst visions combined. Then the door opened—and revealed Makoto.

Up above, Venus winced. *I was afraid of that. Well, at least now he’ll actually be _inside_...*

Down below, Ryo covered a dual flash of relief and disappointment with a polite nod. “Good evening, Mako-chan. Can I come in?”

“I don’t know; let’s see... no box of chocolates, no flowers, no...” She paused as Ryo moved his right hand around from behind his back to reveal a small bouquet of bluish-white lilies with a single red rose in the middle. “Okay, that’s a little better—but _I’m_ not the one you’re supposed to give them to.”

Ryo gave her a look that said ‘Do tell.’ Up on the roof, Venus silently shouted at Makoto to get on with it and go get Ami or let Ryo in or to do SOMETHING besides just standing there.

Makoto stepped back and let Ryo in, then closed the door. “Wait here for a second,” she said. “I’ll go see if she’s ready or not. And just in case, hide those flowers.”

She disappeared down the hall, then came back a moment later with Calypso right behind her. They both nodded at him gravely, and Ryo took a deep breath before heading down to the door to Ami’s room. Standing in front of it, he hesitated again for just a moment—by all rights he should have triggered a vision from the sheer mental stress he was putting himself under—then squared his shoulders and knocked.

“Come in.”

Ryo opened the door, and stopped short. “Er... Ami-chan...”

“Yes?”

“You... you look great.”

Ami smiled at Ryo’s tone, and even more so at the expression on his face. She had gone with a turtleneck white blouse and a knee-length blue skirt. She’d had some doubts about the blouse, which—to her mind at least—seemed a close enough fit to be considered a second skin, but seeing what it was doing to Ryo made her glad she’d listened to the others. As for the makeup, well... it was one of Ami’s not-so-private embarrassments that she was severely impaired when it came to cosmetics, but Minako and Michiru had no such difficulties, and they had come up with a combination yesterday afternoon that used next to nothing to do some amazing things with her eyes and cheeks. Calypso had helped Ami to reapply that same mix tonight with mirror-image precision, and when it was done, Ami had looked into that mirror and been stunned by her reflection.

It reminded her of her father and his art, all the long hours he’d spent sketching this or painting that, and now and then trying his hand at sculpture. He had said to her once that anything you put your heart into and strove to make perfect was an art. Ami had always applied that to her studies, doing her best to create murals out of mathematics and sonnets out of science, but now, thanks to her friends, _she_ was the work of art. It was an interesting feeling, to say the least.

Ami let none of her own amazement at her new ‘transformation’ show on her face, and she was reasonably certain Ryo was too busy being dazzled to correctly interpret anything that might get across the mindbond.

“What have you got behind your back?”

“H-huh?” Ryo blinked and shook his head. “Oh.” He smiled and presented the bouquet with a flourish that was only a little shaky. Ami took the flowers with another smile and closed her eyes as she breathed in their scent.

“Thank you, Ryo-kun. They’re beautiful.” That was the cue for an obvious reply, and Ryo didn’t disappoint.

“Not as beautiful as you are.” He even managed to say it sincerely enough that it didn’t sound clich . Ami left smiling behind in favor of positively glowing, and then she took a step forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“That was for being sweet.” She quickly walked around him and out the door to hide the blush rising in her cheeks, but then stopped in the hall and looked back into the room. Ryo seemed to have been left paralyzed by that kiss. “Ryo- kun? Are you coming?”

“Wha... oh, yeah. After you.”

Ami gave the flowers to Makoto, hugged Calypso, then got her coat, shoes, and purse. She and Ryo had walked down from the apartment and along the sidewalk side-by-side for several minutes before Ami asked where this restaurant Ryo had talked about was located.

“It’s not too far,” he said. “We could catch a bus ride, if...”

“No, that’s okay.” Recalling memories of seeing Usagi and Mamoru together, Ami appropriated Ryo’s right arm.

Up above, unnoticed by either half of the happy couple, Venus pumped one fist in the air with a soft, “Yes!” Then she hurried to keep up with the lovebirds before they got out of her sight.

# 

Back in the apartment, Makoto paused in the middle of placing the flowers into a spare glass vase and looked around. “Caly, did you feel that?”

The Nereid was sitting upside-down on the ceiling, reading one of the books Ami had bought yesterday, and she looked up—or down—with a curious expression. “Feel what, Mako-chan?”

Makoto started to reply, then shook her head. “Nothing.” *Why did I suddenly have the feeling that Minako was here?* “Just my imagination playing tricks on me, I guess.”

“Ami and I have told you not to dismiss your strange feelings too quickly just because we don’t notice them,” Calypso warned, drifting down to the floor and turning herself right side up. “_Feeling_ is the whole point of empathy, and if you’re going to master that ability, you have to pay attention to what it tells you.”

“I... thought I felt Mina-chan nearby.”

Calypso frowned and closed her eyes briefly, sweeping the area around them with her mind. She detected those of Makoto’s neighbors who were home tonight and a few people walking or driving past, but no Minako. Ami and Ryo had already moved out of her immediate range, which made Caly happy for them and a little nervous for herself.

“You don’t have to be nervous, Caly. I’m right here.”

The Nereid smiled at Makoto. “I know. It’s just... as long as Ami’s around, I can look at her and remind myself that what I’m experiencing is real. It has to be, because her mind is there, Mercury in Ami, and I know I never would have imagined my sister existing as a real human. When she’s gone...” Calypso closed her eyes and shivered. “When she’s gone, it’s... it’s difficult.”

More than the vague fear, loneliness now emanated out from Calypso, reminding Makoto that regardless of what she looked like, this strange and sweet creature was the last of her kind, displaced a thousand years out of her time with only a tiny handful of friends who could understand her, and none at all who were _like_ her. The Nereid was unique, forced to adapt to an alien world and forever removed from whatever sort of existence her kind had once enjoyed, save only for those deeply personal moments of contact she could share with the reincarnation of her sister.

Makoto left the flowers and walked over to Calypso, putting her arms around the Nereid. There was a faint tingle as she touched her, a reaction of Jupiter’s electrical energy recognizing something similar to itself in Calypso’s being, and Makoto’s mind picked up very human responses to the hug. Reassurance. Security. Gratitude.

“Thank you,” Caly said, returning the embrace and then backing away with an apologetic smile. “I’ll try not to be so depressing in the future.”

“Trust me,” Makoto chuckled, “you’re not depressing. You haven’t met Chiba-san yet; he can get VERY depressing when he puts his mind to it. World-class dumpsville.”

“Endymion was always too serious for his own good,” Calypso replied.

“...and Serenity wasn’t serious enough for _her_ own good,” Makoto finished. “There are times when she still isn’t, but we’ve brought her around. Slowly,” she added, shaking her head.

“And with much food.”

“You read my mind.” Makoto had meant that as a joke, but Calypso’s reaction was one of shock.

“Oh, no! No, Mako-chan, I didn’t! I swear, I...”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Caly, I was kidding. It was a joke.”

“Oh.” Calypso laughed, feebly at first, then with traces of real humor and a growing blush—a blue one, a sign that she was so mentally preoccupied that she was losing some of her control over her assumed shape. “Oh, I must look awfully foolish right now.”

“Just a little,” Makoto agreed, hugging her again. “But it wasn’t altogether your fault; sometimes it’s really easy for me to put these big feet in my mouth. I’m sorry about that. I know you wouldn’t break your promise and go into my mind without...”

Click.

Calypso looked at Makoto curiously as her voice trailed off and she turned to look in the direction of her room. “Mako-chan? Is something wrong?”

“I almost forgot about...” She turned back to the Nereid. “Caly, do you... do you know anything about dryads?”

Calypso blinked. “Yes, I do. There were still quite a few of them living on Venus when...”

“There’s something I need to show you,” Makoto said, heading for her room and dragging the startled Nereid along behind.

# 

When Archon appeared before his apprentice this time, he did not do so as some immaterial shape of light and shadow, but in his true body, materializing in a brief flicker of varicolored light. He also didn’t appear alone; Cestus stood next to him, his fiery eyes looking everywhere, analyzing everything in sight with a ferocious intensity.

Archon had warned the girl about this. As the Imperial Master of Assassins, Cestus’s existence revolved around three things: the killing of his Prince’s and Princess’s enemies; the prevention of similar acts against them; and the knowledge required to do so quickly, quietly, and efficiently. He was suspicious of everyone and everything, and he had honed that suspicion to the point where he could gather up more information about his surroundings in a single look than many could in an hour of close study. Every room was a potential trap, every person a potential enemy, and the only way to stay ahead of them was to have as much information as possible—and then to act on it.

So they were not meeting in the girl’s home, but on a rooftop that Archon had designated as the site for the next mission, and when Cestus looked at this half-taught, _self_-taught apprentice, he saw a figure in a dark grey cloak, the cowl pulled down over a smoky, reflective mask similar to the ones worn by the Imperial Guards. She could see through it and hear or be heard perfectly fine, but no one could see her face without penetrating both the mask and a respectable array of magical defenses. Archon was not yet ready for anyone in Atlantis to know the identity of his student, and she was just as happy not having a professional murderer know where she lived and what she looked like.

The all-concealing mask was abominably awkward to wear, though, and it had taken her several hours of practice to get to the point where she could enunciate without her chin banging against the lower edge of the thing. Where spellcasting was concerned, bad grammar was lethal.

“_This_ is the mysterious apprentice you spoke so highly of? A half-grown child so uncertain of her abilities that she hides her face?” Cestus snorted—and not for a single second did the girl believe that he had dismissed her. Something in his attitude—and eyes—said this man never dismissed anything so lightly, if ever.

“It has never been the custom of the Imperial Order of Mages to bring our recruits to the attention of those in power unless or until circumstances require otherwise,” Archon said calmly. “I see no reason to change this, particularly since this ‘half-grown and uncertain child’ must live in this city and risk detection by our opponents.”

Cestus grunted something and studied the skyline. Archon turned his back on the assassin—something VERY few people could or would dare, even among the Atlanteans—and faced his apprentice. “All is prepared?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. The coordinates for the teleportation are set, and I have everything necessary for a mass summoning.” She paused. “Though if I’m going to summon daimons to defend the nexus, I think it might be better to raise one or two more powerful ones and keep them here instead of calling up a large number of lesser ones and scattering them across the city. The Senshi can go through even higher-level daimons and the like fairly fast; weaker types won’t hold them for long at all.”

“Defense is not their purpose,” Archon replied. “That will fall to Cestus, should it even become necessary. The daimons are merely to distract and delay the Senshi so that the nexus has a chance to function normally.”

She nodded again. “I understand.”

“Then see to your spells,” Archon ordered, “and depart when they are completed.” Although he couldn’t see it, the archmage sensed the cocky lift of the eyebrow behind the mask, expressing the unspoken sentiment that the girl had much better ways to spend her evening than on a cold roof with a cold-blooded killer for company. He had several such ‘better ways’ himself, some of which required immediate attention, and the archmage disappeared back to Atlantis. His student began setting up for the ritual, using the ‘pager’ he had given her to create the warding circle on the roof.

“You may want to stand back,” she advised Cestus politely. “With the number of daimons that’ll be coming through, there’ll be quite a lot of radiation from their home plane. Most people don’t care for the feel of that sort of thing.”

“What I care for or feel isn’t really any of your concern, apprentice.”

“Merely trying to be helpful.”

# 

Usagi was sitting on the foot of her bed and looking up at the Phoenix Egg. She had turned off the overhead light and switched on a bedside lamp instead, because the Egg’s curious reflections of light actually seemed brighter this way.

“Maybe ‘reflections’ is the wrong word,” she murmured.

“What?” Luna asked, raising her head from the mattress.

“For the way it glows like that. If it’s alive, then maybe it lights up because it wants to instead of because of some laws of physics.”

“It’s a possibility. I’m not sure what sort of useful information it gives us, but...” Luna paused, one ear and then her entire head turning towards the balcony at the sound of a ‘tap-tap-tap’ on the glass door. Artemis was standing outside in human form, rapping one knuckle lightly on the glass, and he looked vaguely worried—and definitely irritated—about something.

Luna hopped down from the bed, morphed to human form, and unlocked and opened the door. “Something bothering you, Artemis?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” He stepped inside quickly, closing the door behind him. “Do either of you know where Minako is? She gave me the slip about an hour ago.”

Something in the back of her mind told Usagi she knew where Minako had gone, but she glanced at the clock anyway just to be sure of the time. 6:37.

“She wouldn’t have,” Usagi said.

*She _would_,* Serenity replied, *and you know it. Once Ishtar got it into her head that she was on a mission of love, nothing stopped her.*

*Minako isn’t Ishtar.*

*Yes, she is. She just has a few more inhibitions, and keeping a moonlight vigil over a happy couple to make sure nothing goes wrong doesn’t come near any of those. It’s actually part of her job.*

*Don’t remind me.* Usagi was reaching for her communicator when it went off. “Hello?”

“Usagi,” Hotaru’s voice said urgently, “they’re raising daimons again. A LOT of them. And they’re on the move.”

“Take Haruka and Michiru and start dealing with them,” Usagi said immediately. “I’ll send ChibiUsa and Artemis to meet you and get in touch with the oth-”

“You’re NOT going to call Ami in the middle of her date,” Venus’ voice interrupted.

“Where are you?” Artemis demanded.

“Never mind that now,” Usagi said. “Venus, if they’re turning loose a lot of daimons, we need to be able to track-”

“Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, and Calypso can find these things as easily as Mercury’s computer,” Venus countered, “and they can do it from four directions at once.”

“But Mako-chan’s never-”

“Then she can stick with Caly and learn how. I’ve already got the nexus in my sights.”

“You _what_? How did-”

“Gotta go!”

“VENUS!”

“I think we need to work on that girl’s concept of the ‘chain of command’ a little more,” Haruka’s voice noted from the other side of the line.

# 

Switching her communicator off, Venus took the next roof in a long, steady leap. It had been sheer dumb luck that she’d happened to look up right when the profile of the nexus appeared on a rooftop a few blocks from the restaurant Ami and Ryo had entered a quarter of an hour before. Venus had considered going in to keep a closer eye on things, but decided against it for a number of reasons. For one thing, she didn’t have an especially good track record with taking a direct hand in the romantic lives of her fellow Senshi, and for another, Ami and Ryo would have spotted her instantly if she’d gone in. She didn’t have any money on her anyway, so it all worked out.

She hadn’t noticed any daimons so far, and the nexus itself had disappeared behind one of those invisibility shields that seemed to be standard- issue for the things, but she had a good bead on where it had been, and since none of the previous ones had moved after appearing, she was willing to bet that this nexus was still there. She had been about to call in the others when she linked in to Usagi’s and Hotaru’s line.

*If they’re calling daimons,* she thought, *then odds are good that they’ve changed their plans. About time, too, considering how seriously we keep trashing their toys... let’s see... Hotaru-chan said the daimons were moving, and she’d be the one to know... but from everything _I_ know, the nexi _can’t_ move... so the daimons have to be a diversion... whoa!*

She stopped, crouched, and sprang to avoid a flying thing that looked like a mouth with two pairs of bat’s wings. A single Crescent Beam blew it out of the air.

*Well, that settles it. Saturn took apart that last daimon in record time, and this thing wasn’t even a patch on that. The only use for something so weak is to delay, delay, delay... which means they don’t want us getting to the nexus... which means I _have_ to get there, ASAP, so I can’t wait for the others...*

Suddenly, Venus smiled. “Ah, why not?”

# 

Cestus stood atop a ledge on the side of the mana nexus, watching the streets below as the huge machine slowly warmed up towards full activation. People were leaving buildings and scattering in all directions, some of them running from the handful of daimons that were still in the area, others just putting as much distance between themselves and the looming presence of the nexus as they could. That was something he would have to pass along to Archon and the artificers; the cloaking shield for the nexi needed to be fitted more closely.

He didn’t understand what the occasional flashes of light down there might be, though, and that bothered him. They certainly weren’t any form of weapon or attack spell, or the defenses of the nexus would have reacted in an appropriate manner... and they seemed to be coming from little box-shaped devices several of the people below were holding up in front of...

Golden beams lanced down from the sky, blasting into the pack of daimons and reducing them to nothingness. Cestus traced the path of the sudden attack up and across the street—and blinked. Where the Senshi were concerned, gold meant either Venus or Uranus, and those symbols in the uniform of the woman now standing on the roof across the street from him included the sign of Venus, but the crescents... and a _mask_...?

“Who in the Abyss are YOU?”

“You must be new in town,” she replied, “so I guess a formal introduction is in order.” Maybe it was a trick of the light, but suddenly she seemed taller... or just more intimidating. “I am the soldier of justice, the sailor-suited beautiful soldier! I am Sailor Venus, Code Name: Sailor V! And if you don’t want another scar to mess up that pretty face of yours, I suggest you clear out right now!”

*_Pretty_?!* Cestus didn’t get a chance to speak, however, because there was a sudden commotion below that had nothing to do with the daimons or the nexus.

“Look!” someone shouted. “It’s Sailor V! It’s really her!”

There were suddenly about a hundred of those flashes.

 

# 

_(The crew is still setting up for the segment when Usagi bursts onto the stage, looking profoundly annoyed.)_

**Crewman** : Er, Usagi-chan, we aren’t...

**Usagi** : Sit down and be quiet!  _(The crewman blinks and does that. Usagi turns to confront the camera.)_  The moral for this story is simple! Minako has got to learn how to follow orders! When I get my hands on her... ooh!

_(Usagi storms off, leaving a nervous and silent crew behind.)_

**Crewman** : Um... I think that’s a rap...

21/04/01 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_I am so close to being back on the correct biweekly schedule, I just hope this one gets in ahead of the deadline... and now on to writing the second half of this oh-so-obvious two-parter._

_Up next:_   
_-Llllllllet’s get ready to rumblllllllle..._


	22. Rumble in the Urban Jungle, and Ten Reasons Why The Senshi Don't Tell Each Other About Their Dates

# 

The city, Proteus noted, was busy tonight.

Through its army of mutated rats, the entity had detected the arrival of the new nexus, the forces of Atlantis continuing their bid for control of this city’s incredible energy. The rats had also detected a number of daimons, if not the portal Proteus knew must have been used to bring the creatures into this world from their own. The rats had been forced to defend themselves several times now, actually destroying two or three of the invaders—and losing twenty or thirty of their own number in the process. Given what little it knew about daimons, Proteus considered the losses rather light, and projected that these creatures must be serving much the same role for the nexus that the rats did for it; as scouts and as a self-defensive wave of expendable troops.

And they were definitely being spent. The Senshi were out in force, and some of the lesser daimons were even being beaten back by ordinary humans.

One of Proteus’ rats watched from the alley beside a martial arts dojo as a man who must be an instructor took down a dog-sized thing of scales and claws with a series of expert maneuvers. The daimon got back up, of course, but it wasn’t landing a blow on its agile opponent, and another few collisions with a wall or the pavement would be the end of it.

Elsewhere, several of the rats squeaked and scurried for cover as a matronly-looking woman armed with nothing but a battered frying pan and a furious roar chased several imp-like monsters past. There were three of the black-and-yellow stripe-skinned things, and while none was more than three feet tall, they had long claws and sharp teeth—and they ran for it anyway, their red eyes wide with surprise and fear. The woman caught up to the slowest of them and sent it caroming off the wall of a nearby building with one swing.

Out in the park, a solitary rat stretched the focusing powers of its augmented eyes to the limit to observe the effortless dismemberment of a serpentine daimon trio by the blonde Senshi with that frighteningly deadly sword.

Downtown, a pair of the mutant rats scaled the side of a building to get a better look at the mana nexus over the heads of the crowd—and to observe the two humans up on the roofline. One of them looked like a Senshi, but the other had to be an Atlantean; no ordinary person Proteus had scanned radiated energy like that.

*This ought to be interesting.*

# 

After this ‘Sailor V’ introduced herself, Cestus was forced to take a moment and wonder just what in the world was going on here. Since when did ANY Senshi engage in such nonsensical chit-chat before a battle? Granted, the Senshi of Venus had always had a reputation for being somewhat fixated on romance, even when she wasn’t a Venusian by birth, but this ‘soldier of love and justice’ bit was over the top even by those standards. Exactly what sort of training program had Athena put her new allies through? And why the mask and dual identity?

*Unless,* Cestus thought, narrowing his gaze, *this _isn’t_ really a Senshi of Venus...* He couldn’t think of any particular reason to have a fake Venus running around, but then again, he also didn’t know very much about how the Senshi fit into this modern world, so there could be a reasonable explanation for it. Not that it mattered one way or the other; he knew of only three ways to test the identity of a Senshi, and since he didn’t have another Senshi or a properly-trained mentalist on hand, that left the third choice.

Turning to one side and holding his right arm down and back behind his body, Cestus gathered his energies and then spun, the upwards sweep of his arm casting a crackling, vaguely star-shaped projectile straight at the woman. There was a thunderous detonation and a flash of blue-green light as the rooftop blew apart, but Cestus already had his eyes on the figure leaping to the left, clear of the blast. He flung another orb at her, and she shot it out of the air with a golden beam of energy.

*I know a Crescent Beam when I see one,* Cestus thought, jumping out of the path of the streaking force-bolt and watching the movements of his opponent very closely. *If she keeps going in that direction, she’ll...* Cestus flung one hand forward, palm out, and shouted a word in Atlantean.

V heard something that sounded like “Trigger!” right before the rooftop she had been aiming for was pulverized inside an expanding dome of raw force. The blast caught her and flung her sidelong into the air some five stories above the street, thrashing her mercilessly in the process and blowing out windows in all directions. When the people below groaned and screamed, V couldn’t help it; she looked down and gulped. If she fell from this height...

She twisted in mid-air as the rooftops on both sides of the street began to shoot past, ready to call for her Love-Me Chain so she could lasso something and stop her fall well short of street level, only to experience a moment of panic when she realized that the Chain might not come to Sailor V, who had always done most of her fighting up-close and personal. But if the Crescent Beam worked in both forms, then the Chain ought to... but if it didn’t... but it should... *Oh, just hurry up and SHOOT, Minako!*

“LOVE-V-CHAIN!” The crowd on the street cheered and Cestus dodged as a length of glowing metal links shot out from the falling Senshi, extending with tremendous speed to lash around an outcropping on the nexus. Just shy of the third-floor level, V grabbed the other end of the Chain, looped it around her wrist several times, and suddenly felt her momentum reverse. She was flying up rather than falling down, the shining length of the Chain contracting with a rapid click-click-click-click-click as it pulled her to safety.

Or not-so-safety. V clenched her teeth and shuddered from head to toe as her opponent brought a length of crackling blue-green energy down on the Chain. It didn’t break or even slow down, but a surge of electricity shot up and down the Chain, tiny bolts of blue and green dancing around the golden links—links, V noticed, that retained their overall heart-shape, but which were now stylized to suggest a ‘V’-shape as well.

*Neat,* she thought absently, right before a second shock came coursing through the Chain. “That’s enough of that!” V raised her free hand and pointed as she flew past her enemy. “CRESCENT BEAM!”

Cestus fell back, twisting his upper body to dodge the path of the Beam. Temporarily freed from his attacks, V focused on her ascent and, at a certain point, willed the Chain to stop pulling her up. She swung across the front of the nexus, tracked by every eye on the ground, then unlooped her wrist and let go of the Chain to flip over and land neatly on the next rooftop. She turned and frowned.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to surrender?”

By way of an answer, Cestus shouted “Trigger!” a second time, and V raised her arms to protect her face as the world around her disappeared into a haze of blue-green light and suffocating pressure.

The thought, *Now would be a GREAT time to learn how to teleport!* flashed through her mind, but predictably, nothing happened, and the force of the blast sent her tumbling into the low wall at the far side of the roof. No question that it hurt, but she’d been through worse, so it was possible—if not exactly easy—for her to duck and roll as the scarred man unleashed a barrage of those star-like projectiles at her from his outstretched hand. He followed that up by conjuring a narrow, jagged blade of bluish energy in his hand and then leaping at her, bringing his arm across his body in preparation for a sidelong slash.

V saw him coming and pushed down with everything she had, flipping herself up, over, and around to land right behind. The instant her feet touched down, she went straight into a spin, locking her right forearm into the classic Sailor V Chop. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn that the large Venus symbol on the back of her glove flashed.

Cestus had started to turn the instant he realized that his wide, cement-rending slash had lost its target, but he was only halfway around when the blow took him high on the back, just short of the base of his neck. Staggered, the assassin fell to his knees, the fingers of his left hand twitching as the energy-blade fizzled out and vanished. His own training allowed him to push away the pain as easily as V had hers, and he brought his now-empty hand up at her stomach, fingers wide and gathering energy once again.

He didn’t actually touch her, but the mass of energy gathering in his palm exploded like a thunderclap, doubling V up and hurling her back across the roof with terrific force. Cestus straightened and summoned his blade again, and then blinked. The woman was getting up.

*Not even Draco could shake off a hit like that so quickly,* Cestus said to himself. *Not out of his armor, at any rate... what exactly am I up against here?*

V was wondering something along those lines herself. *I know I’m tough, but I know I’m not THIS tough. That last one should have broken me in half...* She raised her arms, partly to be ready to fight, partly to look at her gloves a little more closely. The Venus symbols WERE glowing. *Is that it? Is this new uniform is protecting me somehow?*

“Still feeling lucky, Scratch?” V asked aloud. “Or would you like to take advantage of that surrender clause? Going once, going twice...”

“You talk too much,” Cestus snapped. He raised his sword and swung it in her direction, the end blossoming into a snarling high-voltage lash.

“LOVE-V-CHAIN!”

V’s counterattack blew right through the electric whip and kept on going; drawn by the electromagnetic power of the other weapon, the Chain spiraled down between the lines of energy to strike at Cestus’s hand. He let go of his weapon and moved his hand to avoid the blow, then toppled backwards as V looped the Chain around his legs and pulled. Even as he fell, Cestus reached down and slapped his hands against his legs, sending a double-dose of energy snaking down the Chain to fry V again, but she gritted her teeth and quickly twisted the Chain to bind her opponent’s high-voltage hands in place, then added more loops until he was bound from head to toe, at which point she released her grip on her weapon.

“You can try shocking _that_ if you like,” she told him, “but I really don’t advise it.” Keeping one eye on the downed-but-not-out mystery man, V tapped her communicator. “This is Sailor V to Senshi, come in... ahhh!” A burst of static flared over the line. V tapped her communicator a few times, but the interference remained, and she glared at Cestus. It was either the invisibility barrier surrounding the nexus or those stupid energy bolts that had messed up her communicator, but either way it was his fault—and it left her unable to call for help.

*Which means, joy of joys, that it’s up to little old ME to try and destroy this thing.* She looked up at the huge nexus, the upper pylons of which were beginning to glow in that familiar and unsettling way. *And if Luna and Artemis were right, if I shoot this thing, it’ll absorb the energy and probably turn half the district into solid gold.*

V sighed and swore under her breath—in two languages at once—and then looked back at Cestus, who was trying to move and only succeeding in getting himself scraped by the pointy corners of the chain links. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

She scaled the nexus in four quick jumps, and then considered it. They were still making the things out of that ugly green fungus, so if Mars had been here, she could have lit a torch and then burned the nexus down. Luna, Artemis, Ami, or Neptune would have all had good ideas on what to do, and seeing as how it wasn’t active yet, Saturn could have swung the Silence Glaive and chopped the whole nexus down. V felt just a little bit useless at that moment, and then she felt angry at herself for feeling useless.

*Girl, you are just as capable of solving this problem as any of the others! You ARE Sailor Venus; you ARE the leader of the Senshi of the Inner Solar System; and you ARE going to come up with a brilliant plan to cut this monster of a mold down to size, so quit complaining and do it already!*

*Hang on a second,* V thought, the sudden flash of inspiration derailing her earlier train of thought as she looked around at the nexus. The word ‘cut’ rang in her head like a great golden bell. It might actually work.

“LOVE-V-CHAIN!” Another Chain—or perhaps the same one as the one that was holding her prisoner of war down there—shimmered into existence, shooting out and twirling its way around several of the pillars on the uppermost level of the nexus. Two seconds later, the uprights were each sporting their own ring of golden links, almost like some bizarre Christmas decoration. V concentrated, and the sections of the Chain connecting the ‘rings’ disappeared; at the same time, the ends of the rings fused into each other.

“I hope this works,” V murmured. It ought to; her Chain was created and moved by magic, but it was really still just a metal chain. “And I _really_ hope Mars doesn’t get the idea that I’ve stolen one of her attacks.” She took a deep breath and then called out the command she had in mind: “LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!”

The golden rings began to spin around their respective pillars, the sharp tips of the ‘V’-shaped hearts twisting to point in. Then green dust flew in every direction as the rings contracted; rather than the deafening chainsaw buzz V had been half-expecting to hear, the whirring weapons created a curious series of almost musical tones.

There was a snap as one of the narrower uprights succumbed to the attack, its upper length sliding, falling, and crashing down into the middle of the nexus. Two more of the pillars were shorn away, the chain-rings around each of them exploding into diminishing golden shards and doing even more damage on the way out. The nexus’ dull glow had flickered when the first upright fell, and now it went out completely.

*It’s working,* V thought. *I did it. All by myself. That was so... huh?* A crackling noise and the sudden high-pitched sound of something shattering interrupted her thoughts. *Damn! I almost forgot about him!*

Monsters had broken free from her Chain before, so V wasn’t entirely surprised when she turned and had to duck the fist-sized ball of blue-green lightning that went crackling through the space where her head had been a second ago.

“Okay, wise guy! Round two, coming at ya! LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!” A wide, rapidly-spinning chain ring went flying at the man, buzz-sawing its way through another lightning ball, absorbing the power, and then exploding into the roof beyond as its real target neatly sidestepped and unleashed a two-handed counterattack at V.

*Yes,* V thought absently, as she leapt clear of the jagged stroke of lightning, *I think Mars is _definitely_ going to want to have words with me about copyright infringement...*

# 

Plants do not like fire, and daimons do not like things of positive spiritual power. This meant that Sailor Mars was just about the worst enemy a new forest of mobile plant-daimons could have—and as she suspected, the shambling humanoid weeds went up like torches with just a little effort on her part.

Mars had lost track of the number of Fire Souls she’d used in the last ten minutes. These daimons were so weak that even her simplest attack was sufficient to wipe out a cluster of them in one shot, but there were just so _many_ of them... if it hadn’t been for the strenuous pace Luna and Artemis had been setting in training recently, Mars thought she might have collapsed by now from the effort of generating all those attacks—nearly every shot a hit, and every hit worth at least one kill.

It was too easy. Even with all the energy she’d had to use up, destroying these creatures was still too easy. Mars knew it, and she knew that somewhere out there was a mana nexus, hidden from her eyes and—since she wasn’t feeling anything from it—probably not attuned to forces her gifts could detect. Her friends were out there as well, and all of these little beasts, wave after wave of them, were meant simply to slow them down. It was a simple, obvious plan—and it worked because the Senshi just couldn’t take the chance of leaving even these puny monsters behind them. True, they were no threat to most adults or teenagers, but what about children? The infirm? The elderly? Not everyone’s grandfather was a lifelong spiritualist, and not everyone’s younger relations could turn into a superheroine-in-training.

And not all of these monsters were quite as puny as the rest.

Something that looked like a drab grey cloud floated into view up ahead, a thing whose huge, single eye said clearly that it was not a cloud, but whose lightning-like discharges might have created some argument over the matter. It was in the process of blasting apart a car, and a trail of burning wrecks leading back down the street said it had been a busy cloud-monster.

Mars let fly with a Fire Soul and lightning erupted from the eye, spearing the fireball in mid-flight and triggering an explosion from which the cloud- creature retreated. It unleashed more lightning at Mars, a sparkling webwork of energy which she had to jump high to avoid, and then a more focused bolt which she ripped apart with a Burning Mandala. The fiery rings slashed through the creature’s floating body as well, creating great gaping rents which filled with short sparks of energy and were quickly sealed, leaving the daimon whole, but also a great deal smaller than before. It began to move for the nearest intact car, its underside glowing with energy, but when Mars got in its way, it backed off and headed for a different vehicle. Mars put herself in its path a second time, and again the strange being backed away, quivering with what she might have called frustration. It drifted towards the first car, then spat lightning at her the instant she moved—and again seemed to get smaller.

The play of lightning along the hood of that car and the line of destroyed vehicles made sense now; if using its attacks consumed so much of the creature’s energy, it would naturally try to replenish itself by whatever means available. It had probably been a lot smaller and weaker when it first arrived, too, no more powerful or dangerous than all the rest—except when given time to build up its strength.

Mars backed off slowly, and then, when the creature headed for a car and was paying the least attention to her, she launched a Flame Sniper right through the middle of it. There was another explosion, and then no eyeball-cloud at all. One more down, kami alone knew how many more to go, and the nexus to worry about on top of that. Mars sighed... and had to catch her balance with help from the hood of the nearby car.

*Okay,* she admitted to herself, *that Flame Sniper might have been overdoing it just a little.* Mars mustered her strength to fight down the fatigue, focusing mostly on steadying her breathing, but the smell of smoke distracted her and drew her attention to the burning cars that the eye-cloud had left in its wake. If they continued to burn, the flames might spread, and with all the chaos caused by daimons running loose in the streets, firefighters would be a long time getting here to handle the problem.

Mars extended her arms and closed her eyes, focusing on her powers. The nearest fire roared to a furnace note, the flames rising higher and higher, and as the others began to swell up in turn, motes of intensely bright red light formed in the heart of each blaze. Like shooting stars, each of the tiny lights burst forth, streaking through the air towards Mars and pulling the dancing fires along behind them as searing tails. Her eyes closed, Mars could not see the light of her aura as it faded into existence, but she didn’t have to see it to know it was there. The fire-lights struck her one after the other, each merging into her aura and suffusing it with new light and energy until it was almost twice as bright as before, and with each infusion Mars felt her diminished energy being replenished.

When the last of the fires had vanished, her aura disappeared as well, and Mars reopened her eyes. There was nothing she could do about the destroyed cars, but at least the fires couldn’t spread now that she’d absorbed them. And the fatigue had lessened considerably.

*That trick just gets more useful every time I try it.* She shook her head. *Now if only the daimons were that easy to get rid of.*

# 

Daimons were dropping like flies at a bug-zapper convention, and the reason was very simple:

Saturn was not in a good mood.

Uranus and Neptune recognized all the signs. Their foster-daughter was in full search-and-destroy mode, laying into daimons left, right, and center without so much as a word—to the monsters OR them—in between swings of the Silence Glaive. The ones that were smart enough to keep out of range of the deadly blade but still dumb enough to stay in her field of view were being popped out of existence by the narrow bolts of dark energy Saturn unleashed from her empty hand. Every time Saturn passed between either of them and the nearest strong light source, the light seemed to grow briefly dimmer, and there was a palpable sense of menace hanging around the little Senshi.

“All things considered, I’d say she’s handling it pretty well this time.” Uranus paused to fire a World Shaking at a crew of red-skinned imps, sending them flying like leaves in a hurricane. “You?”

“I think we may have to make room for one more in bed again tonight,” Neptune replied. “No matter how well we do out here”—she spun and sent a Deep Submerge into a creeping mass of tiny black insects—“a lot of people are going to get hurt.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Uranus nodded towards a guy down the sidewalk who was wrestling with a skinny, grey-fleshed humanoid and actually seemed to be winning the match. Not far away from that, a policeman armed with a baton was successfully holding at bay a small group of squishing, foot-long, razor-toothed slugs. “This latest batch really isn’t up to par.”

“Maybe. But even so, Hotaru isn’t going to take their being here well. At least,” Neptune added, “not once she’s calmed down.” Saturn had just reduced the grey man-daimon and the slugs to powder with tiny force-bolts flicked from her fingertips, and she was moving on.

“Okay,” Uranus agreed reluctantly, “but she sleeps on _your_ side this time.”

# 

Tonight was one of those nights where being about a foot taller than and twice as strong as a normal girl really came in handy; Jupiter couldn’t seem to take three steps without finding another pint-sized monster to deal with, and while she had blasted some with lightning, she was dealing with most of them the old-fashioned way. She sort of had to, seeing as how Calypso was tagging along.

It hadn’t been Jupiter’s first choice on how to go into a battle, but she couldn’t see any way around it. They had been in the middle of a conversation about dryads—about whom Caly knew quite a lot, if not enough to say for certain what the silver acorn Makoto had been given by Sasanna was—when Calypso had suddenly gone into a series of convulsive movements that reminded Makoto more of an epileptic seizure than of anything else. That sort of thing was bad enough to watch in a human, but coming from a being with a completely different kind of biology, it was worse. The Nereid hadn’t even been able to speak telepathically for several seconds, and once she got her voice back—so to speak—the explanation that her body was reacting to a strong surge of negative energy didn’t do anything to help Makoto relax. All Makoto had been able to do was hold her strange friend and try to talk to her while she struggled to get her body back under control.

Usagi’s general call had arrived just as Caly was getting to her feet, and it took Makoto a second to realize that she heard two communicator beeps: one beep from her communicator, and one from a communicator—Ami’s—that Calypso had been hiding under the sleeve of her dress. Caly explained that she had ’borrowed’ it earlier on the grounds that nothing should be allowed to intrude on her sister’s special night, and when they explained that to Usagi, she had not been at all amused. Under different circumstances, Usagi would have thought that sort of sweet, but not tonight. They had daimons to fight, LOTS of them, _and_ they had a mana nexus to track down and topple, but since none of them knew which restaurant Ami and Ryo had gone to—and since the Mercury Computer wouldn’t function in communications mode unless Ami told it to do so—they were going to have to do the job without Mercury.

It wasn’t Calypso’s fault that someone had chosen this particular night to stage an invasion, of course, but she still felt pretty bad about the problem she had inadvertently created, and she had been extremely anxious to try and make up for it by helping Makoto track down daimons. She had handed over Ami’s communicator, waited for Makoto to transform, and then turned herself into a slightly blue-tinted, vestlike overlay of Jupiter’s fuku. And off they had gone.

As monster radar, Caly was flawless. Not only could she track daimons by their psychic presences, but their unnatural, vile energy stood out against the city like black beacons; even the unintelligent daimons did not escape her notice, and at the same time, their personal energies were nowhere near strong enough to affect the Nereid in the same manner as the surge of their arrival had.

But if the daimons’ energy wasn’t affecting Caly now, Jupiter’s most certainly was. Every time she used an attack, there was a lot of excess electrical energy that normally got dispersed back into the air or the ground; now, most of that excess was going straight into Calypso. Not only did the tingling from that electrical buildup keep distracting Jupiter from business, but Caly seemed to be enjoying the impromptu meal just a little too much—and by the sixth Supreme Thunder, she was giving off some emotional impulses that were downright embarrassing. That was when Jupiter had shifted to hand-to-hand, spacing her electrical attacks out as much as she possibly could.

Calypso didn’t seem to mind the sudden massive decrease in her food supply, but by that point she was quite literally drunk on the power she’d already absorbed anyway. At least, Jupiter _hoped_ it was intoxication she was sensing... no, best not to think about it too closely. Caly might overhear and try to explain.

*Did you say something, Mako-chan?* a drowsy thought-voice asked.

“No.”

*Okay. The next nearest group of daimons is just over there behind that building. Here, I’ll give you a hand.* Jupiter suddenly felt a strong tug from the ‘vest’, and there was a definite feeling of upwards movement as Calypso tried to pick her up and fly her over a three-story building.

“Uh, Caly, that’s okay! I can get there myself! Really!”

*Okay.* The tug went away, and Jupiter’s feet settled back to the ground. Calypso yawned. *I think I’m going to take a little nap now, Mako-chan. Can you track the rest of these monsters down by yourself?*

“Sure, Caly. I paid attention to what you were doing.”

*Good. Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble, too... mmmm...* The tingling feeling Jupiter was getting from the Nereid’s body died down somewhat as Calypso’s mental voice trailed off into noises of contentment, and then silence.

Jupiter decided that she and Ami needed to have a serious talk about Nereids after this was all over.

# 

The daimon crept silently down the dark corridor of the sewer. A short and ugly parody of the human form, leather-skinned, taloned, and bristling with needle-like hairs, the creature peered cautiously over its shoulder at the darkness behind it. Darkness was good; it was the closest thing on Earth to the natural state of existence in the daimon dimension, the next best thing to being home.

Somehow, though, this darkness made the daimon edgy. Concepts such as ’safe’ and ‘comfort’ are always relative at best where daimons are concerned, for their home plane is hostile almost beyond human comprehension, a place where even the land—or its nearest equivalent—is often the enemy. Still, darkness should have been familiar enough to the daimon for it not to watch its back any more than it usually would.

But there was something wrong with this darkness, something about it which caused the otherworldly little monster to question once again the wisdom of choosing to seek shelter in these tunnels. There was a stink here that had nothing to do with the sewage, the smell of a form of vileness the daimon could recognize as being in some ways kin to its own unnatural nature, and yet which was at the same time entirely different. The daimon did not like the scent, or the implication that it was not alone down here.

When the mass of rats came rushing out of the side tunnel a moment later, they did not find the daimon unprepared. Mutated teeth and claws were pitted against supernatural talons and spines, and although outnumbered a hundred to one, the daimon at times almost seemed to be winning.

Then the rats were joined by a mass of green tendrils, and the fight was swiftly over.

# 

Artemis had gone panther almost as soon as he and ChibiMoon were clear of Usagi’s balcony. The change was partly because this larger, stronger, and more heavily-armed shape was better suited to taking on a city suddenly full of otherworldly monsters, but also because his human form was now his ‘civilian’ identity, and he had no built-in magic to keep people from connecting Arthur Knight with a white-haired man who spent his nights battling the armies of darkness.

If anything, that ridiculous name would only serve to convince people even faster.

Not surprisingly, the sudden appearance of a white-furred, half-ton jungle cat sent a lot of people running for cover, and ChibiMoon was halfway to giving herself a case of laryngitis from shouting at people that Artemis wasn’t going to try and maul them. Considering the formerly-daimonic evidence to the contrary Artemis was leaving in his wake, nobody seemed all that inclined to believe ChibiMoon, and she finally gave up and concentrated on cleaning up those infrequent monsters that Artemis either didn’t see or didn’t get around to finishing off.

“Not using your teeth?” she asked, half-teasing.

“Not on your life,” Artemis rumbled at her. “Do you have any idea how bad these sorts of things can taste? Not to mention the fact that they’re almost always toxic in one way or another. Take that one there,” he said, focusing on an amorphous, reddish-green slime that was oozing its way up a wall. “Can you tell me for one second that _you’d_ put something like that in your mouth?”

“Probably not,” she admitted. “Unless it was a new Jello flavor, of course...” ChibiMoon sailed her tiara up at the slime, shearing it in two. She was a bit disconcerted to see that both halves got up after hitting the ground and then—with a VERY ugly burbling sound—rippled out until they were each as large as the original creature had been. She tried a Stardust attack then, blasting the slimes into a dozen or more fragments, some of which had the decency to shrivel up and fall to dust. The rest, unfortunately, re-enlarged themselves, leaving eight or nine blobs of goo that together could totally envelop a human—and seemed more than willing to give that trick a try, as they stopped sliming in the other direction and sprang at ChibiMoon instead.

“Wah!” Squish. “Whoa!” Spludge. “Yaaah!” Blort. ChibiMoon dodged as best she could, considering that she was getting mobbed from nine directions at once. “A little help would be great!”

“I’m a bit busy!” Artemis shot back, dancing around a volley of daimon spitballs to get his claws into the offender. He pounced, pinned the annoying little imp, and felt something snap right before the creature’s body disintegrated. “Don’t you have a Chibi-Crescent Moon Wand or something like that?”

“A Crescent WHAT?”

“I guess that means Neo-Queen Serenity still hasn’t gotten around to replacing that thing,” Artemis muttered.

Something dark and howling blasted down into the slime-creatures, vaporizing them en masse; ChibiMoon and Artemis automatically followed the flight path of the Dead Scream and spotted Pluto down the street, raising her staff from its firing position.

“Not that I’m not _really_ grateful that you’re here,” ChibiMoon said, “but weren’t you supposed to stay behind to look after Usagi? In case anything got through?”

“They won’t.”

“How do you know...” Artemis felt silent as Pluto gave him an amused look and wiggled the fingers of her empty hand at him. “I forgot about that,” he admitted. “You’re sure, though?”

“All the probability lines for the next hour of her future are clear of daimons. But that having been said,” Pluto added, turning to ChibiMoon, “Ikuko-chan will be looking in on her in another thirty-six minutes, so we’d better finish this business and get home quickly.”

“Right.” ChibiMoon looked around and pointed to a group of retreating shadows. “Thattaway.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Artemis said as they started towards the creatures, “did any of those ‘probabilities’ you mentioned happen to give you any idea as to where Venus is right now?”

“Sorry, no.”

# 

If V had been given the necessary time to think back, she would have been hard-pressed to remember the last fight that had given her this much trouble. Since she wasn’t given that time, she was just hard-pressed.

It wasn’t so much that this guy was incredibly strong. He was in sufficiently good physical condition to match a Senshi, which was really saying something, and V had to admit that his hand-to-hand skills were much better than her own. Uranus or Jupiter could have handled him, but she was only able to hold her own in their brief close-range encounters because of that unexpected protection her new uniform seemed to be granting her. V still didn’t understand exactly what that was about. Every time she got hit, her mind registered the pain, but her body just seemed to shrug it off, and there was almost no pain _after_ each blow, as if the attacks weren’t strong enough to cause actual injury.

Nor did it have to do with her opponent’s powers. Again, he was pretty close to the Senshi level of expertise in this area, but all of the long-range attacks he’d displayed so far were based on lightning, which made them extremely easy for her to counter with her metal-based Crescent Beams. Whenever he shot something at her, V could send a Beam flying right through it, to absorb the electrical force and then keep on going, turning some of the guy’s own power against him. If he’d set off another of those rooftop-demolishers, she might have been in trouble, but V had a hunch that those might have been some sort of trap or device rather than an immediately useful power. And on the rare occasions when she did take a hit, the resistance of her new uniform played in again, leaving the pain of the hit and almost no actual physical harm, even from attacks that were ripping holes in concrete.

No, the real problem V was facing here was the brain underneath that red hair. He seemed to be able to anticipate half the moves she made and be two steps into a countermove before she’d even realized that he knew. When she demonstrated the futility of his lightning blasts and explosive electrical orbs, he started setting off intensely bright flashes, trying to dazzle her eyes so he could get close and reverse the advantage once again. Every time she tried to get enough clearance to use an attack, V found that her adversary had disappeared—usually to reemerge from a shadowy spot not three feet away from where she was standing. When she hit him, he either shrugged it off and countered or disappeared to strike from a different angle; when he attacked, he didn’t let up for an instant unless she managed to get out of his reach. And then he either sent energy bolts blasting her way or did that annoying vanishing trick and caught up with her once again.

And throughout all of that, he had not said a word. That was a REAL change, and it had thrown V seriously off-balance. Most of their past opponents hadn’t exactly been what she’d call the sociable type, but you could always count on them to say something every now and then, even if it was just giving in to the understandable urge to gloat, boast, or indulge in a round of maniacal laughter when things were really going their way. But this guy? Ice cold, stone- faced, and almost utterly silent, if it hadn’t been for those two brief lines earlier, V would have thought he was a mute or something. One with a very bad attitude and no sense of humor whatsoever.

*Some people just don’t know when to lighten up—but then, I have to admit that if _I_ had a nasty scar like that, I’d probably be cranky, too. Although it does sort of look good on him...* V sighed and dodged another assault, an expanding wave of those explosive stars. *WHY do so many of the bad guys have to be CUTE, too?*

Cute or not, he was doing his best to kill her, and causing quite a lot of damage in the process. He almost seemed to have forgotten about the nexus entirely, and again, V was put off-balance. The Senshi almost never ran into someone who came at them with this kind of all-out assault right from the get-go. Their enemies had always been protective of their own skin, using expendable monsters to do all the real work and only taking the risk of a head-on confrontation when they finally got fed up with the Senshi always interfering—or when whoever gave them their marching orders got fed up with it, whichever came first.

By contrast, this guy really didn’t seem to care if he made it out or not. If he’d been running true to form, then he would have teleported out as soon as V had destroyed the nexus...

*Wait a sec.* Risking a quick glance, V saw that the nexus was still standing. In spite of the mess she’d made by sawing into the upper section, the rest of the huge contraption hadn’t fallen apart, and she realized with a shock that the thing was actually in _better_ shape than it had been a few minutes before; there had only been two spires left on it, but she counted three and two-quarters’ worth of them now. The nexus was repairing itself, growing steadily back towards its point of activation—and Lightning Boy here was trying to keep her away from it.

*With extreme prejudice,* V added, hastily ducking a sweeping stroke of lightning.

*Something is different,* Cestus thought, narrowing his eyes as the strange Senshi evaded his attack and turned to launch an attack of her own back at him. He caught the look in her eyes, and in that brief instant, a lifetime’s worth of skill and training warned him that she had figured out his game.

“LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!” Cestus braced himself to leap out of the way, and then swore softly and feelingly when that accursed Chain reappeared, not to spin towards him, but to begin turning around its mistress in a narrow ring. She turned and headed for the nexus, the Chain spinning ceaselessly around her body, rising up to the level of her eyes and then falling to the level of her knees before rising again, and Cestus knew that any attack he launched to try and slow her would be intercepted by that whirling, singing length of metal.

Summoning his strength, the assassin was briefly surrounded by a field of crackling energy before he blinked out of existence, to reappear directly between V and the nexus, two slivers of lightning held like swords in either hand.

“You’ll have to get by me first!” he shouted, bringing the weapons down against the shielding Chain, shattering it with a thunderous blast and a thousand crystalline tinkles. Although drained from the fighting and the hasty teleport, and now a bit shaken by the explosion, Cestus charged forward, weapons out. V lashed out with her Chain, but he was too quick, too close; the weapon gouged a narrow line through the rooftop, and the sizzling energy blades stabbed in at her, hissing violently. She leapt backwards and tried to snap the Chain around, but all that length of shining metal simply couldn’t move precisely enough to catch an enemy this fast.

*Got to shorten the thing to a more manageable size,* she thought. *Scratch-resistant finish or not, I DON’T want to get slashed by those!*

Obeying her unspoken wishes, the Chain retracted from four meters or more down to just barely one, and V brought it across her body so fast that it almost seemed to go straight and solid, like a sword-

Flicker.

# 

“For the hundredth time, Ishtar, keep your elbow UP when you do that! If your sword is angled like that when you try to parry, the enemy’s weapon will slide down the blade and then right into your arm!”

“My ears are working perfectly fine, Ariel.” Ishtar lowered her weapon and made a show of rubbing at one ear. “Honestly, when Evander said you were loud, I thought he meant in bed...”

“All right,” Ariel snapped, blushing from her chin to the roots of her hair at the younger girl’s words, “that does it!” She attacked anew, the Space Sword howling in a manner that suggested she really meant it this time. “And once I’m done kicking your sorry backside, I’m going to deal with that bastard brother of yours!”

“You know very well that he is NOT a bastard, and there is NOTHING wrong with my backside!” Ishtar shouted back, raising her weapon to protect her body and her voice to protect her pride. “VENUS WINK-”

Flicker.

# 

“-CHAIN SWORD!”

There was an audible ‘click’ as the sections of the Chain lined up and fused together, the tip of each heart-shaped link fitting perfectly into the top of the next to form blade and grip. V raised the hollow ‘sword’ in front of her face, and the last heart-shape at the bottom of the handle began to glow and turn, triggering a flow of energy which cascaded down from the tip of the weapon. As the golden light passed, the sword was completed, the blade filling and the handle changing so as to perfectly match the grip of V’s hand. When the lowest heart stopped turning, it had completely reversed from and become much less rigid in shape than before. Light flashed above the grip of the sword and then flowed outwards as a crescent-shaped hilt materialized, points up, as a small Venus symbol appeared across the guard, glowing briefly white and then becoming gold as the blade of the sword turned a steely grey.

Looking past the sword at her enemy, V smiled faintly and winked. Then she attacked. Blue-green lightning and gold-tinted steel collided with a great flash of energy, but the Sword fared much better than the Chain had earlier, and Cestus was forced to halt his rush, crossing his weapons above his head to catch and throw back V’s downward slash—and then she struck his collarbone with the heel of her empty hand.

The assassin took the hit and fell back, bringing his arms down to cut a blazing electric ‘X’ through the air; V dropped into a crouch to avoid the suddenly-lengthened blades of the lightning-weapons and then sprang at her opponent, cutting outwards and upwards with her Sword in a long, swift arc as she moved.

Too far out of position to jump back, Cestus sidestepped the slash and tried to strike at V’s exposed back, but her momentum carried her clear of his reach, and when her feet touched down, she immediately twisted, cutting a broad path through the air with her Sword in her left hand and firing a Crescent Beam from her right.

Cestus avoided the Sword simply by stepping back, and the shot was canceled out when it slammed into an energy barrier being generated between his blades, but the delay of that defense gave V time to catch her balance and set up for her next attack—although what that might be, she had no idea. So far three of her Venus attacks worked in V-Mode—if slightly modified—but she doubted that the Beam Shower would do the job, the Crescent Beam CERTAINLY wasn’t enough, and it was pretty likely that she couldn’t use the Chain _and_ the Sword at the same time. That left the Love and Beauty Shock... but somehow, V knew it wouldn’t work.

Being Sailor V felt different that being Sailor Venus. There was a greater sense of security—partly from the mask, partly from the fact that EVERYBODY loved Sailor V, and partly from this unexpected ability to ignore damage—but she didn’t feel quite as _strong._ V guessed that the energy which had protected her against each attack was being drawn from the same place as all the rest of her Senshi abilities, so as long as that protection and the Sword were both up and working, she wouldn’t have enough power to gear up for her best move. She didn’t know how to shut down that defense, and she might not have enough energy even if she sent the Sword away—and as it stood, she needed both of those powers to deal with this maniac.

And speaking of the maniac, he had just unloaded a mother of a thunderbolt at her while she was off wool-knitting. Seeing it far too late to try and dodge, V raised her arms and hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much when it hit...

It hit. And it didn’t just hurt, it HURT. The initial impact was bad enough, but the pain just kept on going and going and going; V was half-expecting to see a fluffy pink rabbit with a drum go by, but after several seconds three things occurred to her. The first thought was that the pain was getting semi-manageable even as it continued; the second was that not even Jupiter could keep on shocking something at this intensity for very long, maybe not even as long as it had been going on; and the third thing—a moment or two later—was the realization that her opponent WASN’T blasting her anymore. Rather, he was staring at her, his weapons lowered in involuntary amazement.

V looked down at herself and saw that her entire body was outlined with the violently crackling force of that thunderbolt, and that the light wasn’t diminishing. The Venus symbols all over her uniform were shining, the brooch that held her compact the most brilliantly.

*What the-*

Flicker.

# 

“YIIIIIIIIOWWWWWWWWCH!” Ishtar withdrew her freezing hands from the shifting, radiant cloud and hugged them to her chest, humming loudly to stop herself from swearing or crying—the former because it would get her in trouble if Luna happened to be in earshot, and the latter because if she tried to brush away tears, her icy hands would freeze the tears and get stuck to her face.

*I told you it would probably hurt,* a gentle voice said from somewhere inside the blue mist.

“That... wasn’t... a PROBABLY... and why... why do my arms... feel cold now... too?”

*Because this test isn’t over yet.* The vapor rippled out of the space of air between Ishtar and a row of targets on the far side of the practice room. *The rest is up to you, Ishtar. It’s no different from the way you usually do things; just remember to focus on the cold you’re feeling as well as on the energy you put into the attack. Gather, aim, and release.*

Ishtar did that as best she could, firing a Crescent Beam at one of the targets. It came out with a halo of bluish energy that wasn’t at all normal, and when it hit the target, it left an ice-rimmed hole rather to the left of the bullseye.

*Well,* the mental voice said, *you certainly need to work on your aim*— the mists descended and coalesced into Mercury’s human form—“but on the whole, I think you did well. Now here. Let me see your hands.” Mercury took Ishtar’s gloved hands between her own and concentrated; there was a soft blue glow, and what was left of the cold, numb feeling quickly receded from Ishtar’s fingers. “There. All better. Want to try again?”

“Nuh-uh. Not right now.” Ishtar shook her head quickly and emphatically, rubbing her hands together even though they really weren’t cold anymore and dropping back to her normal form. Only about three months past her thirteenth birthday, Ishtar wasn’t very far into puberty or the associated growth spurts, but she was still an incredibly beautiful child, and almost impossibly cute in the white dress Princess Serenity had given her when she arrived—to match similar dresses given to Amalthea and Vestia, naturally. Of course, Ishtar had had the gown altered a bit to match her personal tastes—shortening the skirt up to her knees, dropping the back to practically nothing, and removing the arms entirely to get maximum range of movement and cool air flow—so she didn’t quite match Serenity or the other two new Senshi when they all got together and wore the dresses, but she was still cute.

And now she was cute and confused. Ishtar looked at her hands and then at the target, frowning. “Mercury, how come I can do that? Borrow other elements, I mean.”

“Because you’re a very friendly and honest girl and we all know you’ll give them back?”

Ishtar smiled, but stamped her foot. “Mercuryyyyy...”

“Just a guess.” Mercury sat down and hovered a short distance in the air, her eyes closed as she tapped her lips in a pose of deep thinking she was fond of. “It would probably take a fully-trained Senshi of Venus to give you the complete details,” she said at last, opening her eyes and looking at Ishtar, “but as I understand it, it has to do with the nature of metal, and your command over it. Metal can absorb numerous kinds of energy without experiencing any real change to itself. Make it hot or cold, expose it to electricity or solar radiation or just physical force, dump it in the ocean or leave it exposed to the air; until you go past certain limits, which are often very great limits, the metal really doesn’t change. And it’s a very good conductor of energy. Are you following me so far?”

Ishtar nodded.

“Good. Now, since your Senshi powers are drawn from the element of metal, you have—or will eventually acquire—traits of metal, and one of those traits is the tendency—or ability, in your case—to absorb and retain energy. Just like metal, if you’re exposed to heat or cold or some other form of energy, you can—with practice—tap into that energy to a certain extent and change the nature of your attacks. Absorb cold, and you can charge your attacks with it to freeze things; absorb heat, and you could melt things. But since you yourself can’t naturally tap into other elements, you have to have someone else do it for you. In a real fight, that would usually mean letting yourself be hit by an attack.”

“But... that would... that would _hurt_,” Ishtar objected. “Really hurt.”

“I know.” Mercury sighed and floated over to hug the young girl. “But it’s important, too, Ishtar. This is one of the greatest powers Venus possesses, because it lets her turn an enemy’s own strength back against them. Most of the rest of us can only manage that against creatures who draw on our specific element, or on ones we’re able to trick into doing something foolish like shooting at each other. A Senshi of Neptune can reflect an attack with her Mirror, but she doesn’t get a lot of control over it, and she has to use up a pretty sizable amount of her own energy in the process. Saturn... well, Saturn is Saturn, and can pretty much do whatever she needs to in order to get the job done, but she’d have to use her powers to some extent as well. If she’s advanced far enough in her training, a Senshi of Venus doesn’t have to do anything but _be_ Venus, and this ability will still work. It’s one of the reasons Venus is the commander of the Inner Senshi, or the Senshi as a whole during times of war.”

“Really?” Ishtar exclaimed, backing up to get a good look at Mercury’s face. “I get to be the leader?”

Once again, Mercury sighed, this time a good deal more theatrically. “Yes, you get to be the leader. Eventually. If you’re good. And if we get desperate,” she added.

“Mercury!” The Nereid smiled and tapped the end of Ishtar’s cute little nose, and Ishtar made a face at her, then smiled for a moment. Then the smile just sort of drained away, and she looked at the floor. “Mercury, I... I’m not very good... with pain, I mean... how... how am I supposed to handle it?”

“Well, for starters, you can practice with that power regularly and get used to absorbing small levels of power, like what we just did. You’ll eventually build up a tolerance for it, so it won’t hurt as much. But it _will_ always hurt a little, more so when you try to absorb a lot of energy.”

“And... and how would I deal with that?”

Mercury smiled. “Think about what your mother would say if we went to Venus right now and asked her, ‘what is the best way you know to deal with pain?’ Any ideas as to what sort of answer she’d give you?”

Ishtar looked at Mercury like she was crazy. “She’d say love, of course. That’s almost always the best... oh.” She became thoughtfully silent. “So you’re saying... if I go and use this power someday, and it hurts, I should... remind myself that I can take a little pain... as long as it’s for the people I love? Is that right?”

“You’re the Venusian; you tell me.”

Ishtar thought about it, and her expression of extreme seriousness transformed her cuteness into a brief moment of truly stunning beauty. “Yes. Yes, that’s what I should do. I don’t like to fight, but I’ll fight for my friends and my family, and... um...” She thought hard, evidently believing something more was required. “And... I know! I won’t just fight for justice, I’ll fight for LOVE and justice! Not just my love for the people I know, but for the sake of all love, everywhere! Sailor Venus, the indestructible Golden Soldier of Love! HA!”

There was nothing mimicked about the suddenly wide-eyed and worried look on Mercury’s face.

Flicker.

# 

*And so the legend began,* V thought, smiling to herself. *I’ve got to see about getting in touch with my inner child more often... but for right now...* She turned her attention to her current situation and struggled against the conflicting energy—and the pain—to raise her right arm. *Focus, just like Mercury said... and then let it go...* “Let’s see how you like it, pal! CRESCENT BEAM!”

When V fired, she dumped all the electrical force into the one shot; the blast of the thunder knocked her back to the edge of her current rooftop and left a profound ringing in her ears. The pain had gone away, though—and so had her enemy. She vaguely recalled seeing his eyes go wide and those electric knives come up, projecting their defensive field, a split second before the massive thunderbolt blew into them. There was a jagged-edged gap on the other side of the roof where the man had been standing, the area now blackened and charred and ringed by debris.

V looked at her finger, then at the damage it had wrought, blinking in awe. “Smoked ‘im,” she said quietly. She lowered her Sword and turned to face the nexus, then spent three or four seconds sorting out the multiple images swimming around in front of her eyes. “Whoa... head rush, head rush... ack...” She sent her weapon away and pressed her hands to the sides of her head until the throbbing stopped.

*Now this is the point,* she thought, *where Artemis would tell me to quit standing around wasting time with needless theatrics and to just get the job done. Then I’d threaten to throw him off the side of the roof, and he’d make some remark about cats always landing on their feet, and I’d threaten to tie his paws together, and he’d ask with what, and I’d try to think about it and start to feel better because I wasn’t paying attention to the pain anymore... and it’s worked again.* She straightened up and took a deep, relaxing breath.

She murmured a brief thank-you to Artemis before fixing her attention squarely on the nexus. *I think I’ve got just enough left to take that sucker down... so let’s get buzzy...* “LOVE-V-CHAIN—TIMES TWO!”

She extended both arms, and lengths of golden Chain shot out, flying wide of the nexus and then swinging around to meet on the far side. V couldn’t see it, of course, but she felt the instant when the two sections touched and joined into one huge Chain; she brought her hands together and linked the remaining ends with a brief flash of golden light and a bell-like ringing, completing the massive loop.

“Here we go. LOVE-V-CHAIN SONG!”

With a musical hum, the huge Chain circle began to turn, all the links twisting to point in at their target as they spun around it in a rapidly- accelerating and rapidly-shrinking orbit. Still not fully active and already using up a large amount of what little energy it possessed in order to regenerate its earlier damage, the nexus could do nothing to resist the cutting Chain, and green-grey dust flew in all directions as the huge Atlantean device was steadily sawed through. The Chain disappeared from sight, sinking further and further into the green trunk of the nexus. Several moments passed before V felt—and then saw the effects of—the Chain’s shrapnel-like explosion, ripping holes in the already-battered nexus.

There was a momentary silence. Then, with the same rippling crackle that an enormous tree makes when it falls, the nexus fell in on itself, sending a huge plume of dust into the air. Spent energy flashed within the boiling cloud, which was carried high on a sudden updraft of wind and dispersed with greater- than-natural speed. True to form, the toppling sections of the massive machine shattered or exploded into nothingness long before reaching the crowd on the ground.

V watched it all with a weary but satisfied smile, then raised her communicator. “Usagi-chan? You there?”

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!” Usagi shrieked.

“Just doing my job, Princess. You can tell the others that the latest nexus is down for keeps. If they look up quick, they’ll probably be able to see what’s left of the smoke.”

The silence was dumbfounded. “You... took out a nexus... by yourself?” Pause. “What’s that sound?”

Hearing it as well, V looked around, then peered over the edge of the roof and smiled. “Oh, that’s just a small portion of the populace showing their gratitude and appreciation for Sailor V.” She waved down at the cheering, clapping crowd.

Then shadows dropped out of the night sky all around her and became the Senshi, plus tiger-mode Artemis. A moment later, blue mist flowed off of Jupiter and solidified into a yawning, stretching Nereid, who looked around, noticed all the grim folding of arms and disapproving stares being directed at V, and followed suit. The effect was only slightly spoiled as Calypso floated over to rest her chin on Jupiter’s shoulder and whisper, “Why are we angry with her?”

“Venus?” Usagi’s voice came. “What’s going on now?”

“Just a prelude to a little shop talk, Princess,” Neptune replied. “Feel free to pitch in at any time.”

V looked at her friends and gave a faltering laugh. *Hooo-boy...*

# 

His name was Tanaka Ken, and he had one of those faces everybody immediately trusts. Serious without being stern, handsome without being pop-star gorgeous, and aged without being old, he was the ideal anchor for the evening news.

“Good evening. In our top story tonight, emergency services citywide were almost overwhelmed by widespread reports of vandalism, assault, looting, and fires. Although no concrete evidence has been obtained to confirm it, eyewitness accounts taken from hundreds of citizens agree that the perpetrators of the apparent riots were a collection of non-human creatures; the most common descriptions were ‘monsters’ or ‘devils,’ although there have been numerous reports that the mysterious Sailor Senshi were present as well. A number of people also claim to have seen the famous Sailor V, who according to Interpol records was killed in an explosion over three years ago; this has led to serious questioning as to whether or not tonight’s incidents may have been the result of some publicity stunt gone out of control. Officials are also checking thoroughly to rule out the possible use of any hallucinogenic agents. We now go to our field reporter Kurima Reiko, live at the scene—Reiko?”

“Thank you, Ken.” The picture changed to show one of the station’s better-known reporters, a woman who had the same sort of newsworthy face as her counterpart; pretty without being beautiful, determined without being overly tough, and smart without being dangerously intelligent. At least at the first glance. “I’m standing outside what was, by all indications, the center of the disturbance. Police and fire officials have cordoned off the area and called in specialists to assess the structural state of several of the buildings you can see nearby; they are warning everyone to keep back from those buildings, but if we can cut to our helicopter camera”—she paused for a moment as her image on the screen was shrunk down to make room for the image of several rooftops, as well as the feed from the newsroom with Ken—“there, you can see the extent of the damage and the reason for the police concerns.”

“Quite a lot of damage to the roof levels,” Ken agreed. The tops of at least five buildings in the area were motley collections of rubble, blast craters, and clinging char. “Any word yet on what might have caused it?”

“Well, Ken, concerns over the stability of those buildings have kept the police from getting bomb squad experts up to examine things as of yet, but everyone we’ve talked to so far seems to agree that this is where the alleged fight involving Sailor V took place. Accounts describe the appearance of some sort of tower on top of that building, which was almost immediately followed by the initial attack of the ‘creatures,’ and then a running confrontation between Sailor V and an unknown man who seems to have been in charge of whatever was taking place. Interestingly enough, Ken, we’ve spoken to some city workers on the scene, and it seems that there may have been an unexplained drain on the city’s power grid beginning at approximately 6:48, which is roughly the same time witnesses say the ‘tower’ appeared. There hasn’t been any official word on that, though.”

“We’re still waiting for an announcement about all of this from city hall and the Diet on this end as well,” Ken said. “Now, Reiko, obviously there are a lot of stories floating around about the possible connection between the highly-publicized and well-known Sailor V and the much more reclusive Sailor Senshi. On the one hand, we have a single woman whose existence has been confirmed internationally, if never fully explained, and on the other, we have nearly a dozen extremely similar individuals of almost supernatural capabilities, none of whom have ever been confirmed to be in contact with any level of law enforcement. Does anything you’ve been told tonight seem to confirm or deny that apparent connection?”

“If you’re asking for directions to their secret hideout, Ken, I’m going to have to disappoint you—and probably a few million of our viewers as well—but there is a definite consensus here that several of the Sailor Senshi _did_ arrive at the scene shortly after the battle between Sailor V and her unidentified opponent ended in the destruction of the tower. They left the area as a group, although that apparently followed a heated argument of some sort-”

“I’ve heard enough,” Security said sharply, hitting a button and switching off the monitor.

“Better get used to it,” Media advised. “It’s likely to be the story of the month. And don’t give me that look,” he added, even though it was still too dark in this room to make out any kind of facial expression. “There’s nothing that could have stopped this story from getting out, and I’ve already got people in place to handle it. You heard that little snippet about hallucinogenics, right? With just a few pieces of ‘hard evidence’ from Resources, I can have the news off poking their noses into political and religious extremist groups inside of a week.”

“You’ll have that evidence,” Resources promised.

“Besides,” Media continued, “I thought you’d have been pleased that your own people performed so well. How many of those things did they take out, in addition to the thirty or so prisoners our esteemed lady colleague from Sciences is checking over right now? And all of that without one injury on our side, or any mention of their presence in the news, I might add.”

Security grunted and seemed a bit pacified. “I still think someone in your department dropped the ball on this.”

“Let’s reserve judgment on that for now,” Information said. “Political is meeting with our representatives in the Diet right now, and it’s a safe bet they’ll want to see our reports as of an hour ago, so I suggest we all tend to our own business. Seeing as how everyone in Sciences is a bit occupied at the moment, I’ll handle their end.”

“Is it entirely a good idea to try and hold those things?” Personnel asked. “Aside from the fact that they’re hideous little monsters, I was always under the impression that the Senshi were rather good at tracking them down.”

“That’s why we’re holding them in the outlying labs rather than in the main complex,” Information replied. “The technicians have set up energy fields which they think should counteract the energy signals of the creatures and mask them against detection, but we likely won’t know for sure if they work until the labs are invaded—or not.”

“That’s a comforting thought.”

# 

Ami was having one of the best nights of her life.

The restaurant had been a good choice on Ryo’s part. It was just classy enough to have the right atmosphere for a dinner date, but not so formal as to be uncomfortable or overpriced, and the clientele was a reassuring mix of families, groups of friends, and one or two couples like themselves. It was small enough to have a homey feel, but large enough that they could get a place to sit and not be crowded by the other patrons, and the food, a curious mix of traditional and modern dishes from all over the world, was very good. Ami thought she ought to see about bringing her friends here some time; Usagi would love it for sure, and Makoto would probably want to meet the cook and exchange recipes.

She had Ryo had talked during that leisurely, hour-long dinner, talked about anything and everything EXCEPT for Senshi business and Ryo’s visions. They talked about Ryo’s parents, who were getting more overt in their ‘hints’ that they wanted to meet Ami, and now possibly her mother as well; they talked about the courses they would be taking over the next year, which would be their last in high school; they talked about plans for the spring break, and here Ami had to put her foot down and tell Ryo he wasn’t allowed to go up to her aunt’s beach house at the end of March, because—by long-standing Senshi tradition—it was Girls Only.

They talked so much that Ami started to wonder if she was coming down with some kind of Minako virus. First it had been the phonecalls; then it was the uncontrollable bouts of giggling; and now it was the non-stop chatting. If she started lapsing into mangled catch phrases from pop culture...

After dinner, they went for a walk. There was just enough springtime in the air tonight to keep the temperature reasonable, and the city was remarkably quiet for just past eight on a Saturday night. Traffic was next to nonexistent, and there seemed to be fewer pedestrians than usual as well.

Perhaps the lone exception to the overall scarcity of people on the streets this night was the group of eight—or two groups of four, depending on how you looked at it—that seemed to be tailing Ami and Ryo. There was an extraordinarily handsome fellow with long white hair that was mostly tucked up under an old Giants baseball cap—a cap pulled WAY down over his face—who walked arm-in-arm with a lovely blonde woman wearing something that looked like the fedora and trenchcoat combination favored by private investigators in all the old movies. Right behind those two were a delicate-seeming young lady with hair like a waterfall, eyes like still ponds, and a champion-level glomp on the arm of the tall and profoundly uncomfortable-looking young man next to her, a fellow with brilliantly green eyes, a long brown ponytail, and the periodic habit of twitching one shoulder or his neck as if something about his clothes wasn’t sitting right.

A group very similar to these four had gone into the same restaurant as Ami and Ryo about thirty-five minutes ago and ordered a fairly light meal, then hung around finishing their tea or coffee for a few minutes before hurriedly following the two lovebirds out—the two girls all but dragging their dates, although the blonde seemed to have considerably more trouble.

The other four shadows hadn’t arrived until both groups had been walking for several minutes. This bunch consisted of a nice young couple and a pair of younger girls whose respective features each seemed to be color-inverted from the other’s, the one on the left being pink-haired, the one on the right being black-haired. They had briefly moved to catch up with the other group, the pink-haired girl passing off a small pen to the blonde in the process, and then they had fallen back a bit. It was only right at this point that the blonde girl acquired her trenchcoat and fedora getup; prior to that, she had been wearing much more conventional clothes and had a considerably different hairstyle.

Oddly enough, Ami and Ryo didn’t notice that they were being followed, even by such a strange mix of people. But then as they say, love is often blind—and once the lovebirds got to the park, all the trees gave enough cover for their unnoticed shadows to hide behind that even a love with 20/20 eyes and a pair of military-issue night vision goggles would have its work cut out for it trying to find them.

“Honestly,” Michiru said at this point, “this is really quite enough. Let’s give them at least a _little_ privacy...”

“You were the one who suggested that we make a sweep of the city for any leftover daimons,” Haruka replied. “Can we help it if the last leg of the patrol route happens to go this way?”

“That is the single lamest excuse you’ve ever tried to foist off on me, Haruka. We should go.”

“And miss the best part?”

“This _is_ Ami we’re talking about,” Michiru noted with a mix of amusement—for Ami—and irritation—for Haruka.

“Yeah, but her boyfriend’s up to something.”

“How would you know?”

“It may surprise you to learn that after impersonating a guy for all these years, I’ve acquired a fairly good understanding of how the other side thinks and acts—and right now there is _definitely_ a plan unfolding in Ryo’s mind. I don’t know _what_ it is, exactly, but it’s there. Now hush, Michi; you’re making it hard for me to hear.” Michiru folded her arms and gave Haruka a dangerous look, but Haruka—her eyes aimed up ahead—just waved one hand back at her. “Yeah, yeah. Later.”

ChibiUsa and Hotaru turned around to shush the two of them, and a little further along, Calypso appeared from the other side of a tree and waved one finger in stern, silent admonishment before vanishing out of sight again.

Haruka was not the only one to think Ryo was up to something. Even at this distance, Calypso could pick up errant thoughts of careful calculation; Makoto could feel his anticipatory nervousness; and Minako knew that the ‘love vibe’ was just right for a move on Ryo’s part. If Rei hadn’t gone home to make sure that her grandfather, Yuuichirou, and the four crows were all okay, she probably would have picked up something as well. Truth be told, Ami herself was aware that there was some ulterior motive in her boyfriend’s choice of destination—but she was content to enjoy the walk and let him surprise her with the details in his own good time.

“Quiet night,” Ryo said.

“Yes, it is.”

“And you’re not too cold?”

“It’s not that bad out. Besides,” she added, smiling, “I have this nice boyfriend to help keep me warm.”

“Do I know him?”

Ami gave him a dry look and then shook her head. “I think that the next time there’s a Senshi meeting, I’m going to leave you at home. Haruka’s warped sense of humor seems to be catching.”

“Better that than Mina-chan’s vocabulary.”

“Have you been reading my mind?” Ami asked suspiciously. “I was thinking something like that myself earlier.”

For quite some time, Ryo frowned. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t think I was. How about you? Can you read anything from me?”

Ami concentrated on him, and there was a subtle change in the feel of the mindlink as her developing mental powers went to work. “You’re thinking about something in the inner pocket of your jacket,” she said confidently. Then Ami frowned. “You know my birthday isn’t until September, Ryo-kun.”

“I know, but it’s still a special occasion, right?” He dug out a small box and flipped it open to reveal a pair of silver earrings, simple teardrop-shapes only about half as long as Ami’s little finger, each with a small blue stone set into the broad end. The gems glowed softly in the light from the nearby park lamps. “I... um... I saw them at Osa-P yesterday, and I went back to buy them after I left Michiru’s. It... occurred to me, while we were at the mall yesterday... let’s just say I sort of felt like I owed you for the birthdays, holidays, and possible dates I missed in the past. All the things I could have done, but didn’t.”

“What is he saying?” Michiru whispered.

“I thought you were leaving,” Haruka replied.

“Shut up, Haruka,” Michiru said absently.

“Shhh!” ChibiUsa and Hotaru repeated.

“I should have at least _tried_ to get in touch with you after I knew for certain that you and the other girls were back as the Senshi,” Ryo was continuing, “but I didn’t, and... well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for that. Really sorry, especially after seeing how happy you were yesterday, and then again tonight. And I know we’ve had this discussion before; it just sort of came back really strong yesterday, so I had to find some way to get it off my chest.”

Ami looked at him, then at the earrings. “Ryo...” She sighed and reached out to close the box, briefly covering his hands with her own. Then she took a step forward, put her hands up to Ryo’s head, and pulled him down for a very long kiss.

Minako just barely held herself back from cheering, and there were a lot of wide eyes and smiles among the shadows beneath the trees.

“Ryo-kun seems to suffer from a chronic case of shock every time Ami-chan does that to him,” ChibiUsa noted. “Do you suppose it’s a good sign or a bad one?”

“What _I_ want to know is where Ami learned how to kiss like that at all,” Haruka said. “_I_ can’t, and I’ve got way more experience at it than she does. Is she channeling her old life or something?”

“You’re jealous,” Michiru said in amusement.

“I am no such thing!”

“Liar.”

“Shhh!”

Up ahead, the kiss had ended, although Ami had not let go of Ryo’s head. “Consider all your past transgressions forgiven,” Ami said, blushing only very slightly, “and don’t bring them up again, because I’m getting a little annoyed at having to straighten you out over them every month or so. Okay? I don’t need _things_ from you, Ryo; I just need _you._”

“Okay,” Ryo agreed. “Uh... does... that mean I should take the earrings back to Osa-P, then?”

“Of course not,” Ami said, smiling and taking the box from him. She studied the earrings once more, then exchanged them for the plain blue ones she had been wearing and put the box in her purse. “I said I didn’t _need_ things from you, not that I didn’t _want_ or wouldn’t accept them. And these are very beautiful. Thank you.” She kissed him again, this time just on the cheek.

“You’re... welcome. Um... shall we go?” He held out his hand, Ami took it, and they walked away. Behind them, there was stillness for several minutes before the other Senshi began emerging from the trees.

“You’re right,” Hotaru said to ChibiUsa. “There was a definite delay in Ryo-kun’s reaction after she kissed him.”

“He’s just a bit nervous, that’s all,” Minako said. “I’ve seen it before a hundred times. Once he’s gotten used to the idea of steady dating, it won’t be so bad—although I have to admit, Ami-chan _does_ seem to have a knack for surprising him.” She smiled. “That’s good in a relationship. After all, variety is the Sprite of life.”

“That’s ‘spice,’ not ‘Sprite,’” Artemis corrected, “and will you lose the Humphrey Bogart getup before someone sees you?”

“No. Now come on, before they get-”

“I think we’ve done enough prying into their private lives for one night,” Michiru interrupted.

“I agree one hundred percent,” Artemis replied instantly.

“Okay then,” Minako said, not missing a beat. “You two can leave together, I’ll borrow Haruka for a while, and the rest of us will go on. I think that’s a fair exchange; don’t you?”

“Think again,” Makoto said, with a meaningful glance at Calypso. The Nereid blinked for several confused moments before her mouth formed an “O” of understanding and the illusion of the tall guy with the ponytail fell apart. Freed of the image, Makoto shifted her shoulders again, this time in relief as opposed to discomfort. “Caly and I have to get back to the apartment before Ami- chan and Ryo do, and I’ve still got a little shopping to take care of while I’m out. And besides,” she added, yawning, “I’m tired.”

Haruka looked at Makoto with a puzzled frown, then shook her head as if dismissing something.

“And I have to be home soon, too,” ChibiUsa added. “Setsuna told me I only had until nine before Ikuko came upstairs again and looked in on us. So I’ve got... um...”—she stopped and stole a quick peek at her watch—“about half an hour left.”

“If ChibiUsa’s not going to stay,” Hotaru put in, “then I’m going home as well. With Caly leaving anyway, that means you won’t have anyone to hide you from any telepathic sweep Ami-chan might happen to send your way, Mina-chan—and since you have to give the Pen back to ChibiUsa, Ami and Ryo could spot you visually anyway.”

“But...”

“No buts, Minako,” Artemis said firmly.

Minako looked around at all of them and, finding no supporters, sighed and gave in. She was well aware that she’d already pushed the limits of her friends’ trust with all her solo stunts tonight, and she really didn’t want to give them any further reason to be upset with her. Not that she was sorry about having tailed Ami and Ryo and then not telling the others where they were during a potential emergency, or about having encouraged Calypso yesterday to the act of swiping Ami’s communicator tonight—this had come out during the brief dinner, neither pleasing nor particularly surprising Artemis and Makoto. Minako wasn’t even all that sorry about running off to a fight without waiting for backup.

No doubt she’d be singing a different tune if she’d lost the fight at the nexus, but she hadn’t lost, and she’d learned some useful things about her own powers, so all in all, Minako was ready to consider this night a big success. Even if pretty well all of her friends were annoyed with her. And even if Scarface had disappeared without a trace, an almost certain sign that he wasn’t dead, but had simply retreated after her little return-to-sender move with the lightning bolt. Saturn hadn’t been able to find any Bits of Blown-Up Bad Guy to indicate that they wouldn’t be seeing that spiky hair and spiral-tattooed chest-and-vest combo again in the future.

Even so, the satisfaction of not one but two jobs well done—the fight and the date—more than made up for the problems.

*And it doesn’t hurt that Sailor V is now officially back in the saddle,* Minako thought, smiling as Hotaru became Saturn and opened up a dimension door.

# 

“_That_ is your apprentice’s idea of keeping daimons under control?”

Archon and Cestus stood side-by-side before the displeasure of the Imperial Throne, the archmage with his usual unruffled calm, the assassin with the lingering traces of injury and weariness that even an hour in the Halls of Healing hadn’t been completely able to remove. On the Throne, Janus and Jenna were both seriously put out by this latest failure, and Lilith—today with rich brown hair, soft blue eyes, and the trim physique of a dancer or gymnast, wrapped up in blue silk and silver ribbons—was making no attempt to hide her glee at Cestus’s defeat. Lord Draco stood to the right and front of the high seat, frowning beneath his ornate helm and absently tracing the designs of his sword with one finger; the huge black knight was as impassively silent as ever, oblivious to the proceedings.

“We expected a force of perhaps six or seven daimons at most, Archon, _not_ an army of over five hundred of the things! Would you care to explain the reasoning here? Because quite frankly, it escapes us.” The twins were speaking in unison again, as they often did when angered.

“It was a security precaution, your Highness. My student is quite capable of summoning and controlling two or three of the higher-class daimons typically called forth in these spells, but it would have required upwards of five such creatures to pose any sort of threat to an expanded force of Senshi. The girl could not have called that many daimons at one time without invariably losing control of one or more of them, and our situation is already difficult enough without adding the presence of free-willed daimons to complicate matters. The current unrest and confusion in the daimon dimension only prevent them from taking an interest in _our_ world for as long as _they_ are in _theirs._ Once brought over to our plane, they would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by pursuing their own agendas—and I do not need to remind you of the talent these creatures have for manipulating others into doing their work for them.”

“So instead of a half-dozen or more potential renegades, you chose instead to have your apprentice turn loose an army of the things which were _already_ completely out of control?”

“I had her summon as many of the lower-class daimons as she could. If not as individually powerful, they were still just as effective for the purpose of distraction as higher types would have been, and perhaps even more so, since they covered considerably more ground all at once and forced the Senshi to spread out to deal with them. Only one Senshi reached the nexus, after all. We also do not have to be concerned with future daimon interference in our plans after this event, since none of the ones summoned were sufficiently intelligent _and_ powerful to be of consequence—had any of them survived.”

Janus and Jenna looked at their sorcerous advisor for several long moments, then turned to Cestus. “And you, Cestus. Is there anything you wish to add to your report?”

“No, Highness. All the facts are in my report; I await your judgment for my failure.”

“And what a _spectacular_ failure it was,” Lilith murmured through a cutting smile. “Losing to a Senshi of Jupiter would make sense—after all, it’s happened before—but to be overpowered by a sweet little Senshi of Venus, well...”

Cestus glared at the woman, his hands clenching into fists, but said nothing further. Janus looked towards his other advisor. “Your thoughts on Cestus’s performance, Lord Draco?”

“Unsuccessful,” the gleaming warrior replied, “but informative. Venus’s powers of damage-resistance and energy-absorption were not nearly as developed in our day as they seem to be now, and we can assume that the same holds true for other Senshi and their respective powers. We already knew the Senshi of this era are stronger than the ones we remember, but we didn’t know exactly what forms that improved strength might take—and since Cestus’s training and combat style rely heavily on knowing the capabilities of the enemy beforehand, it was the lack of information, as much as anything else, which defeated him.”

Janus nodded. “Our conclusion was much the same. Very well. Tonight’s affair was a failure, gentlemen, and it sets us back even further, but no additional action will be taken at this time. We have neither the resources, nor the time, nor the inclination for it. I do expect better results in the future, however. Understood?”

Both men bowed.

“Good. You’re dismissed.”

# 

Rei sat at the table in her room reading a book. It was not the Book; that was on the table in front of her, laying open while she waited patiently with paper and pencil for Rooky to finish his latest ‘worm-hunt’. The book Rei was reading was one she had picked up from the public library a few days ago, a work of pseudo-fact and semi-fiction on the supernatural. Even though Rei generally didn’t go in for ghost stories all that much anymore—a side-effect of having to deal with things in the real world which were a lot worse than ghosts—but she wasn’t reading for entertainment; she wanted information.

Rei had the sneaking suspicion that Hikawa might be haunted.

At first, it had just been that incident where the Book had somehow moved itself from the floor to the table, something she could have easily accepted as being just part of the artifact�s inherent weirdness. The uneasy dreams, too, she would have been content to chalk up to the presence of the Book and her own ambivalent feelings towards it. But after Rooky’s speech on Monday about ’something not-here’, about doors that were apparently closing themselves, about the eerie feeling all four birds seemed to be sharing...

That was one reason she had been in such a rush to get home last night. She had no idea whether the bizarre energy involved in bringing hideous alien monsters from any number of other worlds would have any kind of effect on a ghost, but on the off chance that it might, she had to be here. Between Mars and her own spiritual gifts, she was the best equipped to deal with it. Her grandfather had a lot more experience with this sort of thing, of course; they seldom admitted it in public these days, but there were still plenty of people around who believed in spirits of one kind or another, and Rei had seen the old man called upon every now and then to help someone deal with a problem from ‘the other side.’ But Grandpa was old, his spiritual talents built up and then inevitably worn down over the course of a lifetime—and Yuuichirou had about the same level of spiritual power as a wad of used chewing gum—so Rei knew it was just best if she was here.

Nothing had happened, though. In fact, aside from the way her grandfather had made his usual circuit of the grounds with a frown and many careful looks into shadowy places—something Rei knew he only did when he had one of those ‘odd’ feelings—neither he nor Yuuichirou had been aware of the daimon riot until Yuuichirou came back with the newspaper this morning. The headline had been ‘V FOR VICTORY OR VEILED HOAX?’ with a file photo of Sailor V and a HUGE article taking up most of the front page, and several additional sections inside. Rei read it for all of three minutes before giving up in disgust; the words ‘publicity stunt’ and ‘hallucinations’ had been prominent, while the phrases ‘government conspiracy’ and ‘alien invasion’ were cleverly hinted at throughout. It was insane to imagine that someone with that sort of juvenile mentality wrote for a major newspaper.

She figured that Minako was going to eat up every word of it.

“Cawp?”

Rei looked away from her book to see Rooky’s head sticking up out of the pages of the Book as if from a small body of water. It wasn’t much of a surprise: sometimes he came out of the Book like this, walking steadily up as if on stairs; sometimes he rose up as though on an elevator; there were other times when he’d shot out on the wing, and once he’d just appeared next to it. There was never any way to tell, really, so Rei had stopped wondering about it.

“Hello, Rooky. Did it go well?”

“Awp. Rooky’s sorry, pretty Rei-di.” He did indeed look sorry as he shuffled up out of the Book, hunched over on himself. “Glowing worms hide. Rooky looks for glowing worms called ‘armory’ and ‘arsenal,’ but can’t find. Rooky’s sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rei said, brushing the back of the scraggly little crow’s head. “I know you tried.”

“Rooky tries again? Tries for the pretty Rei-di?”

“If you want to. Let’s see...” She looked at the list Artemis had given her and noted once again with a trace of disgruntlement that the items she had ‘found’ so far and crossed off the list were scattered all over the place. She tried time and again to search through the Book in alphabetical order, but the thing seemed to have a sense of humor nearly as bad as Haruka’s. If Rei told Rooky to look for the word ‘air,’ for example, he’d certainly find it, but quite probably as ‘airy’ or ‘bairn’ or ‘hair.’ If he did find a reference to a Weapon—which was easier for the ones like the Caduceus, whose names couldn’t be confused easily—more often than not it was as part of a description of the Weapon being used by one of the Senshi.

Under other circumstances, reading about the exploits of her Senshi predecessors would have struck Rei as a terrific way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but right now it was just one more thing getting in the way of the job she had to finish. She couldn’t skip ahead, either, because the Book moved at its own pace, and she might miss something important if she tried.

“‘Aegis,’” Rei said, reading from the top of the list. “’Major Weapon, specific to Jupiter. Sixteen separate orbs of crystalline or possibly ceramic design, solid but lightweight, pink in color and lit from within by green light when active. Design is symbolic of the sixteen moons of Jupiter, with four of the orbs being twice the size of the others; sections function as focal points and amplifiers for electrical energy.’ Mako-chan would love that,” Rei sighed. “Too bad we can’t seem to find any ‘Aegis’ in here”—she tapped the Book— “except for the one in Greek mythology. I wonder exactly how much of their culture was inspired by Atlantis or the Moon Kingdom, anyway?”

She moved down the list and picked the next item at random. “‘Warding Stones: Minor devices, nonspecific. Small crystal discs roughly the same width as a hundred-yen piece, smooth and rounded, colorless when inactive. Create protective shields at a range of up to two meters from the stone. Occasionally destroyed and replaced; eighteen remaining at last inventory.’ I can think of any number of times when something like that would have come in handy. Too bad they’ve probably all been broken.”

Rei flipped back a bit. “’Aqua Trident: Major Weapon, specific to Neptune.’” She rolled her eyes. “_Big_ surprise, there.”

She kept on reading for several more minutes, not noticing that the symbols on the two exposed pages of the Book were beginning to act strangely. Instead of sinking back into the paper, the marks were twisting and changing in color, going from one thing to another, and the end results were starting to look a lot like columns of finely-drawn kanji characters. The pages were rapidly filling up with intelligible words, and when some of the symbols began to sink, they stopped—or were stopped—and moved back into place.

Rei didn’t see it. Rooky, on the other hand, most definitely took notice as one of the nearer symbols began to flash and flicker through the entire visible spectrum like an exploding strobelight factory.

“Awp?” the crow said, moving to investigate. Rei looked up at the noise and immediately spotted the flashing symbol—and then she saw the rest of it:

THE AEGIS ARE ON GANYMEDE, BUT MAKOTO MUST GO AFTER THEM ALONE; ASK AMI AND CALYPSO ABOUT THE FURIES IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY. HOTARU SHOULD OPEN A DIMENSION DOOR TO THE OLD JOVIAN COLONY OF ALTARGREN. MAKOTO WILL BE ABLE TO SENSE THE GENERAL LOCATION OF THE AEGIS FROM THERE, BUT SHE SHOULD BE READY FOR TROUBLE, AND SHE MUST NOT USE THE AEGIS UNTIL SHE IS BACK ON EARTH.

# 

“Okay,” Minako said over the communicator. “Do I even have to ask the obvious questions?”

“The Aegis are one of the Weapons of Jupiter,” Artemis said, and he quickly rattled off a description that was nearly word-for-word what he’d written on the list Rei had in her room.

“That sounds familiar,” Makoto said. “Were those the things being used by the Senshi of Jupiter that Merlin showed us? The bracelets?”

“That was them,” Artemis confirmed, “although they aren’t actually bracelets. Each orb is physically separate from the rest, and they can all function independently, though of course they’re more powerful and versatile when used together. I’m not really sure how they could have wound up on Ganymede, though; they were in semi-permanent lockdown on the Moon for decades.”

“Why?” Makoto asked.

“Because they were _dangerous,_ Mako-chan,” Luna replied. “The Aegis were created by Serenity I, and they were based on the same work which allowed her to make the ginzuishou, so in certain respects, each orb is like a small, early version of the crystal, but tuned to Jupiter’s electrical power instead of spiritual power. Even all sixteen of them together aren’t nearly as powerful as the ginzuishou, of course; at best, they can double or maybe triple the power of the Senshi-“

“TRIPLE?!”

“-but the problem is that they don’t have a lot of the safeguards that are built into the ginzuishou’s design. You’ve seen repeatedly how much it takes out of Usagi to use the crystal; the Aegis may not be as powerful, but their effect on a Senshi of Jupiter is just as bad. I know of four Jupiters who were killed outright while using the Aegis, and all of those who actually tried probably had their lives shortened to some degree.”

“Is this your way of encouraging me to go find this thing, Luna? Because if it is, it’s not working.”

“They’re too dangerous to leave laying around,” Artemis said, “even all the way out on Ganymede. You don’t have to use them, but if they’re here—or locked up on the Moon again—we can at least be sure they’re not going to get picked up by anyone or anything that might happen to wander by.”

“If they’re that much trouble,” Haruka put in, “then maybe we should send some help with her to make sure the job gets done.”

“Not a chance,” Luna said flatly. “If the Furies are still up there, then Makoto and Hotaru are the only ones who’d be safe—and if we send anyone out, we’ll need Saturn to stay here and hold that Shield of hers so nothing gets back in unannounced.”

“Which brings us to the next question,” Minako prompted. “Ami-chan? Wait, does Caly still have her communicator?”

“No,” Ami said in a level voice, “she doesn’t. We had a talk about that last night—and you should have known better than to suggest it to her, Minako.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, and if we _hadn’t_ gone through with it, you never would have finished that date. Tell me straight that you’re _not_ happy you got to spend the whole night with Ryo without any interruptions.”

Ami was silent. “You’re welcome,” Minako said. “Now spill. What’s the deal with these ‘Furies,’ and how come you and Caly know it?”

“Because they used to be Nereids,” Calypso replied sadly. “When we first left Earth, some of us moved to Jupiter, but at the time we didn’t fully understand what effect living under its electromagnetic field would have on us. After a few generations, some were... changed...”

She fell silent, and Ami took over. “The Furies are so supercharged with electrical energy that their touch alone could be deadly to a normal human, and they had a tendency to go into a swarming behavior around other forms of life— something to do with the electrical energy of our brains interfering with their energies, or so the theory went. Mako-chan will be safe because she channels the energy of Jupiter, and that same energy covers all of the moons; she’ll just disappear into the background and be ignored by the Furies. The rest of us would be almost certain to get attacked.”

“Of course,” Artemis added, “that’s also the reason why you can’t risk using the Aegis until you get back here. They were designed to harness the power of the planet’s electromagnetic field, and if you tried using them for the first time while you were _inside_ that field, you’d get fried for sure.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Makoto sighed. “Well, if I’m going, I might as well go now. Hotaru-chan?”

“I can find Jupiter easily enough,” Hotaru replied, “but it might take me a few days to locate a specific city on one of the moons if I have to go searching blind. Ami-chan, do you have the coordinates in your computer?”

“Just a minute... Altargren... yes, here they are.”

“Good,” Saturn’s voice said. “Then I won’t have to waste time.” There was a pause of several seconds before they all felt something pass around and through them in a rippling, unseen wave.

“Was that what I think it was?” ChibiUsa asked. “Hotaru, are you all right?”

“I’m okay. And the Shield’s up and working. I’d like to give it about an hour to settle in before we do anything else, okay, Mako-chan?”

“Fine by me. That gives me time to have lunch.”

“I thought you wanted to hold off on using the Shield for a while yet,” Michiru pointed out.

“That was before they dumped all those daimons on us last night. I’ve had my fill of unannounced visits, Michiru-mama.”

“Speaking of things unannounced,” Minako interrupted, “what sort of stones were in those earrings that Ryo-kun gave you, Ami-chan?”

“Oh, those were sapphires. I was sort of... wait, how did you know about those? I didn’t... tell...” The blush was actually audible. “Y-you... you _spied_ on us?”

“’Spying’ is such an ugly word, Ami-chan. And it was only for a little while. We just wanted to make sure everything was going well after that mess we went through with the daimons, and we left once we were sure you two were okay.”

“When was that?” Ami asked in a small voice.

“Right after that kiss,” Haruka said. There was a squeak on the other end of the line.

“What was it like?” ChibiUsa asked.

“None of your business!”

“O Contrail,” Minako said, “it’s very much our business. It’s a time-honored tradition called ‘kiss and tell’—now fork over the details, girl.”

“Well,” Calypso began, “for starters, she seems to think very highly of Ryo’s...”

“CALY!!!”

# 

During the Silver Millennium, Altargren had been the largest settlement on the moon of Ganymede, on any of the moons inhabited by the Jovian tribes. It was the closest thing to a capital city in Jupiter’s miniature system, the major center of trade and travel between all the moons and the inner system. Farmers from the outlying districts had moved their legendary harvests to the city alongside the caravans of the miners and the loggers and the ice merchants, all of them going to do business with each other and with their visiting rivals. Ships would arrive at the port and unload endless streams of Nereid-made crystalwork and Venusian medicines, Martian silks and Lunar books, and passengers from the worlds of the inner system; the ships would leave just as heavy as when they landed, but with entirely different cargoes. One such ship had once taken a young Amalthea into the stars for the first time in her life, starting her on her journey to the Moon.

Like all the other settlements on the Jovian moons, Altargren had been centered around one thing: maintaining the environment. The heart of the city was dominated by the great pyramid which housed the mechanisms of the atmospheric shield, the great energy barrier which protected everything for hundreds of kilometers around from the ravages of the airless void that had been Ganymede’s natural state. The shields amplified the light of the distant sun and regulated the temperature; they held in the precious air and water that sustained all life on the surface; they resisted the spectacular electrical storms that periodically swept all the moons. It was only during those storms that the shields became visible, lit up in awesome displays as the lightning danced along their outer surface, but if you never saw them otherwise, you always knew the shields were there.

At the base of the shield complex, there had stood the lesser but no less important reservoirs of the local irrigation system, six large and heavily reinforced domes topped by the curved, half-shell mass of the city windtraps. Each ’trap constantly siphoned off water vapor from the air and fed it back into the huge underground tanks, which in turn fed the network of tunnels and pipes that spiderwebbed out from the city in all directions, carrying the water to nourish the fields. ‘Fields’ was a loose term for it, of course, since the typical Jovian farm raised its own plantation of hardwood trees and decorative blossoms alongside the food crops—which, under Jupiter’s influence, had a tendency to transform even the best-tended ‘field’ into a veritable jungle all by themselves. The presence of the livestock only added to the impression of out-of-control bounty, particularly since they benefited from Jupiter’s energy as well and grew to the same extremes of size as the plants, if not quite as quickly.

The task of maintaining order under such circumstances was a tall order even at the best of times. The shields never wavered, but the irrigation system was not so resilient, and pipes were often snapped by the twisting roots of the prodigiously-growing plants. The periodic moonquakes took their toll as well, and in the outlying districts where the potency of the shields was reduced, freak lightning strikes and the attentions of local wildlife—creatures every bit as overgrown as the farm beasts, and often nasty of temperament—contributed some damage as well. Creatures native to the cold and blackness that reigned outside the shields sometimes made their way inside to raid and wreak havoc, and there was always the remote but still real threat of darker and deadlier beings than even these, things from the deep void of space beyond the moons and the planets and the solar system itself.

Fortunately, the Jovians were well-suited to the demands of their world. Like their crops and livestock and unfriendly neighbors, the immense and ever-present force of Jupiter had reshaped the descendants of those humans who originally settled its moons. Early childhood was relatively normal, but puberty set in early and with a vengeance; the old saying about how children grow like weeds applied in spades to the Jovians, who usually got started at age ten and didn’t stop growing for the next five years. It was a rare Jovian who didn’t top six feet, and every last one of them had the muscle to match their height.

The elemental influence of Jupiter extended to the mind as well as the body. Makoto was gifted with empathic abilities and a rapport with plants because Amalthea had possessed the same kinds of abilities, but neither of them had these powers because they were Jupiter. Being born as a Senshi had only enhanced the aspects of Amalthea’s Jovian heritage; it had not created them. Jupiter itself had done that, changing her ancestors over thousands of years and causing the development of a variety of traits and abilities, the best of which were all reflected in the Senshi of Jupiter, but which could be found in her people to a lesser degree.

Armed with those abilities, the Jovians went about the business of living. They tended their fields with patience and perseverance, wrestling with the wild plants as often as the oversized livestock. When the irrigation system broke down, they fixed the damage and fed water ice from the mines into the reservoirs to make up for whatever had been lost in the breach. Under the watchful eyes of their parents and neighbors, children played in the fields almost from infancy, growing up—and up, and up—and gradually gaining the same nearly instinctive understanding of nature that their elders possessed. Wherever a hand was needed, it was given, regardless of the task; neighbors worked each other’s fields in one capacity or another nearly every day, particularly the sorely-pressed teachers of the outdoor schools, who constantly had to stop class and hunt for their students among the ten thousand or so possible hiding places offered by the landscape. The only people in the system more openly friendly with each other were the Venusians—who, it must be said, had even the Jovians beat by a pretty fair margin—and despite the potential for violence allowed by their sheer size, there were no people less threatening in word or deed than the Jovians.

Unless you somehow managed to get one of them mad, that is. The monsters who periodically attacked the more remote farms and villages saw their share of angry Jovians, and it is probably sufficient to say that for many of the monsters, one such encounter was enough.

For thousands of years, this was more or less the situation on the sixteen moons. So what if the environment was artificial? It was home. If some aspects of the prevailing lifestyle seemed a bit rough compared to the splendor of Atlantis, well, that was true enough—but it was a life without the endless scheming of the great and often equally petty rulers, a life free of the squabbling between different families and the vying for power and position. In later years, it was also a life safe from the strange diseases and blights which appeared on so many of the worlds in the Atlantean empire, for while there were mana nexi powering the cities and villages, their effects were minimal; Jupiter’s energy was just that strong. Some of the villages had become villas in those later times, and they had the normal complement of lords and ladies to dwell in them; while he was acting in his official capacity, a Jovian lord could play politics with the best of them, but a visitor arriving unannounced at his home would most likely find the “lord” out in the fields with the “peasants,” and usually much happier than when stuck in some stuffy council chamber debating the letter of the law.

All of this and more was going through Jupiter’s mind as she waited for Saturn to finish opening the dimension door to a place Ami had said would put them just outside Altargren. She wondered what—if anything—was left now of the world she half-remembered, a world she had only seen through another girl’s eyes, but which she still felt such a profound connection to.

On the other side of the door, everything was rock and ice. There were no preserved buildings like on Mercury, nor even any ruins, just a plain of hard stone coated by a layer of frosty dust. Looking through the door with a sudden sick emptiness in her stomach, Jupiter’s first impression was that of a night in some arctic wasteland. But there was no air on the other side of that opening in space, and it was much further from the sun, which meant it would be far, far colder than anywhere on Earth.

“I can feel it from here,” Calypso sighed. She was sitting with Ami on the other side of the room, and she was leaning, almost unconsciously, towards the door, her eyes closed in an expression of pleasure. All three Senshi looked at the Nereid as she let out a long, pleasurable sigh, Saturn and Jupiter blinking in surprise, Ami reddening with a trace of embarrassment.

“Cut that out, Caly.”

“Can’t you feel it, sister?”

“No, I can’t. Now quit it!”

Calypso sighed and reopened her eyes. She regarded the door with a look of longing, then shook her head and settled back, leaning against Ami. “Just feeling that energy, I can understand why we tried to settle there once. Even knowing what it did to some of us, I still want to go.”

“You’d bring every Fury within a hundred kilometers straight to you, Caly—and some of them can teleport, remember.”

“I know, I know. But still...” Calypso sighed again and snuggled closer to her sister, fighting off one kind of need with another.

“When this is all over,” Jupiter said, looking squarely at Ami, “we’re going to have to talk about that.” She’d meant to do it last night or this morning, but she’d fallen asleep well before Ami got home, and stayed that way until well after Ami had already gotten up.

Ami obviously understood what ‘that’ was, because she nodded; Saturn just as obviously didn’t understand, but she didn’t ask. “Ready to go have a look around at the old neighborhood, Jupiter?”

“No,” Jupiter replied honestly, “but here I go anyway.” She took a deep breath and stepped through.

In the middle of crossing the barely-noticeable threshold of the dimension door, Jupiter felt a slight change in the nature of her own energy, a familiar sensation which told her that her power was shielding her against the cold void that surrounded Ganymede. She could also feel a tingle over every inch of her body, and this she recognized as the energy of Jupiter, an electrical field so strong that it blanketed all of the planet’s moons.

That helped, a little. The people and their homes were gone, the plants and the animals were gone, and even the air was gone, but the familiar feel of that energy reassured Jupiter a little. Not everything had been lost; this much was still the same.

Something else had not changed, either. She looked around at the sky and could see many tiny stars, as well as the sun, much smaller here than it appeared from Earth. She could see several of the other moons hanging in the void, their cratered surfaces stirring recognition—and right there, standing between the field of near moons and the backdrop of stars, was the planet. Her planet. Its huge face still shifted and danced with the ceaseless passage of storms that could swallow the Earth whole and barely notice; its presence was inescapable, and the single storm, the vast patch of red clouds, was like an unblinking eye staring out at the universe, seeing you and ignoring you in the same age-old glance.

Standing a little taller under that awesome gaze, Jupiter smiled. “Hello, old friend. I’m back.”

From the other side of the door, Saturn looked at her strangely. “Um... Jupiter? I hate to interrupt, but... was Rei’s message right? Can you tell where the Aegis is?”

Breaking off her study of the sky, Jupiter closed her eyes and concentrated, and almost immediately she became aware of a presence off in _that_ direction, something that was like a concentration of the already-potent energy all around her. “I’ve got it,” she said, pointing towards a not-too-distant mountain. She looked at the shape of it closely and felt Amma’s memories stir. “I think that’s the mountain where they built the docks.”

Saturn leaned to one side to get a glimpse of the mountain, then nodded. “Got it. Come on back, and I’ll put you a bit closer.”

Jupiter moved back through the door and stood clear as Saturn closed it and opened another in its place. The mountain was much closer this time, rising up in front of them. A neat series of obviously artificial openings were lined up along the face of the slope above, and despite the crumbling decay of ten centuries, they still looked very much like the airplane hangars that were their modern incarnations on Earth.

“It’s definitely up there,” Jupiter said with a nod.

“A lot of other things could be up there, too,” Ami cautioned her. “Remember what the Book said and be careful, okay?”

“I will. You’re going to leave this door here, Saturn?”

“Uh-huh. It’s not as convenient as having me along to open one wherever you need it, but I suppose it’s the best we can do. If you get in some kind of trouble, just call; we can send Uranus through to teleport to you and then teleport both of you back here and out of danger.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Just don’t let anything else through while I’m gone.” She walked through the door and headed for the mountain at an easy run.

It wasn’t going to be particularly difficult to make the ascent. Any paths that had led up to the wide, man-made caves were long since gone, but climbing wasn’t all that hard for someone with Senshi strength and endurance. And thanks to the vast flood of unseen energy radiating out from her much-nearer namesake, Jupiter felt like she could climb right to the top of this mountain and then tackle its next two cousins. Several times during the ascent, she stopped to look at the surrounding landscape, trying to get some hint of what might have happened to destroy Altargren and not leave any except those man-made caves behind. What she could see of the surface didn’t really suggest anything, and after a while, she stopped looking.

No Furies or any other sort of creature appeared, and ten uneventful minutes later found her standing on the floor of one of the lower chambers. It was twice as big as any soccer field, about half that in width, and the roof was five stories high if it was an inch; Jupiter looked across to a broad, down-sloping ramp at the far end of the room. It led into an equally wide tunnel, and Amma’s memories suggested that the whole construct was intended to house vessels for long-term maintenance, freeing up space in the main hangar. The sense of the Aegis—if that was what it was—was coming from down that ramp, and Jupiter followed it without hesitation. It was darker down here, the reflected light of her planet not penetrating into the tunnel, but Jupiter could see well enough; she’d brought a flashlight.

The tunnel was wide enough for four fully-loaded semis to have driven down side-by-side and still have room, but it struck Jupiter as being cluttered. Cranes and cables hung from the ceiling in places, and ancient crates were pilled along the walls. At one point, she found the half-completed or half- shattered hull of what looked like an old sailing ship and had to stop for several moments just to look at its elegant lines, letting her imagination and her half-complete memories fill in the missing details.

Then the smell reached her. It was a dry, metallic odor with faint touches of electric ozone at the edges, and for some reason, it made Jupiter nervous. She stopped walking and bit her lower lip, thinking. Ami and Caly had described the Furies as cloudlike masses of red lightning; she hadn’t seen one yet, but could that electric smell be coming from one of them? She continued on, more slowly than before.

At the end of the tunnel, she stopped and stared. A massive hole had been dug here, a much cruder extension of the tunnel’s length which looked more like a natural formation than an artificial construction. It moved even further into the mountain, and the air—there was actually air!—the air at its mouth was thick, warm, and rich with that weird smell.

Jupiter was seized by a sudden urge to turn around and walk away. It was pretty obvious that the tunnel had been dug out by something, and it was still wide enough around for those four semis to drive through, each with an extra trailer stacked on top of it. She was _not_ at all eager to meet something that felt it needed that level of space for comfortable movement.

But it wasn’t in Jupiter to run from most things, and the faint presence she had been following was a great deal stronger now. She shone the flashlight down the length of the tunnel and saw that it ended in a chamber somewhat further on, and had no other passages connecting to it, so she stepped into the rough-walled section and continued on, halting once more at the edge of the next chamber. While the ceiling of the place was about as high as that of the abandoned hangar back at the front, the volume was probably only about half of the hangar’s—but all of it had apparently torn out of the stones by some enormous thing.

The thing in question was sitting across the chamber on a wide shelf of stone, and while Jupiter could only see its front end, it still looked quite capable of having done all the stone-tearing necessary to fashion this place. Its two forelimbs were as thick as treetrunks and ended in sturdy talons that looked like they would be equally useful as either feet or hands. The torso from which those arms—or feet—extended looked like a small mountain, a mountain of silver-green armor plating which rose and fell almost imperceptibly as the creature breathed, a mountain blanketed by the wide, almost batlike wings that hung from its shoulders. Even though it was reclining, the creature’s neck rose up to a height that would have enabled it to peek through third—or fourth-floor windows back in Tokyo. Its head, adorned by a backswept crest of horns, was currently pointed downwards so that the silver-blue eyes above the muzzle and the powerful jaw could stare at Jupiter in a form of surprise that only an intelligent creature could pull off.

It was, in no uncertain terms, a dragon.

 

# 

_(Artemis is sitting at a table, eating a plate of tuna casserole.)_

**Artemis** : Not bad... though why they spoil the tuna with this pasta stuff is beyond me... oh, hi. Just a second.  _(takes a quick bite of his meal and gulps it down)_  Okay.

**Artemis** : The obvious choice for a moral in this episode is that our girls are a nosy bunch, and they get into more trouble just by being nosy than by any action of their enemies. There’s also something to be said for the practice of secrecy with regards to any personal event of a potentially romantic nature...  _(shakes his head and goes back to the casserole)_

05/05/01 (Revised, 15/08/02)

_Yes, a dragon. I like dragons, and that one’s been planned for quite some time._

_I hope everyone enjoyed the scenes from the date. I know I had some fun writing them. I paused once or twice to wonder if Michiru would really sink to that level, but I took comfort in the fact that Haruka would in an instant, if only to get something to tease Ami with later—and Hotaru would be right there alongside ChibiUsa, who is the biggest snoop in existence after her mother._

_Now watch how this episode probably doesn’t get posted until Mother’s Day because I’m writing it up late and sending it in at the last possible second..._

_*insert revision comments*_

_The big changes here were made at the end. I wasn’t completely happy with my meager description of life on Jupiter’s moons, or of the dragon, but that’s what happens when you’re down to the wire on a deadline. Consider me happier now, and resolute not to let that happen again. ^_^_

_Up next:_   
_-Dragon! BIG dragon!;_   
_-Spring break gets into gear;_   
_-and hey! It’s finally March!_


	23. Waiting Games, Some Shocking Moments, And Why Sometimes You Can't Just Let Dragons Lie

# 

At the sound of a knock, Rei looked up from the Book and saw the silhouette of a tall woman with very long hair standing outside. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Luna’s voice responded. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” The door slid open; Rei smiled when she noticed Luna’s cautious, searching glance around the room. “They’re outside.”

“Good,” Luna said, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. “Because we need to talk.”

“What about?”

“That.” Luna pointed at the Book as she sat down. “When Usagi asked you to take the Book, she was asking with full awareness of everything Serenity ever knew about it, but that didn’t include so much as a hint that it might start moving around on its own, or that any of the other things you’ve described might happen.” She held up a hand to forestall the argument she knew Rei was about to make. “When you told us what the Book said about the Aegis, Usagi and I could tell from the wording that something had changed. The Book NEVER speaks _to_ the reader, Rei; it may talk about them, and it may provide answers to specific questions, but it never uses a direct form of address like that—and it doesn’t offer warnings or suggestions.”

“It hasn’t ever used a legible script, either,” Rei added. “Not that I’ve seen, anyway.”

Luna’s left eyebrow went up a notch. “So you can appreciate our concern when the Book, after all the thousands of years for which it’s been studied, suddenly seems inclined to switch from being a passive record of history to being an active participant in it. Either there’s more to the Book than anyone knew, or something else has gotten in touch with it. The first is entirely possible, but based on everything else that you’ve told us has been happening around Hikawa, Usagi and I are both inclined to suspect the latter.”

“Lu...” Luna raised her hand again.

“I came here to ask you a question, Rei. After everything the Book has done or caused so far, and with the possibility of what else may happen because of it, do _you_ still feel you’re capable of guarding it, or would you rather that someone else took charge of it?”

“I _have_ to take it, Luna. Nobody else can read it.”

“That’s not a good enough reason,” Luna replied, “and it’s not completely true, either. Usagi told me that Calypso could read it quite well when they were in here the other night.”

Rei’s jaw dropped, then closed. “Calypso isn’t a Senshi—and even if she does have Ami-chan and Mako-chan right there to help her, they don’t have my training. If something is interfering with the Book without actually being physically present, I have a better chance of noticing and dealing with it than any of the others do.”

“That likely won’t be the case once Jupiter comes back with the Aegis,” Luna noted, “and training doesn’t count for anything if you aren’t willing to use it.” Luna started to reach for the Book, but Rei’s hands shot out and caught her arms before she’d even touched the cover.

“Luna, _please._ I _have_ to do this.” In a quiet, almost fierce voice, she added, “I promised.”

Luna smiled gently and turned her hands so that she could clasp Rei’s arms. “That’s what I needed to hear. As long as you’re genuinely willing to accept this responsibility, Rei, we won’t try to take it away from you—but don’t be afraid to ask us for help if you need it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Rei mumbled, looking down at the table and blushing. “Thanks, Luna.”

“You’re welcome. Now, can I have my arms back?”

# 

The room used to house the meetings of the Directors was as dark as ever, and mostly empty. One seat, that of the Science Director, was occupied, and the woman was typing away at her console.

“You took your time,” she suddenly said aloud, not looking up from her work.

“One of these days,” the Information Director replied, from the darkest part of the room, “you’re going to have to tell me how you do that.”

“Call it woman’s intuition.”

“Do you really expect me to accept that?”

“Humor me.” A faint note of amusement entered the woman’s normally cool voice. “A girl has to keep some of her secrets, after all—and I do have something else you should see. Or rather,” she added, “something you should hear.”

“Oh?”

“This is a recording made by one of our friends at SETI about an hour ago,” Sciences said, loading a file into the system. “They were in the middle of their usual deep-space signal recording and analysis when they picked up... this.”

Information listened intently as a series of popping noises began to play over the meeting room’s hidden speakers. It sounded pretty much like the usual interstellar ‘noise’ that the SETI researchers constantly sifted through in the hopes of isolating an artificial signal from amongst all the natural sources—and quite suddenly, it stopped. For three entire seconds the room was utterly silent, and then the sounds of deep space resumed.

“I’m not an expert,” Information admitted, “but that break seems a bit unusual to me.”

“One of the sounds in that recording was a pulsar with a rotational period of just under one second—so yes, a pause that long was quite out of the ordinary. There’s also this to consider.” With the click of a few more keys, the room’s main monitor glowed to life, showing a frozen image of deep space which was positively littered with glowing objects.

“It’s a recording from observations made by the Hubble telescope at the same time that SETI experienced their little glitch. Our contact at NASA passed it along.”

Information watched closely, and was rewarded with the sight of this undoubtedly distant corner of the universe being blurred into a senseless blob of light, a blob which persisted for a count of three seconds and then returned to normal.

“Did the sensor network pick up anything?”

“I think the better question here is ‘did the sensors NOT pick up anything?’ Every last corner of the system logged a surge of that untraceable energy type we’ve attributed to Saturn, right before these two events occured—one of them in North America, the other in orbit.”

“What time was all of this?”

“11:16 am, our local. You might also be interested to know that our specimens from last night went on a mass howling fit at the same time, and I myself felt a very definite chill, as did at least three members of my staff with whom I spoke. At the time I thought it was just a reaction to the noise those creatures were making, but after seeing these, I’m not quite so sure.”

“Now that you mention it, I think I may have felt something myself.” Information fell thoughtfully silent. “I’ll get in touch with Media and tell him to have his people check for reports of unusual activity in the city at or around that time; you find Personnel and tell her to start checking around to see if other people noticed any strange feelings at 11:16.”

“I’ve already put my own department to work checking our systems,” Sciences put in, “just to see if anything was affected or damaged. I’ll have Resources do the same—and you should call Political about this as well.”

“He’ll want to know if you have any theories about...” Information paused, searching for a word and finally settling for, “It.”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

# 

“A global shield?” Janus said incredulously.

“Yes, your Highness,” Archon replied. “It seemed to be something on the order of a massive detection field, rather than a combat shield.”

“‘Seemed to be’?”

“It was remarkably difficult to track, my lord. The initial disturbance had passed us by within seconds, leaving insufficient time to properly record the phenomenon, and we’ve had no further indication of any kind to determine whether this shield is still functioning or not.”

“Were you able to determine anything about its possible origin?” Janus asked.

“Not conclusively, Highness, but I’d tend to suspect an artificial source. There is no mention in the archives of any Senshi possessing a power like this, even on a small scale. By itself, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that one of the new Senshi has this sort of ability, but only the Senshi of Saturn were ever able to manipulate energy on a planetary scale before—and the energy expenditure involved was lethal even for them.”

# 

“You’re in trouble, Saturn,” Calypso said.

Saturn looked at Calypso expressionlessly.

“Would you like to surrender now, or fight to the bitter end?”

Saturn waved her hand at the Nereid, mumbled something that sounded like “hmmnhrph,” and went back to her study of the chessboard on the table between them. Calypso’s white army had captured both of Saturn’s knights, her queen, a rook, and several pawns besides; she had lost her own queen, a knight, and a few pawns in the bargain, but retained the overall advantage.

*Maybe if I move that bishop there...* Saturn studied the move and then, finding no obvious danger, went ahead with it. Two moves later, she realized it had been a mistake, because Calypso had reclaimed her queen and was one move away from checkmate.

“Okay,” Saturn sighed, “I give up. You’re good at this, Caly.”

“Well, of course I am,” Calypso replied, moving the pieces back into their starting positions. “We invented chess.”

Saturn blinked and looked at Ami. “She’s half right,” Ami said. “The Nereids invented a game which humans called ‘chyetsa’, and some aspects of the design, rules, and strategy were similar to the game of chess. Since chyetsa was created about twenty thousand years ago and required a certain degree of magical or psychic ability to play, it’s entirely possible that somewhere along the line, someone was inspired to create a simpler, nonmagical version for ordinary people.”

“And if you could play chyetsa,” Calypso said, “you could play chess.”

Saturn glanced at Ami, who was standing over near the dimension door, scanning through it with her computer and trying to track Jupiter’s progress. “Did you play this game, Ami-chan?”

“A little.”

“She’s just being modest.” Calypso smiled at her sister. “She won the system championship five times, three of them consecutively. And then there was that Avatar match...”

“Caly, you know that was an illegal game. I only played it because I had to.”

“Yes, but you still won, fair and square. You didn’t even hurt him that much.”

“The _what_ match?” Saturn interrupted, blinking. How could you hurt someone in a game of _chess_?

“We don’t have to go into that,” Ami said.

“But you’ve gone and got me curious, Ami-chan.” A pouty Saturn was a very strange thing to behold, and when Ami turned around to get a look, Caly was into a full-blown sympathy pout of her own.

“No,” Ami said firmly. “You can explain it to her as well as I can, Caly. I’m trying to keep an eye on Jupiter.”

“All you’re doing there is wasting time,” Calypso countered. “Between the warping effect of the door and all the ambient electrical energy on the other side, your computer’s scanning range is practically nil.”

That was true, and after looking at the two of them for a moment longer, Ami sighed, closed her computer, and walked over to take a seat next to Caly.

“When I said chyetsa was like chess,” she began, “I meant it mainly in the sense that it was a game of strategy, where each piece has different capabilities. The board wasn’t square; it was a collection of hexagons in the same six-pointed star shape used for Chinese checkers, with the center of the board being a large hexagon nine spaces wide along each side. The center hex was red, and every third hex along one of the six lines running directly from the center out to the corners where the arms met was also red. The very points of the star were blue, and every third hex in a straight line from _them_ was also blue. The third space in a straight line from any of those hexes would be blue as well, and so were the alternating spaces in between; every other hex was white.”

“Like this.” Calypso held up her hands, and mist flowed out from her palms to assume the shape in question. The hex at the tip of the star nearest to Saturn was shaded blue, and the two-hex row beyond it had two white spaces. The third row was a white space, a blue space, and then another white space, and the fourth row was a blue hex, two white ones, then another blue. The pattern kept repeating like that across the entire board, and, as Ami had said, the center space and every third space out from it in a line was shaded red.

“The blue and white spaces were mostly for reference as to how some of the playing pieces moved,” Ami continued. “Some of them could only move in straight lines, while others could jump across rows on the blue spaces. Some could advance a number of spaces in one move, others couldn’t move at all once they were placed, and various pieces were able to attack or defend at a distance. The red hexes, on the other hand, had special values depending on which player held them, and with which piece. As you can guess from the shape of the board, chyetsa could be played by up to six people at once, and if—for example—one player could put pieces called Spires on two red hexes that were in a line, only that player’s pieces could move across the line between the Spires. You could create safe zones for your more valuable pieces that way, or trap your opponents’. If you took a red hex with a Magus, on the other hand, no enemy piece could come within two rings of it, and any enemy piece actually in that area already was captured.”

While Ami talked, Caly was demonstrating the moves in question. Towerlike structures rose up from two of the red spaces, and a soldier-like figure standing directly between them disappeared as the row of hexes lit up red. Another red hex was surrounded by a mix of pieces with different aspects, some colored blue, others green, and when a green piece with wizardly robes moved onto the hex, all the blue pieces within two spaces of it in any direction vanished. Saturn watched it and then looked at Ami.

“Okay, so it’s a bit more complicated than chess. But how does magic fit into it?”

“The magic was necessary because there weren’t any actual pieces in a chyetsa set,” Ami replied, “just the board itself. Each player had a reserve of magical energy called a ‘cache’, which they would fill to an agreed-upon limit using their own energy. You started with a piece called a Lord or Lady, and as long as it was on your home space, you could generate other pieces by using energy from your cache. When you captured an enemy piece or sacrificed one of your own, its energy was transfered to your cache, and as you gained more and more of your opponents’ energy, you made them less and less able to play effectively. You defeated an opponent either by forcing them to empty their cache and then capturing all of their pieces, or by trapping their Lords off of the home spaces, preventing them from generating new pieces no matter how much energy they had left.”

Saturn looked apprehensively at the two sisters. “I have a pretty good idea of what the word ‘avatar’ means, Ami-chan, and if this game used someone’s energy...”

“An Avatar match,” Ami said in a steady voice, “was a game of chyetsa in which the players fed _all_ of their energy into the cache; magic, mental energy, physical and spiritual essence, everything. You _became_ the game, and if you used up your cache and then lost all your pieces, you died. Even if you survived, you could be crippled for life, to say nothing of what possession of your undiluted life-energy would allow someone with the right knowledge of magic to do.”

“And the _Nereids_ made this game?”

“We made a game which didn’t have a name,” Calypso replied. “Our history said that the original form was created as a way to teach young Nereids who couldn’t yet absorb lightning from stormclouds how to feed. One of the elders would feed, then assume the shape of the board and divide half of the energy up evenly amongst the young players, who had to give the energy shape to play the game and try to get the rest of the energy from the elder. The better they played, the more energy they got, and the more energy they could control, the closer they were to being able to feed on their own. The elders played amongst themselves as well, sometimes for fun, sometimes to determine mating groups...” She broke off with a grunt and a startled look as Ami elbowed her in the side.

“’Groups’?” Saturn repeated suddenly, staring at the pair.

“Never mind,” Ami said, blushing. “The point is, the Nereid game was harmless, but when it became popular with humans, it was gradually changed to suit their way of thinking, and the practice of the Avatar match was developed during the age of Atlantis as a form of dueling among the nobility. It was outlawed during the entire Silver Millennium, of course, but out in the asteroid belt one time, we ran across a group of pirates whose leader had a board modified for Avatar play. His ship was taking on prisoners from a merchant vessel when Ariel and I caught up to him. We couldn’t attack him without risking the prisoners, but he knew that he’d lose if a fight broke out, so—the game.” She glanced at the illusion of the board and shuddered.

“Not pleasant?” Saturn ventured, her voice filled with sympathy.

“It was both the best and worst game of chyetsa I ever played,” Ami answered, “and no, it wasn’t fun at all. Every time I lost a piece, I lost a little bit of myself, but every time I captured one of his pieces, I got energy that I just couldn’t stand to have. It took ages, but I was finally able to reclaim all of my own energy and then return all of his to him before I cornered his Lord. He survived, and we got all of the prisoners back safely, but I still couldn’t stand to so much as look at a chyetsa board for months afterwards.”

“I can understand why.” Saturn looked at the image of the board, frowning. “I think... I think Pandora played sometimes, didn’t she?”

Ami nodded. “We had a few games every now and then. As I recall, she was a fairly good player, but we never got to finish a game; somehow something always seemed to come up.”

“Too bad we don’t have a board,” Saturn sighed.

“Sure you do,” Caly said. “I can be the board.”

Ami and Saturn blinked, and Ami started to say something, but Caly was already flowing into the shape of the board she had been holding between her hands; the six-pointed star settled smoothly to the table, nudging aside the chessboard as two figures of women in regal dresses appeared at opposite points of the star. One figure looked like Mercury and was holding a miniature replica of the Caduceus; the other was a tiny Saturn, complete with Silence Glaive.

*We can’t quite play a normal game, of course,* Calypso said. *Saturn’s energy would probably make me ill for the next week if I tried to absorb it, and there’s no way I’m going to take anything from my sister, but I can keep track of the score for you.*

The two Senshi exchanged a look. “Should we?” Ami asked.

Saturn shrugged and gestured towards the door. “Why not? We’re not going anywhere unless Jupiter calls, and if things keep on like they have been, I can’t really see any reason why she’d need to.”

# 

If Setsuna had come along and used her power to stop Time, the results wouldn’t have been more locked in place than the way they were now, with Jupiter staring wide-eyed up at the massive dragon, and the dragon in turn staring down at Jupiter, both of them clearly stunned by what they were seeing.

Actually, a few pointers about dragons in general are probably in order here.

For one thing, dragons are quite likely the oldest living species in the universe. And never mind their individual lifespans, which are more easily tracked as centuries than as decades or years; dragons as a whole have been around long enough that the word ‘eternity’ isn’t quite as out-of-place as it might otherwise sound. This longevity—both personal and in terms of the species—has a lot to do with the fact that dragons have physical bodies which are among nature’s finest killing machines; they are large, formidably armed, highly mobile, surprisingly quick for their size, and capable of adapting to nearly any environment they have a mind to enter. Many of these advantages are only enhanced by dragon physiology, which is based as much on magic as it is on the scientific laws of nature; they have their own kinds of magic, some of it innate, some of it studied and developed over time, and most of them back up these two forms of muscle with intellectual powers equal to anything found in smaller species.

On the other hand, when one stops to consider the sheer numbers of those smaller species, there aren’t really all that many dragons in the universe. This is due in part to the concept of the food chain, where there are only as many high-level predators as the food-energy available in the number of low-level prey will allow, but only in part. Dragons have extremely efficient digestive systems that can metabolize virtually anything, even high-density minerals, in order to get nourishment, and they don’t need to eat nearly as much as less-magical creatures of similar size in order to stay healthy and growing. Nor does the relatively low dragon population have much to do with the depredations of so-called ‘dragon slayers’. When all other things are equal, the bigger beast always wins, and dragons are already so powerful that things are almost NEVER equal. Anyone who actually manages to kill one dragon may quickly find him—or herself the host to a steady stream of visits from the dragon’s nearest kin, and if there actually proves to be an active threat that individual dragons can’t handle, they’ll gather in numbers to deal with it.

Unless of course the threat turns out to be something like Saturn, in which case even the dragons will turn around and fly the other way as fast as their wings and magic can carry them. There’s also a very powerful fortune-seeking teenaged sorceress on a distant world who’s earned herself the title ‘Dragon Spooker’, a girl whose name alone will send any number of dragons that hear it into an all-out retreat—but that is a very unique case, and a story for another time.

No, by far the biggest reason that dragons haven’t long since taken over the universe—setting aside the fact that none of them really WANT to—is that they have tremendous difficulty working together. Not that they aren’t sociable, in their own way; they’re just not what you’d call team players, not unless there’s something of overwhelming power or importance driving them to play nice.

It’s an entirely understandable situation. Any being that can level mountains, outfly the wind, live for thousands of years, and generally be king-if-not-god of all it surveys is fairly likely to develop just a wee bit of an ego somewhere along the way, and that makes relationships tricky. Even mated pairs of dragons—and those dragons who do have mates are FIERCELY devoted to them—usually prefer to have their own separate lairs, and the offspring—to whom the parents are at least as devoted as they are to each other—tend to leave the nest for good during their equivalent of restive adolescence. Dragons are proud creatures, often to the point of arrogance, and as a result, they quarrel with one another just like any other form of intelligent life. Members of the different breeds pick fights over the same sort of flimsy excuses human nobles once used as an opportunity to poke holes in each other, and the only difference with the end results is the level of collateral damage that goes with them.

The silver-green hide, triple-backswept horns, and periodic electrical discharge from the mouth and nostrils of this particular dragon clearly identified it—to anyone familiar with such things—as a member of the breed known during the Silver Millennium as Jovian thunder dragons. These were one of the more prominent and successful of the two dozen or so breeds actually living in the solar system—though they were still not exactly common—and like most of the other creatures living around Jupiter, they had a strong affinity for electrical energy. From the sheen of its claws and horns and the overall shape and proportion of its body, that same dragon-familiar observer would judge this to be a female, one well-settled into her maturity but not really all that old yet—probably three centuries or so shy of her thousandth birthday, in all likelihood.

All in all, this was not a good combination for Jupiter. Jovian thunder dragons were not the biggest of breeds, but they were plenty big enough, and while also not the most intelligent dragons, they were still easily on a par with the majority of the human species. Females of any dragon breed are generally quicker of movement and of thought than the males, and among magical beings, intelligence frequently translates into greater command OF magic. So not only was Jupiter face-to-fangs with something roughly the size of Usagi’s house, it was also a fast something, and probably well-equipped to back up its obvious physical prowess with magical attacks and defenses on a scale about fifty times greater than her usual enemies’. On the plus side, she might still be able to out-think the dragon, or even talk it out of a fight and dinner. Of course, it was just as likely that the dragon might out-think her, especially considering the sheer _presence_ of the thing.

It was partly simple size, partly because of that metallic scent, and partly because of Jupiter’s empathic talent, but the dragon was just about the most intimidating thing she had ever seen, and it was making it hard for her to think. This quality, which is most frequently called ‘dragonfear’, is one of the more subtle and powerful weapons in a dragon’s arsenal, since it impairs the ability of other creatures to fight effectively and will quite frequently send the faint of heart running or down in an outright faint. A normal human couldn’t have stood at this distance from the dragon without shaking from head to toe, and even a Senshi’s magical defenses didn’t entirely block the effect.

Jupiter was dimly aware of all of this in one huge lump of thought as she stared up at the creature. She was also aware that the sensation of energy-presence she had been following was stronger in this cave, which she took to mean that the Aegis was somewhere nearby—somewhere beyond the dragon, naturally. Mostly, though, she was aware of a blur of scenes moving past her eyes as she remembered something from Amalthea’s life.

The outlying Jovian villages were sometimes attacked by the more powerful or vicious creatures of the moons, and one day while she was away at her training on the Moon, Amma’s home village of Rheos had received a visit from a large dragon—a magma dragon, a breed noted as having a propensity for violence and destruction. Amma’s father had been one of those killed in the attack, and most of the buildings in Rheos, including her home, had been burned to the ground. Although enraged and grief-stricken, there was nothing Amma could do at the time except try to cope with the pain and continue her training, but years later, she heard about an attack by a dragon matching the description of the one that had killed her father; she was back on Ganymede in a flash, not even waiting for her friends as she went in search of the dragon, tracking it across three separate moons.

She learned later what she had sort of known already anyway, that the other Senshi would come after her, but she had left her communicator behind, and Mercury—after coming down from the energy high all Nereids got if they moved into Jupiter’s sphere of influence too quickly—discovered that even the Caduceus couldn’t pinpoint Amalthea’s location against all the energy her planet was putting out—the exact same energy of the Senshi of Jupiter, and thus the perfect screen to keep both her and her personal retribution from her friends’ interference.

Along the way, Amma became aware that she wasn’t the only person hunting the magma dragon. It wasn’t until reaching the third and final moon that she’d finally come across a tall woman with silver-green hair and eyes and no visible means of transport, who told her in no uncertain terms to turn around and forget about the dragon. Amma had refused, and told the woman that _she_ ought to be the one to leave; the woman also refused, claiming she had business with the dragon and wasn’t in any particular danger. Amma didn’t believe that for a second, and said as much, at which point the woman demanded to know where a scrawny child got off calling her a liar. Amma had never in her life been called scrawny, and her response to the ridiculous insult included some words borrowed from Ariel’s vocabulary, which had been colored by the older Senshi’s numerous voyages aboard skyships, talking with and listening to the sailors.

In short order, they had a serious argument going, and it probably would have come to blows if the magma dragon hadn’t overheard the shouting, flown back to see what all the fuss was about, and started launching molten spitballs down at the pair in his own version of target practice. Then the ‘woman’ had suddenly turned into a dragon herself, a silver-green scaled thunder dragon, and the two huge creatures started going at each other tooth and nail. Although surprised by the unexpected transformation, Amma was not about to let even another dragon get between her and that murderous magma, and she began pitching lightning into the fray with an almost indiscriminate aim, working as much to drive the thunder dragon away as to injure the magma.

Their argument resumed immediately, punctuated now by the snap and crackle of flying thunderbolts and the blazing roar of dragonfire, and the magma dragon developed the most intense expression of confusion as the two females unintentionally tag-teamed him while doing their level best to knock one another out of the fight, all the while shouting insults and accusations.

Then one of the dragons’ tails—for the rest of her life, Amma had never been able to clearly recall which—had smashed into the Senshi of Jupiter and crushed her against a stand of rock with edges like knives. Without her Senshi defenses, a hit like that would have killed her; as it was, the blow shattered Amma’s left arm and hip, leaving her unable to move, barely able to breathe, and with no choice but to watch the rest of the battle play out. It quickly became evident that while the magma dragon had trouble dealing with two such high-powered opponents at once, he was more than capable of dealing with either one of them on an individual footing; nearly half again as large as the female thunder, the burning-red and soot-black armored magma soon had her pinned. Holding her neck down with his tail, the magma lifted himself up, raising his front claw in preparation for a final blow, his jaw already parting for a roar of victory...

...and thereby providing a perfect opening for the buzzing disc of Sparkling Wide Pressure, fired one-handed, as it went right down his throat. In the memory, Jupiter saw the magma’s orange eyes widen and flare with green-white light as the attack discharged somewhere near the base of his brain, stunning the entire vast bulk just enough for the thunder dragon to slip her neck free and strike, sinking her fangs into the base of her enemy’s throat. When the light in the magma’s eyes went out a moment later, it wasn’t just the flickering brilliance of Jupiter’s attack, and the brute’s body slumped to the ground. The female extricated herself from the carcass and crawled a short distance before collapsing in turn, not dead or dying, but very sorely hurt nonetheless, and the blank stare of the dragon’s silver-green eyes was the last thing Amma saw as she blacked out.

They were also the first thing she saw when she woke up, although this time the eyes were back in the body of the woman with metallic green hair, and both she and Amma were inside a large cavern instead of out on the surface of the moon. The dragon’s human form wasn’t visibly injured, but she still looked seriously drained—and she was tending Amalthea’s wounds anyway, with a skill which was quite remarkable considering her actual nature, and a care that Amma couldn’t understand. Her face fixed in an expression halfway between annoyance and humility, or possibly even humiliation, the dragon explained that since Amma had saved her life, she was now honor-bound to serve the Senshi until she could return the favor.

“So,” the dragon said firmly, “I am going to make sure you get better. Once I’m satisfied that you’ve completely recovered from that fight, I’ll take you wherever it is on these moons that you live, and then we go our separate ways.”

Unfortunately—at least from the dragon’s perspective—Mercury finally lucked out and got a fix on Amalthea’s position, and the other Senshi arrived on the third day after the fight to take their friend back to Ganymede, so her mother could look after her. That had left the dragon-woman in an absolute taking; she wasn’t about to interfere with a mother’s right to look after her child, but this meant she had no choice but to go along as well and wait for some other opportunity to save Amma’s life to present itself.

Amalthea therefore became the only person in living memory—up to and including the memories of the dragons themselves—to have a dragon for a bodyguard. Some of the more powerful and clever wizards of the bygone Atlantean era had managed to tame dragons through the use of potent spells, but such mind-slavery was one of the many Atlantean secrets the original Serenity had outlawed, and it had rather sharply altered the personalities of the dragons in question. No one had ever had a free-willed dragon at their beck and call before, so Amalthea had no references, no way to be sure what to expect. Neither did the dragon.

They argued. Gods, goddesses, and devils all, but they had argued. Even living in service to another creature, a dragon was still a very proud creature; a dragon that had to spend nearly every moment—waking or otherwise—in a form other than its natural, was an irritable being; and a free-willed dragon could periodicially go off and do dragon-things that inevitably made the life she was hanging around to save some day anything from interesting to extremely difficult. Amma was every bit as proud and stubborn, and frequently had plenty of reason to be just as irritable as her new companion.

They taught each other. Amma learned things about draconic history and culture she never would have imagined, and often quite by accident, with some idle question or casual remark which would set off a flood of information. In turn, she was obliged to explain thousands of things about human culture, the everyday things she took for granted as often as the deeper, older facets of human existence for which they had to go to Luna, Vestia, Mercury, or even—in one or two rather specific instances—Ishtar to get a definitive ruling on.

They spent the better part of a year together, and somewhere along the way, they had become friends, close enough that the dragon revealed her given, draconic name, and then taught Amma how to pronounce all twenty-three syllables of it—some of which required a near self-strangulation for a human throat to produce. Up until then, Amma had only known the dragon by her common name, a name adopted to suit the attitudes and vocal capabilities of the humans whose form she wore, and which—despite its shortcomings compared to the elegantly interwoven meanings of her true name—the creature had become rather fond of.

*ALEXIA?!*

The word had no sooner popped into her mind than Jupiter realized that this couldn’t be Amalthea’s friend. For one thing, she’d already noticed the size and condition of the creature, the length, the wingspan, the sheen of the claws and horns and armored skin; all of it belonged to a dragon older than Alexia had been the last time Amalthea had seen her—somewhere in the middle of her third century, give or take a decade—but not to a dragon as old as Alexia would have been now, a thousand years later. The eyes were different, too. Alexia’s eyes had always been the same silver-green as her human hair or dragon’s hide, but this dragon’s eyes were silver-blue.

What really drove it home was the lack of recognition on that large, armored face. Jupiter knew she had changed quite a bit, but there was enough of a resemblance between her and her past life that anyone who had known Amalthea would have been able to recognize her now.

“I must be hallucinating,” the dragon rumbled. The voice was powerful, resonant, and undeniably female, but not really all that loud, considering the size of the owner. It set off bells of recognition in the back of Jupiter’s mind, which clashed rather strongly with the warning bells that started ringing as the dragon got to her feet up on her balcony. “A human?”

“That’s right,” Jupiter replied. “I’m...”

She was cut off by a loud snort. “Even sounds real,” the dragon muttered, glancing briefly at Jupiter before turning her attention to the tunnel entrance, as if expecting someone or something to be out there. “Whoever’s there,” she called out, “your little illusion is very well-done. Now kindly get rid of it before I do it myself.”

“Excuse me!” Jupiter objected.

“Fine then,” the dragon said, after ignoring Jupiter’s outburst and waiting for several long moments. “Have it your way.” The creature looked down, her eyes narrowing slightly in concentration, and then she said a word that Jupiter didn’t understand. The tingle in the air around Jupiter’s body suddenly increased tenfold, and she shuddered from head to toe, not from pain, but from a ferocious tickling sensation; it took every ounce of self-control she could muster to hold in the laughter.

“Cut that out!” she snapped.

The dragon blinked, and the energy faded. “Any illusion would have been destroyed by that,” she rumbled, a note of caution entering her voice. Slowly, the dragon lowered her long neck, bringing her head almost level with Jupiter’s, and then she sniffed at the air—and blinked again, drawing away. “You’re... real?”

“I am,” Jupiter replied steadily, trying not to let her nervousness at being so close to such a large mouth get too obvious. “I’m from Earth.”

“This is impossible,” the dragon declared, rising back up with a perplexed expression on her face. “The people of Earth haven’t had the magic _or_ the technology necessary to get this far out into the system since their Silver Millennium fell apart.”

“We’re relearning,” Jupiter said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, and I can smell the magic leaking out of you. Fah! That must be why I didn’t notice your scent when you were coming down the passage; you smell just like all the energy floating ar...” The dragon stopped short and looked down sharply, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Who are you, human?”

Memories of something Alexia had told Amalthea came to the surface, a description of how dragons exchanged greetings when they had no intentions of fighting, and Jupiter straightened up, doing her best to imitate the proud, neck-arching, puffed-chest pose that Alexia had demonstrated.

“I am Kino Makoto,” she began, gathering her resolve not to flinch when she said the next part, “daughter of Hana and Kaminari”—there, she’d said their names—“of the city of Tokyo, Japan. I am the Senshi of Jupiter; I am”—and here, she forced out a word somewhat similar to the one the dragon had used to cast her spell earlier. This wasn’t a word of magic, but rather a fairly ordinary word that Alexia had taught Amma how to say—the draconic name for Jupiter, planet and Senshi alike. She had to physically say the word because the translation magic that came as part of the Senshi deal didn’t include the draconic tongue, which had never been translated sufficiently for use by humans—partly because the dragons were secretive about their ancestral speech, and partly because it was almost physically damaging for humans to use. Letting her throat relax for a moment after the difficult pronunciation, Jupiter pressed on to complete the ceremony with a short bow and another draconic word, which translated into, “I am pleased to meet you,” “I come in peace,” and “I wish to speak with you,” all in one.

Not many people ever get the satisfaction of seeing a look of surprise on a dragon’s face, but when Jupiter straightened from the bow, she saw it. Shock, confusion, and the overall stalling of a mind that has just been handed a situation it can’t make sense of. It was the same sort of look Luna had been forced to endure whenever one of the girls heard her speak for the first time.

“How do you know that greeting?” the dragon demanded, her talons gripping the ledge and her body rising into an almost feline arch. Amma’s memories urged caution at the sight of that pose, for the most common way among dragons to deal with fear or uncertainty was with aggression, and Jupiter could tell that this dragon was definitely uncertain, and if not specifically afraid, then certainly nervous. “Answer me, human!”

“Not until you tell me who you are,” Jupiter said, snapping right back. “The custom is still a name for a name, isn’t it, _dragon_? Give me your name, and I’ll give you my answer!”

There was silence, and Jupiter winced inwardly. Thanks to her own empathic abilities, the dragon’s unease and aggressive compensation were literally contagious—and an outburst like that was NO way to get this creature to settle down!

Or rather, it was the perfect way. Triggered by her empathic reception of the dragon, Jupiter’s outburst carried the exact same blend of uncertainty and posturing menace, both of which the dragon picked up on in turn. Realizing the intruder wasn’t as sure of herself as she might have seemed, the dragon relaxed a bit.

“Fine, little one, I’ll play along.” The dragon shifted into the proud pose Jupiter had tried to imitate earlier, arcing her neck and extending her wings to form an image of majestic power, and when she spoke, her voice was clear, calm, and full of that same pride. “My name is my own, but to other races, I am known as Alexandra. I am the daughter of Alexia and Tyrus, of this moon, which I believe is known to modern humans as ‘Ganymede’.” She did not add anything else to the greeting, but then, Jupiter hadn’t been expecting to receive the full welcome.

*Alexia’s daughter,* she thought absently. *That explains the resemblance, anyway.*

“And now that we’ve been introduced,” Alexandra said, “I want some answers.”

“I agreed to give you one,” Jupiter replied. “If you want any more answers besides that, then you’ll have to give me some in return.”

The armored ridge over the dragon’s left eye rose in a slightly disbelieving expression. “Is that a challenge, little one?”

“If it makes you feel better, yes.”

Alexandra’s snort almost sounded like a chuckle. “Alright, then, challenge accepted—but I go first. Where did you learn that greeting?”

Jupiter didn’t miss the faint change in the feel of the air, the local magnetic field being altered in some fashion. The dragon’s overall emotional state was caution, tinged with curiosity; based on that and what Amalthea was telling her, Jupiter guessed that this feeling was a reaction to another spell, probably one meant to verify the truth of her answers, and possibly even enforce it. Naturally, such a spell would only work for the dragon herself, but Jupiter had already learned how to use her empathic talent to pick up on lies, so things would be fairly even. She had to be careful about what she said, though, and to pay close attention to what Alexandra said in turn; according to Amma’s experiences, dragons were masters of these little challenges of wits and words even without magic.

*Maybe I should have brought Calypso or Mercury with me after all,* she thought. Aloud, she said, “I learned the greeting from a dragon, who was my friend.” Jupiter saw Alexandra’s eyes twitch in an averted blink and guessed that both parts of her answer had just been confirmed to be true; she took that as a cue to ask her own question. “What happened to the human colonies on these moons after the Moon Kingdom was destroyed?” She had almost asked about the Aegis, but Jupiter didn’t see the harm in getting the details about some other things that were just as important to her as the Weapon, which wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m told it was a famine,” Alexandra replied, the words ringing true. “What was the name of this dragon friend of yours?”

“Her name was her own,” Jupiter responded, noting a definite shift in the dragon’s mood as she got her words turned back on her. This was how it would go, both of them trying to get the most information while giving away as little as possible in return, and they had both known it from the start, but it seemed that Alexandra was either out-of-practice at dealing with humans, or just had a low opinion of their cleverness. “What caused the famine?”

“Saturn.” Again, it was true, and Jupiter thought she understood how things must have played out on the moons. Saturn—first altered by Beryl’s bombs, then by Pandora’s self-sacrificing repair effort—had done something to the crops on the Jovian moons. Mars, which had always depended quite heavily on offworld food, would have suffered a Jovian famine just as badly as the people of the moons, and the outposts and minor colonies further out in the system had no means of growing their own food at all. Without the resources and assistance of the worlds of the inner system, the last pieces of the Silver Millennium would have been in serious trouble, and a long enough blight, coupled with one or two waves of monstrous attacks when there were no Senshi around to stop them, would have been enough to remove the Jovian tribes from the moons and seal the fate of the outer system. As for Mars...

“What was your friend’s name among humans?” Alexandra said then. It was the specific question she should have asked earlier, and Jupiter wasn’t completely sure she ought to answer it. ‘Alexia’ might be a common alternative name among dragons, but Alexandra would get suspicious even if it was. Since the dragon’s magic would alert her to a lie instantly, the only alternative Jupiter had was to say Alexia’s real name—but that was almost guaranteed to provoke an unpleasant reaction from Alexandra. Only other dragons were supposed to know a dragon’s true name; revealing hers to Amalthea had been an expression of just how much Alexia had come to care for, respect, and trust her human friend, but it would seriously disturb her daughter. The key component of the ancient mind-control magics of the Atlanteans was the true name of the subject, and if Alexia believed that a human who could use magic had her mother’s name, she’d be almost certain to take action and ensure that it couldn’t be misused.

“The name I first knew her by was Alexia,” Jupiter replied cautiously, paying close attention to her sense of the dragon’s emotions. The reaction was surprise, suspicion, and disbelief, but nothing overtly dangerous. Not yet, at least. She breathed a sigh of relief and asked her next question. “What happened to the human society on Mars after the Moon Kingdom was destroyed?”

“War and disease,” Alexandra replied shortly. Truth again, and once again, Jupiter could picture the course of events. Mars had been a world of soldiers and craftsmen, regimented and methodical—but the most powerful army still marches on its stomach, and the greatest metalsmith in the world can’t make food in his forge. They might have been able to save themselves by establishing farming colonies on Earth, but if there had been attacks from supernatural forces to contend with at the same time, even the great Martian war machine would have been hard-pressed to hold out. And if the Martians had contracted a disease while attempting to recolonize Earth, something that their many centuries of isolation from the mother planet’s complex blend of environments had left them unable to cope with...

“What was the name of the place where you first met your dragon friend?”

*Damn.* Jupiter had no idea which of the modern names for the Jovian moons applied to the moon where Amalthea and Alexia had met, and she couldn’t feign ignorance, because Amalthea—and virtually every other Jovian child— had known the names of the moons that appeared so often in the sky. “Aurionne.” As she had feared, the old name provoked a much stronger sense of surprise from the dragon, who obviously recognized the old Silver Millennium name. “How did you get your claws on the Aegis?”

“No such thing is in my claws,” Alexandra replied—and since she didn’t have the Aegis on her, that was technically true. The question definitely rubbed her the wrong way, though. “In human reckoning, what was the year you met your friend on Aurionne?”

*Double damn.* “It was the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Serenity XXVIII.” Alexandra’s eyes went wide, and the flood of emotions that surged out from her nearly defied interpretation. Jupiter knew this word game was about to come to an end. “Why is the Aegis in your lair?”

“Because I want it here!” Alexandra thundered, rising to her full height. “And no one is going to take it without facing me first! How do you know so much about the Silver Millennium, girl?”

“Because a part of me lived there!” Jupiter shouted back, once again unable to fully resist the emotional impulses of such a large being. “Amalthea, the daughter of Jana and Amalthus of the tribe of Evora, of this moon, Shalboraea!”

“Amalthea is DEAD!” Alexandra roared. “My mother brought the Aegis here to guard it, and when the last Jovian died, it became hers by right, just as it is _mine_ now that she’s gone!”

That stopped Jupiter short. She closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. “Alexia... is dead?”

“Two hundred and nine of your years ago,” Alexandra snapped, “for which you ought to consider yourself lucky. She was always a bit strange about humans, but if she heard you claiming to be her friend, she’d have torn you apart on the spot.” That was also true—at least, true as far as Alexandra believed. Jupiter sighed.

“I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” she said levelly, “but that doesn’t change why I’m here.”

“I already told you, the Aegis...”

“...was never yours to begin with. It never belonged to any people, not the Jovians, or the Lunari, or the Atlanteans. It belongs to the Senshi of Jupiter alone; everyone else merely held it in trust for her. That included your mother—and now includes you.”

“Human foolishness,” Alexandra snorted, tiny bursts of smoky lightning flashing from her snout. “A thing either exists free or belongs to the one who can control it—and my mother learned how to control the Aegis as well as any Senshi. Better, in fact, since it didn’t harm her to use it, just as it doesn’t harm _me_.”

“Draconic tradition,” Jupiter snapped back, drawing on Amalthea’s memories. “Ownership of a thing only goes to the one who can exercise total and unquestionable control over the thing—and the Aegis will never fully obey anyone except Jupiter, no matter how well they can handle its power. You should know that, if you really are the daughter of-”

Each of Alexandra’s eyes seemed to become as large as the great red spot of the planet outside as Jupiter said her mother’s true name, perfectly pronouncing all twenty-three syllables of it. The dragon’s response was as Jupiter had expected; Alexandra opened her jaws and exhaled a crackling blue-green thunderbolt at the tiny human figure before her.

“SUPREME THUNDER!”

Jupiter was nearly blown off her feet by the sheer force of her own attack. At least three times more intense than it should have been, the lightning cut through Alexandra’s breath weapon, tearing the energy of it to harmless shreds and then sizzling on to slap at the dragon’s armored face. Showing no outward signs of injury or the surprise which Jupiter could sense in her, Alexandra leapt from her place on the ledge, landing with an explosive force and sending the Senshi scrambling out of the way. The dragon turned, whipping her tail around and into the wall, a massive blow that roared through the air, shattered stone on impact, and missed Jupiter, who had thrown herself flat on her back and called another Supreme Thunder from that position.

When the blast snapped against her exposed haunches, Alexandra let out a bellowing roar that shook the cavern. Jovian thunder dragons had a sizeable degree of resistance to electricity, to the extent that most lightning-based human magics were useless against them at best, but Jupiter’s Supreme Thunder—enhanced by her proximity to her world and the abundant energy in the atmosphere—was packing more electrical force than the dragon’s own breath attack, which would itself have been enough to injure another member of her breed.

And even for an armor-plated creature like a dragon, getting shot in the backside is no fun at all.

Alexandra twisted her neck around and spat another jagged bolt of lightning at Jupiter, who tucked her legs up, got to her feet with a backwards somersault, then crouched and launched herself clear as the spot on the stone floor of the dragon’s lair where she had been standing was blasted apart by the attack.

“I don’t want to fight you!” she shouted. Alexandra replied with a word of magic, conjuring up an invisible, shapeless force that slammed into Jupiter in mid-air and blew her back into the cavern’s stone wall. The impact was nowhere near bone-breaking, but it was still rough, and the formless power of the spell remained, holding Jupiter pinned in place as Alexandra approached.

Unable to move her arms or legs, the Senshi leaned her head back against the stone and called down the Thunder again, discharging it from the lightning rod in her tiara through an act of pure will—the same trick she had once used against Beryl’s DD Girls, although fortunately she understood how to direct the power much better than the last time, and was able to send the majority of it flaring towards the dragon. Alexandra took the blast head-on and stumbled back, and with her opponent’s focus broken, Jupiter dropped to the ground, free of the spell.

A prickle at the back of her neck was the only warning Jupiter got before lightning began falling at her from somewhere above, bolts much smaller than the ones Alexandra had been exhaling at her, but also much more plentiful. She dodged most of them, but one clipped her left shoulder, and another sizzled shiveringly down her lower back, rattling her teeth and leaving her legs decidedly numbed. Then the shadow of Alexandra’s large claw replaced the bombardment, forcing an off-balance jump to safety. It only worked because Jupiter lashed out with lightning again, covering her escape by stunning the dragon’s limb.

This time she got to hear a buzzing sound in addition to the warning tingle. Looking up, Jupiter saw a swarm of teardrop-shaped bolts of white energy flying at her, first five, then ten, then too many to count. She leapt as far away as she could, but the projectiles tracked her movement and kept coming. She ran full-out and leapt up over the edge of Alexandra’s wide balcony, intending to use the rim for cover; the glowing missiles shot up past the edge and twisted around to streak down at her even as she threw herself to the right and then over the side, spinning to fire still more lightning up to intercept the bolts.

It didn’t work. The lightning passed right through the streaking energy-darts, and the act of firing it had taken up too much time for Jupiter to try and dodge again. The projectiles shot home, every last one of them striking in rapid succession, their repeated impacts pushing Jupiter over and to the ground. The first few slammed into her numbed shoulder, and when she rolled to protect it, the rest rained down on her back, forcing out a choked scream. Her mind interpreted the cold, solid impacts of energy as something close to what it must feel like to be stabbed, and they just kept coming...

And then she was airborne, the energy of another spell tingling around her body as Alexandra tried to smash her against the stalactite-covered ceiling. Dazed from the painful barrage of magic and disoriented at suddenly being on her way to the roof, Jupiter focused down at the large form of the dragon, her face shifting into an expression that her friends all knew and had learned not to look at too directly whenever it appeared. It was an expression which went way beyond the flaming auras and eye daggers that Rei and Usagi fired back and forth so readily, and who—or whatever happened to earn a place on the receiving end of it inevitably ended up in a world of pain. Of all the Senshi, only Haruka or Hotaru could muster a look to match this one, but Makoto’s version had an edge over theirs because, quite frequently, she didn’t seem to be aware of it.

“THAT DOES IT!” she shouted. “SUPREME THUNDER DRAGON!”

When the electrified image of her own species came roaring at her, the look on Alexandra’s face was almost comical. Between her own size, the limited space of her lair, and the inflation of this attack to around three times its usual power and area of effect, there was nowhere for the dragon to go.

# 

Saturn and Ami turned from the chyetsa lesson to look back at the open dimension door as a somewhat muffled but still discernible howl cut through the nearly-nonexistent atmosphere of Ganymede, passed through the rip in space-time, and reached their ears.

“What was that?” Saturn asked nervously.

# 

When the flaring light had faded out, Alexandra was stretched out in a heap on the stone floor, quivering, twitching, and here and there sparking with brief electrical discharges.

Across the chamber, Jupiter drifted gently to the ground, landing smoothly enough that her injuries didn’t flare with new pain, and watching her opponent closely. It couldn’t be THAT easy to beat a dragon—could it? One on one? Granted, not being able to fly had put Alexandra at something of a disadvantage, especially since Jupiter’s power was over the same element which was so much a part of the dragon’s own nature. The dragon’s sheer bulk and armored hide would defeat all manner of physical insults, and her strong magical nature would overcome many spells, but pure elemental force was something else again, to say nothing of the power boost Jupiter’s attacks had been getting because of her proximity to her planet. But even so, could it really be that easy to beat Alexandra here, in her own lair, which should be packed to overflowing with spells of defense?

What the dragon had said earlier about Jupiter’s magical energy masking her physical scent came back now. It was possible that the triggers for those spells couldn’t tell the difference between a Senshi of Jupiter and the pervasive energy of the planet any better than Alexandra’s nose had been able to sort out her scent... or something like that. Jupiter wasn’t especially given to puzzling out ‘how it works’, so long as the ‘it’ in question was working, and her curiosity tended to take a serious nosedive after she had just been though a series of events like being bounced off a wall, struck by lightning, and pelted with the magical equivalent of a rain of knives.

*I’m going to be feeling that for a week,* she thought, taking a step and wincing at what the shift in balance and posture did to the nerves in her back. She twisted her uninjured right arm around to lightly touch the areas of the worst pain, and when she brought her hand back around, there was no blood on her gloves. Reassured, Jupiter did her best to ignore the discomfort as she walked over to Alexandra. The dragon saw her approach and tried to rise, but the best she managed was to lift part of her neck off the floor before Jupiter clamped a hand on the horned tip of her snout. If not for the lightning-induced semi-paralysis, Alexandra would have been able to shake off even a Senshi’s grip just by wrinkling her nose or exhaling sharply, but as it was, Jupiter had her pinned—so to speak.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jupiter said, “and I’m not going to repay Alexia’s friendship with Amalthea by killing her daughter, but I’m not going away without the Aegis.”

“H-how... her name... how do...”

“Alexia told Amalthea her true name, of her own free will—and Amma’s spirit was reborn inside of me, just like all the other souls whose lives ended on the Moon were reborn on Earth.”

“That’s... impossible...”

“Whether you believe it or not, it’s the truth. Queen Serenity used the ginzuishou and gave her own life to give her daughter—to give _all_ of us our lives back. There ARE Senshi again; there IS a Princess of the Moon who needs our protection; and the Aegis IS mine, to use as I see fit. And I don’t see fit to leave it laying around where anyone strong enough to subdue a dragon could come along and take it. If you want to argue the point,” she added, spotting the shift in Alexandra’s mood and posture, “I just beat you in single combat over something in your possession; according to what your mother told me, draconic custom now says that the Aegis is mine, too. Are you going to stain your honor by breaking your traditions?”

“My mother,” Alexandra growled sourly, “seems to have talked too much in her youth.”

“It gave us something to do when we weren’t fighting.” Jupiter let go of the dragon’s head and straightened up with a soft grunt. “Do you yield the Aegis to me, Alexandra?”

“Yes,” the dragon muttered, grunting in turn as she sat up. “It’s down in my nest.” She shook her head a few times, then let out a sigh and climbed up onto her ledge, going up the three-meter high rim of stone as easily as Jupiter would have a step in a staircase. “This way.”

*That makes sense,* Jupiter thought, leaping up onto the ledge and following the dragon down the passage beyond. All dragons had a thing about collecting treasure, but often for very different reasons. In the case of the thunder dragons of Jupiter, the electrical conductivity of refined metals and the capacity of certain gemstones and other shaped crystals to harness energy was what made such things attractive; they used those items to enhance the electrical charge of the environment around their nests, increasing the rate at which their eggs developed. Males provided some of their own wealth to help fill out a nest, and so walked a fine line when seeking a mate; if a male displayed too much of his treasure, he would be expected to give up that much more of it, but if he displayed too little, he might not attract a female at all. The females in turn made their nests as large and expensive as possible, maximizing the chances for strong and healthy offspring.

The Aegis, with their power to harness and amplify Jupiter’s electrical energy—particularly at this close range!—would have made just about the finest addition to a nest any thunder dragon could ask for; small wonder, then, that Alexandra didn’t want to give them up.

The chamber into which Jupiter and the dragon emerged a few moments later was about the same size as the upper one, with a bowl-shaped depression carved into the center of the floor for the basis of the nest. That bowl was lined with and surrounded by piles of gold and silver, melted and reshaped from their original forms into a myriad of shapes which looked simple at a distance and became more complex as one drew nearer. There were massive growths of glowing rock-crystal lining the walls, their size and stability undoubtedly brought about by Alexandra’s magic, and gems of all shapes and sizes had been fused into the metal mass, seemingly at random, but in what Jupiter understood to be a pattern that would naturally absorb and focus the electrical energy of the chamber onto the central part of the nest. Dragons had an instinctive feel for such forces, and a female thunder dragon would know without the need for blueprints or words exactly where in her nest this particular gem must go, and how it would balance all the others.

As Jupiter had expected, the Aegis had been incorporated into the design of the nest; the green, electric light of the orbs flickered steadily atop the four tallest spires of melted gold and silver, and from a ring of twelve points around the rim of the bowl. The air in this chamber was almost as fresh and thick as the air on Earth, and it was literally humming with energy. There were, however, no eggs in the nest.

“My mother began this nest nearly one thousand of your years ago,” Alexandra said, “when the city below was beginning to dwindle away and the remaining inhabitants had no use for that hangar up above. I and my brothers and sisters were all hatched here, with the energy of those orbs shining down on us.” She sat down near the entrance and looked at the nest with a look of regretful reminiscence.

“I’m honored that your mother chose to add something of mine to her nest,” Jupiter said honestly, “and I’m sorry I have to ruin such a beautiful nest by taking back the Aegis now.”

Alexandra snorted. “Don’t try to make me feel better with flattery, human. Just take them and go.”

“Right.” Jupiter paused. “Um... that would be... how?”

Alexandra blinked and looked down at the Senshi. “Do you mean to tell me that you just fought me for something you don’t even know how to use?!”

“In so many words,” Jupiter mumbled. She looked up at a twinge of exasperation coming from the dragon. “I can’t very well learn how to use them if somebody else has them, now can I?”

There was another snort. “Humans.” Shaking her head, Alexandra lumbered over to her nest and fixed her attention on the orbs. They flared brighter, and Jupiter could suddenly feel... something... One by one, the pink-hued spheres smoothly pulled themselves free of the surrounding metal and floated up to gather over the nest, narrow bolts of energy leaping between some of them while others remained relatively inactive. The sense of massed energy in the room shifted considerably as the Aegis separated from the nest; the air was still thick with energy, and the substance of the nest itself retained a considerable charge, but Jupiter had no doubt that the largest portion of the force she was feeling had just gotten up and moved.

The strength of the energy in the Aegis and Jupiter’s reception of it were both strong enough that she didn’t notice when the lightning rod in her tiara activated itself—at least not before two crackling tongues of energy snapped into existence between the tip of the rod and the nearest of the four large orbs. Alexandra hauled her head back in a hurry as a network of energy erupted between the sixteen orbs with a rippling thunderclap, connecting the segments of the Aegis for several seconds as they continued to float above the nest. The Weapon was either drawing energy from Jupiter or sending it to her through that dual connection, along which buzzing lines of white-hot force moved in a sort of free-floating Jacob’s Ladder. Pulses moved towards Jupiter and away from her, some of them shorting out as they hit each other, others fading away for no apparent reason, and still others reaching the opposite side of the link.

The last pulse started at the Aegis and gathered up all the energy in one rapid swoop as it flew towards Jupiter and was absorbed into the lightning rod, which withdrew back into her tiara. Right on the heels of the disconnecting pulse came the Aegis, all sixteen orbs moving through the ozone-laden air at a steady pace to halt in front of Jupiter, bobbing sedately before her, waiting. Their light seemed a little different now, the color of it subtly altered.

*I suppose that makes sense,* Jupiter thought, looking at the hovering spheres with a cautious air. *The Garnet Orb has the same sort of color as Setsuna’s aura, and the energy of the ginzuishou is the same color as Usagi’s aura... or maybe it’s the other way around... well, whatever. Now how do I get these things out of here without actually using them?*

The separate orbs suddenly moved towards each other, and there was a series of faint clicks as they touched. Then the light in them went out, and a string of sixteen pearly spheres fell to the floor. Jupiter blinked at it/them/whatever before kneeling and slowly reaching out to touch the nearest orb. It was one of the twelve smaller pieces, hardly any bigger than the end of her thumb, and it didn’t react at all when she touched it, which was reassuring. Still, there was that odd sense of... not energy, and certainly not intelligence, but... there was a very real presence in those small stones. It didn’t come from any one of them, and was no stronger in the four large orbs than in the twelve lesser ones, but it was there all the same.

She picked up the string and looped it around her left wrist. It was just long enough to go around twice, and the spheres clicked again when they touched, held in place by what was probably a simple magnetic attraction. Jupiter flexed her wrist and then shook it a bit to make sure the orbs wouldn’t fall off, before looking up at Alexandra again. The dragon huffed and turned around, curling up in her empty nest so that her head was pointed away from Jupiter; getting the message loud and clear, Jupiter turned and headed for the exit, but she stopped at the mouth of the tunnel and looked back over her shoulder.

“Thank you.”

Alexandra ignored her as she left the chamber.

# 

“You found it already?” Ami asked.

“Yeah,” Jupiter’s voice replied though a continuous field of static, “I’ve got it. Or them. However you call it.”

“What was that noise we heard a few minutes ago?” Saturn asked.

“The previous owner didn’t want to give the Aegis up, so I had to argue with her a bit.”

“Oh.” Saturn frowned. “Are you okay?”

“I wouldn’t mind a little healing when I get back, if that’s what you mean, but I don’t need a rescue party or anything. Just keep the portal open.” There was a pause. “Ami-chan?”

“Yes?”

“When you were on Mercury, did you feel... well, stronger?”

Ami thought about it. “Now that you mention it... I wasn’t really paying attention to anything right at first, and I was distracted in the city, but after I’d actually transformed... yes, I think I did feel stronger. I was a little surprised at how easy it was to teleport myself and Caly out of the cave, but at the time I just thought it was either a natural power of the place or something to do with the Caduceus.”

*You did turn into mist once before,* chyetsa-board Calypso reminded her.

“When was this?” Saturn asked, blinking and looking back and forth at the two of them.

“When was what?” Jupiter asked, confused. The communicators didn’t pick up telepathy, after all.

“When we were fighting those daimons back in Atlantis,” Ami explained. “One of them got me in a hold, and I just turned into a mist without really thinking about it. I wouldn’t call it teleportation, since I didn’t actually go anywhere.”

“Is that normal?” Saturn asked. “What I mean is, was that Mercury the Senshi doing the morph-to-mist bit, or was it Mercury the Nereid?”

*We’re not entirely sure,* Calypso replied. *All the Mercuries before Ami were Nereids—or, in the case of the original, partly Nereid—and becoming mist was a natural power for them, so it’s possible that human Mercuries can do it as well...*

“...but it’s also possible that the transformation was because of the energy-imbalance being caused by my condition at the time,” Ami said, finishing her sister’s sentence. “Like those cold flares that kept going off when I tried to transform. I haven’t really had a chance to do any experimentation with it recently.” She glanced meaningfully down at her metamorphosed sister; following the look, Saturn made a silent ‘O’ of agreement and nodded her head.

*I heard that.*

“But you _did_ feel stronger on Mercury?” Jupiter asked again.

“Yes. I take it you’ve been experiencing some kind of power boost up there?”

“You could say that. Supreme Thunder is really living up to its name, and the Thunder Dragon I used a few minutes ago could have levelled a house. Is this supposed to happen?”

“I think so, yes. Distance from our worlds doesn’t make us any weaker, but the energy we tap into is much more concentrated when we’re on or right next to them than here on Earth, and that makes it easier to harness. We’re used to using a certain amount of our own strength to activate a specific power, so if we use the same amount of strength in a place where the energy takes _less_ effort to gather... you see?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Well, that’s good to know. I was a little worried that SCHREEEENGZZZZRRRRT!” Ami and Saturn both flinched away at the sudden burst of interference that obliterated Jupiter’s words. On the table, Calypso shivered, sending a blue-tinted ripple across the image of the chyetsa board and the pieces currently on it.

After first turning down the volume on her communicator, Ami tried to reopen the connection, but all she got was static. Saturn tried her communicator, again receiving only garbled interference, and when Ami switched to her computer, it fared no better.

She and Saturn looked at each other, then through the dimension door, trying to see if Jupiter or anything else might be moving around on the mountainside.

# 

Jupiter was just coming up into the storage section of the old hangar when her end of the transmission suddenly shorted out. She stopped at the mouth of the carved-out section of Alexandra’s lair and tried several times to reestablish the link to Ami and Saturn, but finally had to shake her head and give up. Wondering what had happened, she took a step and then stopped again as a dull red glow became evident up ahead, and started getting stronger. Brighter. Closer. Her skin was tingling again, and she was aware of another presence in the tunnel.

In the short weeks since her meeting with Sasanna had reawoken her empathic abilities, Makoto had been forced to cope with a variety of sensations she had little or no experience with. Feelings that were not her own occasionally made their way past even the mental shielding she had been taught from the dryad history-memory, and she was always aware of the overall presence of others. Every individual’s ‘signature’ was different, but there were certain similarities between members of a given types; thus far, Makoto had come to recognize human, dryad, dryad-brother, Nekoron, Nereid, cat, dog, plant, unit, daimon, and elemental types. And now dragon.

What she felt up ahead wasn’t like any of them. It registered against her mind as a constantly shifting blur of emotion, a blank wall that was warm, then hot, then cold, then normal, then soft, then hard, then spiky... The sensation danced around at random, oddly compelling and equally frightening. Mad. Chaotic.

A Fury.

From the description Ami and Calypso had given her, Jupiter had been expecting to see a red version of a Nereid’s natural form, a cloud of mist dotted with countless points of sparkling energy; instead, she saw something that looked more like a small red sunrise in the middle of a cloudbank. The heart of the Fury was a jumble of energy, a thousand tiny lightning bolts dancing back and forth in a space no larger than a human head, out of which larger, less-intense bolts periodically escaped, diffusing into the shapeless gas which wreathed the center on all sides. It was all shades of red, some dark and some bright, all of them shifting and changing endlessly, and it stank of hot ozone.

Stories from Amma’s life floated to the surface of Jupiter’s mind at the sight of the Fury. They fed on electrical energy, everything from the radiant power of the great planet to the artificial energies used by humans to the electrical energy of a living being’s brain. A brief touch from a Fury could inflict paralysis, madness, terrible electrical burns, or just a brief sting; being totally engulfed by one was fatal, and they seemed to be drawn to do just that. They could pass through solid walls and magical shields alike and unleashed red bolts of destructive energy without warning. Weak Furies, it was said, became nearly invisible, and could enter a living body without killing it, but their energy drove their hosts mad and often killed them as the Fury gained in strength. They could fly in complete defiance of air currents or gravity, and some were able to teleport, but fortunately, they could not venture far from Jupiter itself without starving, and the Jovians had discovered early on how to attune their atmospheric shields to repel the creatures. Most of the time.

These were the sort of memories which would be unpleasant at the best of times, but they were considerably more disturbing now that Jupiter found herself face-to-face with a live Fury. It didn’t help that there had only been three confirmed ways to kill such creatures. The first was to hit it with a strong dose of anti-magic and hope that it was enough to shut it down. The second method was a complicated process in which the Fury was surrounded by multiple electrical fields tuned to its electric charge and frequency, fields which were then forced into the Fury’s body, scattering its energy in all directions in an effect not unlike a small-scale electromagnetic pulse. The last way was to get a group of people with some degree of magical ability to corral the Fury, take part of its energy into themselves, and then expel it, and keep on doing so until the Fury was dead.

Given the damage raw electrical energy could do to the human body, this third method tended to injure or kill considerably more humans than it did Furies, unless you had a very large group indeed, or one with a lot of talented individuals in it. Supposedly, past Jupiters had been able to pull it off alone and survive, but the current one really didn’t want to try her luck.

*Ami better have been right about these things not being able to sense me,* she thought, stepping slowly to the left side of the storage bay, away from the entrance to Alexandra’s lair. She glanced down at the Aegis and hoped that it wouldn’t suddenly spring to life to protect her the way the ginzuishou sometimes did for Usagi. The warning from the Book for her NOT to use the Aegis was strong in Jupiter’s memory just then, as was Artemis’ succinct assessment of what would probably happen to her if she tried. *Just be a nice, cooperative little alien and float on down the tunnel or go back the way you came.*

Predictably, the Fury did not cooperate. It continued to drift forward for a short distance and then abruptly stopped, its sun-like interior directly level with Jupiter. The energy-being’s drifting edges closed about Jupiter on either side, but not in a way that suggested an attempt to wall her in. It was just the normal, unmonitored ebb and flow of the energized gasses, and very soon she spotted an opening and was past the Fury. Jupiter looked back over her shoulder several times as she headed towards the ramp, but the Fury made no move to follow her, and then started to drift down the tunnel towards Alexandra’s lair.

Seeing that, Jupiter almost turned back to warn the dragon, but stopped as she recalled Alexia’s disdainful attitude towards Furies. They were a threat to dragon eggs and hatchlings, true, but an adult dragon of any breed had very little to fear from the creatures, and thunder dragons—with their high tolerances for electrical exposure—feared the Furies even less. They also apparently ran into them quite often, since the Furies were drawn to abnormal sources of electricity, which they could ‘smell’ from quite a distance; this one was probably going to investigate the residual energy of the fight, or possibly the power shift that had occured when the Aegis shut down.

Heading up the ramp, Jupiter glanced at her wrist again. She had sensed the Aegis as an unusually strong concentration of electrical energy, coupled with just a touch of something that wasn’t quite awareness. It was possible that the Fury had stopped moving back there because it had picked up on the Weapon’s presence, even when it was deactivated, and not been entirely sure what to make of it.

“There you are.” Jupiter blinked and looked up. Uranus was standing about halfway across the hangar from her, Sword out.

“What are...”

“Ami and Saturn got worried when your communicator shorted out all of a sudden, so they called and sent me to find you.” The older girl looked her over with a frown. “You look awful.”

“Thanks.”

“No charge.” Uranus nodded at Jupiter’s wrist. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t look like much.”

“Let’s worry about that later and just get out of here. A Fury went down that tunnel a minute ago, and...” Jupiter had turned to look back at the ramp as she spoke, and in so doing, she caught a glimpse of the red glow again, much brighter than it had been.

She was just turning to shout at Uranus to run when the Fury surged up out of the mouth of the tunnel and swept forward, blazing with red energy. It missed Jupiter entirely, but she wasn’t its target. Just as the scent of shifting electrical fields had drawn the energy-creature to Alexandra’s lair, so now was it drawn away from the leftover traces of those expired fields and towards an active source of energy—namely, the electrical impulses in Uranus’ body.

“RUN!” Jupiter shouted—too late.

“WORLD SHAKING!”

The Fury took the hit and was pushed backwards, the vaporous extremities flickering and guttering in the blast of wind, but its core flared, and the creature came to a halt. Its substance gathered up and surged forward again, and again, Uranus blew it back, but without any sign of injury to the Fury. It began to swell again.

“Use the Sword!” Jupiter shouted, knowing that Uranus couldn’t use World Shaking continuously for long. “They don’t like metal!”

Uranus didn’t have time to reply, but she went into a flurry of slashes as the Fury closed on her again. Each time Uranus struck, there was a bright flash from the Fury’s internal energies, and it quickly fell back, billowing rents covering its ‘front’ side where the Space Sword had cut through it. Uranus, though, was holding the wrist of her sword-hand with her other hand, and the set of her face indicated she was in some degree of pain.

*Discharge through the Sword,* Jupiter thought. “Get out of here, Uranus! It won’t bother me!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence!” Uranus shouted back, switching the Sword to her other hand as the Fury rushed in at her once more. This time she settled for one massive overhead swing, cleaving the Fury from top to bottom. It backed off with a violent shudder, red sparks of energy spilling like blood from its torn front, but Uranus nearly dropped her weapon as electrical pulses rippled up her arm. She switched the blade back to her original hand, grimaced at the twinges that provoked in her fingers, and then ducked hastily as a bolt of red-tinted energy flew out of the Fury’s body.

“SPACE SWORD BLASTER!”

The shot tore right through the Fury’s blazing center, and this seemed to hurt it considerably more than the other attacks, but its response was a stunning flare of red energy that shot out in all directions. Both Senshi automatically raised their arms; Uranus was knocked backwards, the Space Sword flying away from her hand in a red flash of electricity, but when the energy hit Jupiter, the Aegis exploded into life, their green glow swallowing the Fury’s energy without a trace. Just as suddenly as they had blazed up, the orbs faded back to dormancy, except that Jupiter could feel a mild tingle about her wrist.

The red glow of the Fury was suddenly upon her, drawn to the greater energy of the suddenly-active Aegis. Jupiter took an unconscious step backwards, raising her arms again...

The point of the Space Sword erupted from the middle of the Fury’s body, the blade’s golden light forcing a path through the heart of the red energy. Jupiter was so surprised by the sudden appearance of the weapon—just a tiny gap of air away from being right in her face—that she moved backwards again, lost her footing on the ramp, and went tumbling down to the lower level of the hangar with a yelp.

Up above, the Fury writhed spectacularly around the Sword, energy flaring and erupting wildly as it tried to escape, but for every move it made, the Sword moved as well, twisting and weaving around to increase the level of interference it posed for the Fury’s core energies. The blazing entity swelled up with force once again, and Jupiter, laying half-stunned at the base of the ramp, heard a loud ‘pop’ as the red light suddenly vanished. She recognized the phenomenon; the Fury had not died, merely teleported itself away, leaving the Space Sword and a battered-looking Uranus to collapse to the floor of the hangar.

Jupiter pushed herself off the floor and moved back up the ramp. “You okay, Uranus?”

“I’ve been better.” The older Senshi was on her knees, looking at her hands with a pained expression.

“Can you move your arms?” Jupiter asked.

“The arms, yes.” Uranus curled the fingers of both hands and bent her elbows to demonstrate. “Although they do hurt like hell just now. My right leg is the problem; it got zapped during our little playmate’s last tantrum, and now I can’t feel it below the hip.”

“Come on.” Jupiter started helping her up. Standing on one leg, her left arm propped across Jupiter’s shoulders, Uranus looked down at the Space Sword, laying on the floor. Just like that, it was back in her hand, and she made a few experimental thrusts into the air to make sure she could use it again if she had to. Then she shook her head.

“Some rescue this is turning out to be. And if you breathe a hint of ‘I told you so’ at me, Jupiter, I swear I’ll kick your ass.”

Jupiter resisted an urge to tell Uranus that she didn’t have a leg to stand on; it was a good line, but it would have been too close to Minako. “Can you teleport us home?”

Uranus shook her head. “I was about to teleport through the door from your apartment before Ami and Saturn stopped me. Apparently, something about the warping effect of the door forces you to physically move through it in order to get anywhere—but I can at least get us down off of this mountain.”

“Please do,” Jupiter said, looking at the softly glowing stones wrapped around her left wrist. “Before any more Furies show up to investigate the energy coming out of this thing.”

Two seconds, a yellow glow, and one blinking out/blinking back in of reality later, they were at the foot of the mountain.

“I’ve got to learn how to do that,” Jupiter said to herself, as she looked around the barren landscape for a sign of the dimension door.

“If what Luna and Artemis were saying earlier about this Aegis being able to triple your strength, you probably will.” She gave Jupiter a considering look. “That is, unless you’ve decided not to use it...?”

“I’m... still thinking about that,” Jupiter replied, stopping her search for the door to look down at the Weapon again. “Having access to that kind of power _sounds_ great, but it’s... well... after seeing what it takes out of Usagi-chan to use the ginzuishou, the thought of trying to control something that strong myself is really scary, you know?”

For a moment, Uranus stopped using Jupiter for support and instead returned it, folding her left arm around the younger Senshi’s shoulders in a reassuring hug. “Nobody would think any less of you for walking away from it, Makoto,” she said quietly. Then she smiled. “Especially since I’d get to keep my title as World’s Strongest Senshi if you did.”

“Feh. I could take you in a minute.”

“Care to back that? We’ve got a nice empty moon here...”

“It’s not as empty as it looks,” Jupiter replied, looking around hastily to make sure nothing had come up behind them while they were talking. No Furies, dragons, or hideous monsters with unknown names showed themselves, and there was the door, over on the other side of a low ridge of rock Jupiter remembered from the beginning of her climb. She indicated it to Uranus, and they set out.

“It’s not just that it scares me,” Jupiter said. “Every fight we get into ends up being somehow mixed up in the fate of the world, but to me, it doesn’t matter if it’s a battle against a daimon or a fistfight against some schoolyard punk in a back alley. When I fight, I want to win—but I want it to be _me_ that wins, not some thing that I’m using. I don’t want to blow in with some overwhelming advantage that nobody can stand up to unless it’s part of my own skills, because otherwise, I’ll end up relying on that other thing too much, and when I finally run into something it can’t help me against, I won’t be able to handle it.” She looked at Uranus, frowning. “Is this making any sense?”

“I used to run track,” Uranus reminded her. “The same question comes up in the locker room, though for slightly different reasons—so yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t help but notice, though, that you’re starting to sound a lot like I used to, not all that long ago.”

“What, that whole ‘back off, we don’t need your help’ Outer Senshi routine?” Jupiter shook her head. “That’s not the same thing at all. I don’t have a problem with asking friends for help, because real friends will back off and let you handle things your own way when they know you don’t need them.”

“And they’ll get in the way no matter what you say if they think you _do_ need them,” Uranus noted.

“Well, we were right, weren’t we?”

“Mmmm,” Uranus mumbled. “Tell me,” she asked suddenly. “Have you been working out or something?”

Jupiter looked at her. “No... at least, not besides our practices. Why do you ask?”

“You just seem like you’ve put on a little extra muscle recently, that’s all.” Uranus smiled. “Or maybe you’ve just been doing a little too much taste-testing when you cook...”

“You can always walk home, you know.”

“Saturn might take it the wrong way if you left me here for the atomic vultures.”

“Oh, I think she’d understand completely.”

“I’d understand what completely?” Saturn asked from the other side of the now-near door. Her eyes went wide when she saw that Jupiter was holding Uranus up. “What...”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Uranus said automatically. “Just get out of the way so I can stagger through without crashing into you or that oversized can-opener.”

Saturn quickly put the Glaive aside, sending it floating across the living room on ribbons of dark energy, to a soft and silent landing over in the corner, propped up against the walls. Saturn turned back to the dimension door, ready to help Uranus through and completely ignoring the attitude-filled look she got for her trouble.

When Uranus was about one step away from stepping through the dimension door, Jupiter felt a twinge of alarm go off in the back of her brain. She was suddenly feeling the presence of intense energy again, as well as a nonsensical jumble of emotional states. In front of her, Saturn’s startled face was being lit up by red light—light coming from somewhere above them all—and Calypso, who had begun resuming human form when the two Senshi reached the door, had a look of wide-eyed fear on her face.

Uranus let out an indignant shout as Jupiter shoved her through the dimension door, right into Saturn, who couldn’t react fast enough to stop both of them from falling over into a heap. Jupiter herself leapt backwards, away from the door, as a wide pillar of red lightning shot down where the Senshi had been standing a split-second before, ripping apart the rocky ground with a resounding blast of thunder.

The landing from the hasty leap was a bad one, and Jupiter tumbled backwards when she hit the ground, rolling head over heels and finally stopping laying belly-down on the rocks, stretched out and with her head aimed towards the door. Stifling a groan, Jupiter pushed herself up far enough to peek over the line of stones and into the heart of the electric red light.

Everywhere she looked, Jupiter saw red. Swirling waves of crimson light, dancing motes of scarlet fire, and thick wreathes of rosy smoke filled the air around the dimension door. No single Fury could have thrown an energy bolt that large, and sure enough, what she was seeing was no single Fury. This was a full-blown swarm of the crazed creatures, dozens of them gathered together and locked into a killing frenzy, lashing out with lethal doses of electrical force at any living thing that crossed their path. Not even full-grown thunder dragons messed with a swarm, and this one was crowded around the dimension door on all sides, struggling to penetrate whatever barrier Saturn had erected within the fabric of the portal.

Fortunately, swarms didn’t last long. This one was already losing intensity after that staggering first strike, individual Furies breaking off and drifting away in an apparent lack of further interest. Some disappeared with teleportational speed, while others moved off under their normal method of propulsion. Many of these were discharging tiny, raking bolts of energy against the ground, scrounging for residual energy from their collective attack, and several were clearly headed in Jupiter’s direction. She didn’t have to look at her wrist to know that the Aegis, having absorbed additional energy cast off by the Furies during their attack, were glowing even more brightly now than they had back in the hangar.

Jupiter took hold of the Aegis with her right hand and pulled it away from her left wrist, the orbs coming free from their magnetic adhesion to reduce the ‘braclet’ to a string of glowing stones once again. She hated to have to do this, but as long as the Aegis was on her, she was a sitting duck. She threw the Aegis away to her right, the string whipping end over end and covering quite a distance in the low gravity, and the two approaching Furies changed course instantly, going after the green-glowing orbs and accelerating rapidly. Taking stock of the movements of the other Furies, Jupiter decided it would be best to put some distance between herself and the door, at least until the swarm broke up and left. Keeping the Aegis in sight wasn’t necessary, since she could still sense its energy right there behind her.

*Wait a minute. Behind me?* Jupiter turned around and was greeted by the sight of sixteen small, faintly green-glowing pink orbs moving towards her in an irregular formation, a bunch of spherical boomerangs coming right back to their thrower. The two Furies were some distance beyond, and a third was coming up to join them, no doubt attracted by the intermittent arcs of energy jumping between the orbs.

“This could be bad,” Jupiter mumbled, backing up a few steps and not feeling at all reassured when the Aegis drifted closer. She turned around before they reached her and ran all-out for ten seconds straight, a dash that—thanks to long legs and Senshi speed—would have left anybody but Uranus eating dust.

When she risked a glance over her shoulder, Jupiter swore. The Aegis were still right behind her, glowing a bit more brightly as they worked to keep pace with her—and there were now five Furies crowding in after them at high speed, with red blurs off to either side suggesting the approach of more members of the swarm. She turned her eyes front and kept running.

A rise of stone rose from the ground in front of her, too high and steep to run over and too wide to go around, so Jupiter took one last stride, jumped towards the rock, and brought her feet up in midair. Using the vertical face as a springboard, she catapulted herself back the way she had come, clearing the Aegis, the pursuing crowd of Furies, and—once again thanks to Ganymede’s low gravity—about twenty meters of open air in a long, slow arc. It gave her a great view of the incredible smoothness both the Aegis and the Furies displayed as they turned to follow her. Neither group even slowed down, and they didn’t even turn all that much; one moment they were moving _that_ way, and the next, they were moving _this_ way.

“STOP FOLLOWING ME!” Jupiter shouted. *The Aegis are supposed to obey me, right? They should stop when I tell them to, shouldn’t they?*

The Aegis, it seemed, were hard of hearing today. As Jupiter came down from her leap, tucking into a crouch and rolling to burn up her momentum, she could feel the orbs getting closer. Swearing, she scrambled to her feet and started running again.

More Furies loomed up in front of her, but by this point Jupiter was fed up, and she cut loose at the nearest of the creatures with Supreme Thunder. There was a tremendous flash and an even louder bang as the lightning impacted against the Fury, and when the brilliance faded, the Fury was staggering through the air off to the left, green lines of energy conflicting with its usual red interior. Even these twisted Nereid descendants, it seemed, could get a bellyache from drawing in too much electricity in one go.

Gathering her energy again, Jupiter jumped skywards, twisted at the waist, and launched a Thunder Dragon at the crowd of Furies behind her, angling the shot to avoid the Aegis. She had no idea WHAT would happen if she hit the orbs, and this was definitely not the time or place to find out.

The dragon-form’s gaping maw swallowed the entire cloud of Furies in a single gulp, and then its body contracted in a blast that made the report of that last Supreme Thunder sound like a firecracker by comparison. Jupiter had to turn away and try to land with her eyes narrowed to slits against the glare and the sudden dust cloud, and her sense of the Aegis told her that the orbs were drifting somewhat past her, pushed along by the force of the explosion.

When she looked again, there was no sign of any of the Furies from the pursuing group, and the face of Ganymede was sporting a new, modestly-sized crater. Or was that two craters...?

Jupiter shook her head, squeezing her eyes tightly shut to get rid of the double-vision. Even with her planet’s energy flowing all around her in such concentration, she was getting tired, and she was definitely feeling pain. Fighting Alexandra had done a number on her in pure physical terms, and all this running and jumping and sliding around in the dirt and rocks hadn’t helped.

Crackling and flashing from behind her brought Jupiter’s attention back to her other problem. On the far side of the Aegis, a Fury was floating away with a decidedly pale cast to its coloration, while the orbs—shining more brightly than ever—merely held their position, waiting. Several other Furies were rushing towards the still-smoking edges of the crater, sending out their buzzing lengths of energy into the air around them as well as against the stone surface below them.

In Jupiter’s mind, it was even odds as to whether the Furies that had been hit by the Thunder Dragon had been blown to their component particles or had somehow managed to teleport to safety before the explosion. Either way, they were no longer an issue, and their nearby cousins seemed to be too occupied to pose a problem—provided that they had all left the dimension door by now, and that she moved quickly enough to take advantage of their distraction.

It took her another two minutes to find the dimension door again; not an entirely terrible time, considering all the running she’d just done, and the fact that the local geography was unfamiliar to her, but some of the Furies seemed to be drifting her way once more, and she simply wasn’t up to another round of tag. Considering that a dozen or so Furies were still trying to force their way through the dimension door, with at least that many moving towards her from other directions, it seemed she didn’t really have much choice. She moved away from the door again, taking a course that would have most of the Furies gathering into a group behind her, a nice easy target that she could take out in one shot. The Aegis followed her, punching through and seriously sapping the energy of several Furies that didn’t get out of the way, their glow intensifying and their speed increasing.

For a second time, Jupiter took a quick peek over her shoulder and saw the Aegis and a group of Furies after her; this time, she stopped, crouched, and leapt straight up, once again turning at the waist to fire down over the Aegis and into the path of the oncoming Furies.

“SUPREME THUNDER DRAGON!”

Hanging there in mid-air at the peak of her jump as the rippling energy gathered into her tiara, Jupiter realized with horror that the Aegis, glowing like tiny green suns, had caught up with her faster than the first time, and were now hovering all around her. When the Thunder Dragon fired, it was swallowed up by the sixteen spheres, and suddenly there were crackling lengths of electricity all around her. The four large spheres were orbiting around her at the level of her waist, each connected to the next on jagged green-white lines of force, while the lesser orbs had formed two rings of six intensely shining points each. These thinner, longer rings spun around her and the orbit of the four major spheres at opposed angles from one another, and energy was continuing to pour from the lightning rod in her tiara, to be absorbed by all the sections of the Aegis.

She wasn’t falling, and neither was she being attacked. The Furies had come to a halt some distance away, shifting and flashing, and their emotional states had suddenly locked into one solid course: fear. As the orbit of the Aegis picked up and the rings suddenly began to contract in on each other and Jupiter, several of the alien beings blinked out, and the rest began to move away at high speed, leaving Jupiter a little relieved, and a lot worried. So far as Amalthea knew, Furies might teleport away when hurt, and they might be repelled by some kinds of energy, but they had never RUN from anything.

Her energy-sense climbing higher with every second, it suddenly occured to Jupiter what the spinning image of the Aegis reminded her of—pictures from a science textbook, in the chapter dealing with the structure of the atom.

*Oh, no.*

Sixteen shapes pressed very softly against her body.

# 

“I’m okay, Saturn, really.”

“I just want to check your hands again,” Saturn said. She avoided the Sword-bearing right arm, but that freed up both of her hands for a good grip on the left. “Those things left a lot of energy in your system, and I just want to make sure I got it all out.”

Uranus pulled her hand free and moved over to the door, where Mercury was standing, this time using the Caduceus and her visor to scan through the rift. “Anything?”

“The Furies seem to be leaving. I count nine... fourteen... sixteen of them moving away in various directions. I’d guess they exhausted themselves trying to get through the door. Jupiter’s life-signs are steady and strong in that direction.”

“Good. You wait here, and I’ll go...”

“Wait,” Mercury said suddenly, holding out an arm to block Uranus. Readings scrolled down her visor, and when a large red symbol appeared on the blue-tinted display, Mercury’s face turned absolutely white. “Close it! Saturn! Close the door, NOW!”

It was one of those tones of voice that you generally don’t stop to ask questions of—and the wall of green-white energy that was suddenly sweeping towards them killed any curiosity Saturn might have been feeling. The edges of the dimension door began to fall apart instantly, and then a dark, loosely ovoid shape appeared around the space where the door existed, sealing it off as Mercury and Uranus backed away in a hurry. Saturn went the other way, putting her hands on the edge of the barrier and setting herself as if she was about to try and move a mountain.

The Silent Shield didn’t budge or flicker in the slightest, but Saturn herself shifted slightly, and the air was suddenly heavy with a feeling of intense stress. Mercury felt a frightened grip close on her arm and reached over to put a hand over Calypso’s, never taking her eyes from Saturn or the Shield. A moment later, the sense of menace passed; the little Senshi let out a sigh of relief and allowed the Shield to disperse, leaving behind no trace of whatever had happened inside of it.

“Are _you_ okay?” Uranus said instantly, coming up behind Saturn and taking her by the shoulders.

“I’m fine.” Saturn leaned back against Uranus, breathing in deeply. “But that was too close for comfort. Whatever that thing was, it ripped the dimension door apart like paper—and Artemis wasn’t kidding about what happens when the door gets blasted. It would have taken out most of this floor if I hadn’t contained it in time.”

“What about Jupiter?” Uranus asked, looking back at Mercury. “Was she far enough away to be clear of the door’s explosion? And WHAT was that shockwave about?”

“I don’t know,” Mercury replied. “We’ve got to go get her.”

“Not from here,” Saturn insisted. “It’s too risky to open another dimension door right where one blew up. We’ll have to get to a safe distance and try from there.” She reached out a hand, calling the Glaive to her from its place in the corner, and then turned around and took Uranus’ hand. “Ready.”

Uranus blinked. “If you didn’t want to open a door here, what makes you think it’s safe to teleport?”

“The dimension door alters the laws of reality,” Saturn said. “It connects two points in space by changing them so that they’re exactly like each other. Teleportation converts whatever’s being teleported into energy and moves it somewhere else; it doesn’t affect the rest of reality at all. Trust me, it’s safe.” She looked at the three of them. “Really. Look, we can have Mercury do a scan...”

“Never mind,” Uranus interrupted. “If you’re that sure of it, then that’s enough for me.” She began powering up for the trip and looked at Mercury. “I’ll be right back to get you.”

Mercury smiled. “We’ll race you.” Uranus blinked in confusion at the statement, and then blinked again as Mercury and her sister both glowed a bright, pale blue and disappeared in a short-lived plume of blue-white mist.

“I think you just lost that race,” Saturn noted lightly. Uranus gave her a look and then teleported both of them to the foyer at home. Mercury and Calypso were over by the door, and Michiru was halfway down the stairs, looking at all four of them with some surprise.

“I take it there was a change of plans?” she asked, as Saturn closed her eyes and assumed a pose of deep concentration.

“We’ll explain later,” Uranus promised.

“It’s safe to open a door here,” Saturn said then, opening her eyes, “but there’s some sort of interference on the other side in addition to the distortion the gate would have caused when it blew. I’ll have to put the other end pretty far from where the first door was.”

“Just get it open,” Mercury said. “I’ll find her once you do.”

When the dimension door swirled open this time, it showed them a landscape being systematically blown to pieces by volleys of lightning falling from a cloudless sky. Patterns of energy not entirely unlike the Aurora Borealis writhed and crackled overhead for as far as the eye could see, and the continuous thunder was deafening. The volume of the explosions fell to a whisper as Saturn did something to the door, but the sheer violence of the rest of the storm remained undiminished.

The Senshi stared at it. “Jupiter’s out in THAT?” Uranus finally said, her voice sinking. Mercury walked over to the door and moved the Caduceus through to get a clearer scan.

“I’ve got her,” she said a moment later. “Fifteen-point-six-two-three kilometers in that direction”—she pointed straight into the center of the storm—“near the heart of the storm. I can’t make out her vital signs from this distance, but she’s out in the open, and she isn’t moving.” Mercury looked at the raging storm, then turned and looked back at the others with an almost helpless expression.

“Saturn,” Michiru said then, coming down from the stairs, “can you put a Silent Shield on a person so that it moves with them?”

Saturn blinked. “I think so, yes.”

“Try it on Uranus.”

“Hey,” Uranus protested, “why do _I_ have to be the guinea pig?”

“Because you and Mercury are the only two who can teleport,” Michiru replied, “and we need Mercury to scan and make sure nothing will go wrong when you try to teleport with a Shield around you.”

“What do you mean, ‘go wrong’?”

Saturn ignored Uranus and put up a Shield around the two of them. It started out as a dome, then rapidly shrank down and began changing in color until it was invisible, a second skin of energy surrounding Uranus from head to toe. Saturn stepped away and turned around to give her handiwork a close inspection; nobody else could see it, but she nodded in satisfaction.

Uranus looked down at her hands. The Shield didn’t cover the Space Sword, although whether that was because of the Talisman’s own potent magic or Saturn’s choice, she couldn’t be sure. There was a faint pressure, too, but nothing uncomfortable. Sighing, she looked to Mercury, who was already busy scanning her. The frown on the younger Senshi’s face did not help Uranus feel any better about this, but when Mercury finally nodded, Uranus closed her eyes and teleported out to the living room.

When she walked back into the front room, Saturn looked at her closely again before turning to create a second Shield. This one divided into two separate sections, one shrinking down to fit Mercury and the other to protect the Caduceus. Mercury repeated the teleport-test for herself and then started checking to see whether the Shield interfered with the functioning of her Weapon or not.

Everything seemed to be muffled—the faint noise coming from the dimension door was entirely gone—and when Uranus tried to mention that, nobody appeared to notice. She had to wave her hands to get their attention, at which point Saturn’s mouth quirked into a noiseless “Oops,” and she brought the Shield down.

“I forgot to mention that,” she apologized. “If you went out into that mess able to hear normally, you’d be deaf by the time you came back, so I set the Shield to block sound, but I can’t make it work against one sound and not against all the other kinds. Sorry.”

Uranus looked through the door for a moment, then shook her head. “On second thought, that sounds like a good idea. You may want to warn Mercury, though.”

“No need,” Calypso said, her hand resting on Mercury’s arm. “I already told her.” Uranus looked over at the pair, and Mercury nodded at her in silence. “She suggests you switch your communicator on, Uranus.”

Uranus did that. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Mercury replied, her words coming clearly from Uranus’ wrist. “This won’t work at a distance,” she added. “The Shields protect our communicators, but the energy of the storm would overpower the signal fairly quickly once it got outside; as long as we stay close together, though, we’ll be able to hear each other.” She paused as Saturn restored the Shield around Uranus. “Can you still hear me?”

“Loud and clear. Come on.”

Mercury nodded. She gave Calypso a hug and sent her over to Michiru before following Uranus through the door and making another scan to confirm Jupiter’s location. She glanced past the readings on her visor a couple of times, unable to suppress a shudder as she watched the vicious intensity of the storm continue, even inside the Silent Shield.

“Got a fix?” Though she was within arms’ reach and they were both at the extreme outer edge of the storm’s influence, Uranus’ voice was scratchy with static.

“She hasn’t moved,” Mercury replied, “and her vital signs haven’t improved, but they haven’t gotten any worse, either. That’s something.”

“Good.” Uranus pointed at a mountain off by itself, some distance out into the storm. “If Jupiter’s near the center of this mess, then that mountain must be the place I found her before.”

“Let’s go.”

They teleported to the top of the mountain with no trouble, and Uranus searched the ground below with her eyes—there were a lot more holes in it than she recalled—while Mercury scanned again. They both blinked and jumped involuntarily a moment later as the air around them was suddenly filled with raw energy, but the Shields held, and the Space Sword was no worse for the wear.

“Why does your Weapon get its own Shield, anyway?” Uranus said.

“I’d think it was because the Caduceus is a highly complex device with many delicate internal sections, whereas the purely physical nature of the Space Sword isn’t much more than a piece of metal and a whole lot of magic,” Mercury replied tersely. “Lightning won’t damage it, and there’s no air around it to carry sound waves, so there’s no chance of it getting damaged by thunder.”

“Wait a minute,” Uranus said. “If there’s no air to carry the sound, then why are we...”

“Do you really want to get into a discussion of the laws of both the physical AND magical sciences as they pertain to the conduction of acoustic vibrations?” Mercury interrupted bluntly.

“Not really...”

“I didn’t think so.” She pointed down the side of the mountain. “There. She’s on the other side of that outcropping. The one that looks like a saw.”

“I see it.” They glowed and blinked out again, and this time they didn’t need the Caduceus to spot Jupiter. She was laying sprawled on the stony surface of this moon, with a small fleet of green-glowing spheres hovering above her, each ringed by an aura of electrical force. Although short bursts of energy danced freely between the sections of the Aegis, none of the destructive power of the storm was getting anywhere near Jupiter; even as Mercury and Uranus watched, a thunderbolt smashed into the network of orbs and fizzled out. If the lightning wasn’t hitting Jupiter, though, something else obviously had been, because the back of her fuku was torn and burned, with even the ribbons hanging in ribbons. The worst of the burns were concentrated around small, perfectly round gaps in the fabric, through which Jupiter’s unmarked skin showed much paler than usual.

“I think we can take a pretty good guess as to what happened out here,” Uranus said with a cold look at the Aegis. “Is it safe for us to get near those things?”

“Jupiter’s out cold,” Mercury said, “so that means the Aegis are running on automatic... give me a minute. Computer, engage memory search mode. Subject: Aegis. Find operational information and security data and then display.” The blue gem atop the Caduceus glowed more brightly, and information began to appear on Mercury’s visor. She read through several screens and then told the computer to stop and back up. Rereading the section, Mercury nodded and raised the Caduceus. “Access displayed program and execute.”

The gem lit up again in a single pulse, and the sixteen orbs responded in kind, flashing simultaneously and then moving further out from Jupiter, maintaining their protective barrier while leaving enough room for the two Senshi to get through to her. Mercury stepped forward immediately; Uranus followed a little more cautiously, then knelt to help Mercury turn Jupiter over. They both winced.

The front of her fuku was just as ripped up as the back, and again there were the holes, the small, circular burns that had gone right through the supremely damage-resistant Senshi fighting gear and yet not left so much as a mark on the body beneath. There were also quite a few scrapes and bruises on the front of her legs, plus an ugly, blood-smeared cut on her forehead, and a lot more dust in general.

“Pulse and breathing... are steady.” Mercury took her hand from Jupiter’s throat and began moving the Caduceus down over her friend’s body. “Her left shoulder is dislocated, three of her ribs are cracked, her legs are both half-broken, and there’s that”—she nodded towards the gash on Jupiter’s forehead—“although thankfully it’s not deep, and there’s no sign of a concussion. I’m seeing traces of internal bleeding, but it seems to have stopped.” Mercury frowned at an analysis that popped up on her visor. “Judging by the location and severity of the injuries... she fell?”

“From what?” Uranus demanded.

“I’m not sure... but according to this, these injuries occured _after_ she was knocked out, by what looks to have been a massive electrical surge...” Both Senshi looked at the Aegis. Mercury shook her head. “There are also signs of earlier injuries, mostly bruising along her back. Some stress damage to her left shoulder, unrelated to the dislocation.” She sighed. “Let’s get her back to Saturn.”

“What about those?” Uranus asked, glancing at the hovering orbs.

“Now that they know who we are, they won’t try to stop us from moving Jupiter. As for anything else that they might do... it depends on what really happened out here.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It has to do with the design and function of the Aegis, and to be honest, I don’t entirely understand it myself.” Mercury sighed and ran a hand across her face, hooking a few errant strands of hair over her right ear and out of the way of her visor. “Let’s get her back to the door, at least. I’ll be able to tell what we should do next once we’re there.”

They set about it very slowly and carefully, with Uranus doing most of the lifting and Mercury working to keep Jupiter’s head and dislocated arm from being jostled around too much. Then, nodding at one another, they began mustering their strength for one last teleport. Even though she was unconscious, Jupiter’s powers reacted to her friends’, and she began to glow with the same green light as the Aegis. Their eyes closed as they pictured the area near the door, the two Senshi failed to notice as the floating orbs drew nearer and glowed more brightly, then floated back out, formed a strange pattern, and began drawing electrical force from the storm in on themselves. Although Mercury had dismissed the Caduceus, her visor went into display mode again, filling up with lines of text and insistently flashing diagrams that she didn’t see.

A moment later, the Aegis flared.

# 

The Sciences Director counted herself fortunate to have been on-hand in one of the sensor control rooms when the readings started coming in this time. So did her suboordinates, for that matter; her air of cool, calm, self-assurance tended to have that effect on people. It was a feeling badly needed when equipment readouts started exploding in showers of electrified sparks.

“The new sensor shielding seems to be working, ma’am,” one of the more fortunate operators reported, his console not being one of those currently going up in smoke.

“Readings?”

“Anomaly in motion within metropolitan airspace. Composition, location, airspeed... indeterminate. Large energy readings scattered over a two-kilometer radius, but with no apparent physical source that the system can find. It looks like...” He stopped and checked a different screen. “Confirmed. Broad-spectrum electromagnetic radiation.”

“Dangerous?”

“Not at the level recorded, ma’am. Temporary television and radio signal interference, cellphone failures—not much different from sunspot activity. Our equipment reacted as strongly as it did because of its sensitivity.”

The Director didn’t reply, but moved over to a phone on the wall and dialed. After a moment and an identifying, “Lab,” she spoke.

“Nenori-san. I’m in one of the sensor monitor stations, and an anomaly was just recorded. Have someone get in touch with Resources and tell them that the model nine sensor shielding is effective. What? Yes, and then inform the technicians to start repairs.” She paused. “Tell me, did the specimens there react in any way just now? I see. No, I didn’t expect that they would. Yes, the analysis will be on its way shortly. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and turned back to the sensor operators. “Have a full report on my desk in half an hour. Damage assessment included.”

Several “Yes ma’am”s followed her as she turned and left the room.

# 

Saturn, Michiru, and Calypso hadn’t moved very much since Mercury and Uranus entered the door. They had all taken a seat on the stairs, Saturn putting the Silence Glaive to one side, Michiru putting an arm around Saturn, and Calypso floating behind them with her head resting on their shoulders and an arm around each of them—and, given the lack of space, not much else in the way of a body.

The sight of a disembodied head and upper torso hovering in the air and trailing off into blue mist would have freaked out most people who saw it, let alone got near it or had one of its arms touching them, but the Senshi were not most people, and both Michiru and Saturn understood that Caly was just doing her best to help them—and herself—feel a little less worried. So they sat there, watching the dimension door in silence and waiting for their friends to return.

Both Michiru and Calypso felt it when Saturn suddenly tensed—and then their quiet vigil was shattered as something large in size, indefinite in shape, and intensely bright appeared in the foyer, accompanied by an electric tingle and a blast of thunder that smashed into the sitting group like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

Blinking away the stars as she sat up, Saturn was the first to recover, and her jaw dropped. Uranus and Mercury were standing in the middle of a ring of small, green-glowing spheres, carrying an unconscious and badly-hurt Jupiter between them and just opening their eyes. Seeing the same looks of surprise on both of their faces that she felt on her own, Saturn quickly dispelled the Silent Shields so she could shriek: “WHAT HAPPENED?!”

“How the...” Uranus began, stopping short as the Aegis moved in, their electric glow fading rapidly away. One by one, the orbs touched with tiny clicks, forming the same string that she had earlier seen wrapped around Jupiter’s wrist, the four larger orbs together with six of the smaller ones at each end. The Weapon moved down until it was resting lightly over Jupiter’s body, the two ends lifting themselves up around her neck while the rest hung down, looking like nothing more than an innocuous necklace of pretty, pink-hued stones. The ‘necklace’ lit up once more, and—as if that had been a signal—Jupiter’s tattered uniform became light and was absorbed into the Aegis, leaving behind Makoto. Mercury immediately recalled the Caduceus and started scanning her again.

“Is she alright?” Michiru asked, her voice surprisingly calm as she stood up.

“The change didn’t heal everything, but she’s better off than she was.” Mercury’s voice was just as calm as Michiru’s, but also decidedly neutral. “Saturn?”

Saturn nodded wordlessly and moved over to see to Makoto. Halfway there, she stopped and looked at the dimension door. The storm on the other side had died down considerably in just a few seconds.

“How did you teleport through the door?” Saturn asked.

“We didn’t,” Mercury replied. “Not through the door.”

There was a silence. Her eyes wide, Saturn very slowly pointed towards the ceiling, a gesture that was also a question; Mercury’s response was a neutral gaze, directed not at Saturn, but at the sixteen pink spheres resting on Makoto’s body, rising and falling with her breathing.

Under that gaze, the Aegis shimmered.

 

# 

_(The scene is somewhere on Ganymede. Saturn and ChibiMoon enter from the left.)_

**ChibiMoon** : Aren’t you just the slightest bit worried that those Furies are going to show up?

**Saturn** : Nope.  _(She waves the Silence Glaive)_

**ChibiMoon** : It must be nice to be so unconcerned.

**Saturn** : Oh, hush.  _(She drops a Silent Shield on her friend and turns to the camera)_  Today, we actually seem to have a selection of morals to choose from. There are several points there—Rei keeping the Book even though weird and potentially bad things are happening because of it; Mako-chan facing up to a dragon and debating the wisdom of using the Aegis or not—that could be taken as a commentary on responsibility and the courage it takes to face up to it. Mako-chan and Haruka-papa got into a whole piece about the satisfaction that comes from making the best use of your own abilities, and I think the author even managed to smuggle in a veiled statement against drugs before it was over. And the running statement for the episode appears to be one of how while a little power is good, a lot of it isn’t necessarily better.  _(She makes a face)_  As I can plainly attest.

**ChibiMoon**   _(struggling out of the Shield)_ : Are you STILL feeling sorry for yourself? This, despite the fact that you’ve recently discovered that you can make yourself any age you want?

**Saturn**   _(rolls her eyes)_ : Like I don’t have ENOUGH of an identity crisis going already... first I’m a sweet little girl, then I’m a possessed teenager, then I’m the End of the World Incarnate, then I’m a toddler, then I’m a rugrat who can turn INTO the End of the World Incarnate...

**ChibiMoon** : Oh, quit whining. At least you get a respectable-looking weapon out of the bargain.  _(Pulls out the Cutie Moon Rod from somewhere, even though it’s long since been upgraded.)_  Look at this. THIS is what I have to look forward to in the way of accessories.

**Saturn** : It works, doesn’t it?

**ChibiMoon** : But it doesn’t GO with anything!  _(She transforms to her civilian clothes, then to her Future Princess Serenity gown, then through every fuku design Sailor Moon has ever worn.)_  You see?! NOTHING goes well with it!

**Saturn** : Now that’s not true at all. It matches your brooch perfectly.

_(ChibiMoon gives her a dirty look as the screen fades to black.)_

26/05/01

Considering the length of this one, and that I went back and re-wrote the end of 22... yeah, one week behind schedule doesn’t seem too bad.

Before I forget to mention it again, the Venus Chain Wink Sword that appeared last episode is a DIRECT copy of the same weapon/technique Venus uses in the manga. She IS the Senshi of Metal (or Gold), after all, so she ought to have a sword. I have never seen the original, however, so if any of you HAVE and find that my description doesn’t match... well, now you know why. The Love-V-Chain Song—AKA Love-Me Chain Song; aren’t dual (or is that triple?) identities fun?—is, so far as I’m aware, completely original. With some inspirational credit given to Mars and her Burning Mandala rings.

Some of you may also be wondering where in the world I got the idea for the design of the Aegis. Well, if you find out, let me know, because I wonder about it myself—but I like what I have planned for them, and I think you will too. A little wholesale destruction always goes down well, and I know the Jupiter fans out there will be happy to see her one step closer to the same status her original namesake held. King of the Gods, in case you missed it. Or Queen, in this case. Or is it Princess? Hmmm...

Also, if you’ve been seeing me refer to the Aegis as ‘it’ and ‘them’, don’t worry, they’re not typos, and you’re not seeing things. I suspect I’ll be doing that a lot.

Up next:  
-Senshi spring break; and  
-Why nuclear necklaces don’t make good gifts.


	24. School's Out, and Visions of Things To Come

# 

When the people of Tokyo started waking up on Monday morning, they discovered that a large bank of clouds had moved in over the city during the night. These were not the sort of puffy-white, cottony-soft, and entirely harmless-looking clouds that appear in otherwise clear blue skies; such clouds rarely if ever offend anyone, and wouldn’t have attracted more than a passing glance. Neither were the clouds the sort of looming black thunderheads that boil up before a storm, flashing and rumbling deep within as a warning of things to come. Although most people generally don’t like getting rained on—and others have serious issues with thunder and lightning—there is a certain majestic quality that can be appreciated in such storms, as the power of nature builds up to once again show her children just what she can do. Then too, when the morning starts out with approaching clouds, you know you’ve got some time before the storm begins, so you have a sporting chance to get wherever it is you’re going.

On this day, though, the sky was filled from horizon to horizon with the sort of dreary grey clouds that seem to start at the ground and just keep on going, thickening steadily until the upper floors of office buildings and high- rise apartments vanish within them. There was no visible dawn today, only a steady shift from dark and wet to grey and wet—and it was _profoundly_ wet. It had started raining well before dawn, a slow drizzle of chill water that had left the roads and sidewalks slick, a rain whose chill benumbed flesh and seeped into the very bones despite all measures taken to conserve warmth and dryness, and which promised to continue well into the afternoon, if not the night. Not a single person could so much as look outside without feeling tired and depressed, and so the city as a whole got off to a sluggish, even moody start.

It was a cold, wet, unlovely day. It was, in a word, dismal.

In that, Haruna surmised, as she looked out of the window of the Juuban High teacher’s lounge, the weather was likely to be perfectly suited to the collective mood of the greater student population of Tokyo. After all, today was that dreaded time between exams and spring vacation, the day—no, The Day—when the year-end marks were posted.

This year, the particular honor of actually putting up the marks for the students at Juuban had been delegated to her—‘delegated’ as in the old downhill-sliding adage. Saezuri Kakura, the music teacher, had just appeared in her office on Saturday afternoon, dropped off a key and some cheerful instructions, and then disappeared before Haruna could make any kind of coherent response.

Personally, she suspected it might be some twisted aspect of Principal Hashido’s sense of humor at work, though it probably also had something to do with the fact that she was the most junior member of the high school’s current staff. That rushed, last-minute transfer back in January had carried all sorts of drawbacks with it—not the least of which was the mess it had made of her classes—so it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that there was a secret end-of-term lottery amongst the faculty to see who got to delay the commencement of their own meager break plans to post the students’ exam results and overall grades.

*I’ll have to remember to nose around a bit next term,* Haruna thought, sipping her coffee. *I’d rather not get stuck sitting around this place by myself for an entire day _again_ if I can help it.*

Actually, she wasn’t totally alone—discounting the ebb and flow of students that had started right around eight-thirty, Niwa, the head groundskeeper, was here somewhere as well—and she could have helped it. All that she’d really had to do was put the results up on the bulletin boards outside the front entrance, a task that would have taken maybe half an hour and not required her to come inside or wait around at all. She had been _sorely_ tempted to do just that.

But it had been raining when Haruna arrived at seven-thirty, and when she took a moment to ask Niwa, he said it had been raining when he got there at around six—and it was giving every indication that it would keep on raining for quite some time. The bulletin boards had plastic guards to protect notices during just this sort of bad weather, but Haruna doubted that she could get all the papers into those holders without at least some of the results getting water-smeared right out of existence, and even if she somehow managed that, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the students to stand around in this sort of cold and wet.

So instead, she was sitting in the lounge, drinking her coffee, reading a book borrowed from the library, and—in general—just doing whatever came to mind that might pass the time. Out in the foyer, students appeared and disappeared through the doors with an irregular frequency. Some came alone, though most were in groups; several looked at their marks and flew into fits of hysteria, many of them as joyous as others were depressed, while others merely noted their marks and left. Most of them, Haruna was sure, didn’t even realize she was there, and none stayed any longer than they had to.

Almost none.

A few minutes short of quarter to eleven, when she was just about done with the book—and long since finished with the coffee—Haruna heard the sounds of opening doors, shuffling, rain-squelching footsteps—enough of them to belong to a small army, or so it sounded—and then a familiar whine.

“Whyyyyyy does it have to be such a rotten day out?” Usagi complained. “Isn’t it _enough_ that we have to endure this torment without them making us go through it freezing cold and soaked right down to the bone, too?”

“Quit whining at us, odango-atama,” Rei replied sharply, her presence not really surprising Haruna. “We can’t change the weather any more than you can.”

“Cut it out, you two,” Minako interrupted, her voice sounding as if the gloomy weather had gotten even her ultra-perky spirit down. “The last thing we need on a day like today is a fight. Let’s just get our marks and then go find a place to dry off and warm up. Does that sound like a plan to everyone?”

There were a number of fervent replies of agreement, many more squishing and squeaking steps, and then a short silence followed by Usagi’s voice rising into a screech of protest. “WHAT IS THIS?!”

“What’s what?” an unfamiliar male voice said. There was an accent of some sort there, Haruna guessed, and the owner of the voice sounded as if he were several years older than her students.

“THIS!” The wall thumped. “This right here!”

“Did you fail another course?” Rei asked. A moment later, she spoke again, her voice having made the jump from good-natured teasing to numbed shock. “That’s... that has to be a mistake.”

“You see what I mean?” Usagi said.

“This is impossible!”

“Now wait a minute...”

On that note, Haruna closed her book and got up from her chair. She knew enough to know that Rei and Usagi could get into a fight at the drop of a hat on even the best of days, and this, being far from the best of days, would probably make their imminent argument a lot worse.

*For ‘worse,’* she thought wearily, *see also ‘noisier,’ ‘higher-pitched,’ ‘longer,’ and ‘meaner.’* They were about four seconds away from exploding at each other, and if nothing else, Haruna wanted to get through this day without getting a headache.

“Can I be of some help here?” she asked, walking out into the hall and setting off a round of nervous starts and half-jumps. In addition to the three girls who had spoken, Haruna saw that Ryo and Yuuichirou were also present, but that Ami and Makoto—rather surprisingly—were not. As for the unfamiliar voice, it had to belong to the tall, white-haired, and almost inconceivably handsome young man whose right arm Minako was holding in a supremely proprietary grip.

“Hino-san, Kumada-san” Haruna said, nodding politely to Rei and Yuuichirou. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Rei replied, nodding. Haruna wasn’t surprised when Yuuichirou didn’t add anything except a smile and a quick nod to that. She was a bit of a professional when it came to the dating game, and there had been signs at Usagi’s party in the autumn that there was _definitely_ something between Yuuichirou and the young Shinto maiden. He was clearly devoted to her, and she in turn was at least interested, if not quite so openly or possessively as Minako seemed to be of the white-haired newcomer.

“Oh,” Minako said quickly, “Haruna-sensei, this is Arthur Knight. He’s a friend I met in England. Arthur-kun, this Sakurada Haruna.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Rather like his accent, Arthur’s bow was half the Japanese style and half the courtly style of ballroom dancing and old English, and he reinforced it with a charming smile. Haruna ignored the fact that her heart skipped a beat at that smile as she returned the bow.

“You must be the mystery man that everyone was talking about last week.”

“Yes, I guess I must be.” Not only did he not look at Minako while saying that, but he didn’t even appear to be trying not to. She still looked up and made a face at him, of course.

“Haruna-sensei,” Usagi said then, “about my marks...”

“I overheard,” Haruna interrupted. “May I?” She moved past Usagi and scanned through the list of names, then began to read aloud:

“Art and Art History. Exam: 72. Term Grade: 80. As it happens, I spoke with Meijin-san last Thursday. He said that even if your technique was a little shaky at times, you had the creative aspect of the course down pat. You were weak on the ‘history’ part, though, which would have gotten you a 70 or 75 for the course, but he was impressed by the painting you did for your final project and decided it was worth a better grade. It was a landscape, right? Something about the moon?”

“History. Exam: 84. Term Grade: 80. I can tell you for certain that this one’s accurate. Your marks from the first half of the term weren’t that good, but you did better towards the winter break and in the last two months. Group study sessions, I believe? At any rate, you improved enough and scored sufficiently well on the exam to level out the 60 you were heading for before Nurin-san left. Even if you did fall asleep at the end of the test.”

“Home and General Economics. Exam: 76. Term Grade: 78. Ryori-san has said several times that she’s been telling you the entire term to thank Makoto for teaching you how to cook those five or six recipes, and that you should stay away from sewing machines like your life depended on it, so I don’t suppose I have to repeat any of it. She’s also said that she was impressed by how well you handled yourself when the course switched over to basic business and finance, and that you showed a strong sense of teamwork and good leadership ability.”

“Math. Exam: 68. Term Grade: 77. You scored fairly consistently on quizzes and tests for the whole term, and much better than I’ve seen you do before—for which I think you have a great deal to thank Ami—but you didn’t do quite so well on the final, so it brought your mark down.”

“Political Science. Exam: 94. Term Grade: 92.”

A dead silence followed that last one. “94?” Minako said slowly. “Usagi... got a 90... on a test? For a CLASS?” Haruna nodded, and after a long moment, Minako started to chuckle. “Your parents aren’t going to know what hit them, Usagi-chan.”

“This isn’t funny!” Usagi protested. “I have a reputation to maintain! Do you have any idea what marks like this are going to cost me?”

“Yes,” Rei said. “Once your parents know that you actually _can_ get these kinds of grades, they’ll be a lot less tolerant of your usual results in the future, so you may actually have to do some real work for a change.”

“Exactly! I’ll...” Usagi stopped and glared at Rei. “There has to have been some kind of mistake,” she insisted in a level voice. “Seiji-sensei’s one of the toughest markers in school; I _can’t_ have gotten a grade like that in his class!”

“Were we back in junior high right now,” Haruna said, “I’d have agreed with you just out of habit. I don’t think I ever saw you get a mark higher than about sixty percent, and you only passed the high school entrance exam by—what? Five? Six points?”

“If even that much,” Rei murmured, getting another glare—which she returned.

“I saw your marks when I was putting the lists up this morning,” Haruna continued, “and I’ll admit that they rather surprised me, so I went into the records and dug up your grades. As it turns out, your marks have been increasing steadily over the last two or three years. It’s most noticeable in the humanities; for example, your final mark for the English course you took last term was up by more than fifty percent of what you were getting in junior high, and your History marks have improved similarly. Even in the sciences, you’re scoring significantly better than you used to, and while the improvements there aren’t as great as in everything else, they’ve at least brought you up to the point where you’re not right on the edge of failing everything.”

“But... but...”

“So these really ARE her marks?” Minako asked, looking at the list a second time.

“Yes, they are.”

“But... but...”

“I guess all that studying was bound to rub off sooner or later,” Rei said as she turned to Usagi, who was still sputtering like a bad engine. “Now sit down and take a breath before you hurt yourself.” She led Usagi to a chair in the waiting area by the office. “Yuuichirou, give me a hand here.”

“Sure thing,” Yuuichirou said quickly, as he moved to assist. Most of the others smiled at this; Minako rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Do _you_ have any questions about your marks?” Haruna asked.

“Oh, no. They’re just about what I was expecting.” Minako grinned. “I can’t wait to tell Ami-chan that I got a better grade in English than she did.”

“By one entire point,” Ryo said lightly.

“Hey, better is better. Let’s not scribble over the details.”

“‘Quibble,’” Arthur said immediately.

“You said what?”

“It’s ‘quibble,’ not ‘scribble,’” the white-haired Englishman explained, with just a hint of a long-suffering patience, a tone that spoke eloquently of many, many previous encounters with Minako’s unique linguistic style.

“While we’re on the subject,” Haruna said quickly, interrupting Minako’s reply, “where _are_ Ami and Makoto? I would have expected them to come in with the rest of you.”

“Uh... yeah.” Minako’s cheery smile, which thanks to Arthur had already died down, now faded completely. “They’re at home. Mako-chan... had an accident yesterday, so Ami-chan’s looking after her, and we’re getting their marks for them.”

“I see.” Haruna looked closely at Ryo and Minako. “Would either of you care to tell me what’s been going on with Makoto recently?”

“‘Going on,’ Haruna-sensei?”

“Don’t try to dodge, Minako; I have eyes and ears, and Makoto hasn’t been acting at all like herself for weeks now. She was almost asleep on her feet in the mornings, and I can think of at least five separate instances when she was completely spaced out—and _not_ in the usual way. She’s been tired, vague, and even forgetful, and now you’re saying that she had an ‘accident.’ If she’s in trouble, I want to know, NOW.”

Minako’s mouth opened and then closed when she saw the serious look on Haruna’s face. Matching the expression, she replied, “Mako-chan isn’t in any kind of trouble, Haruna-sensei. She just... she recently inherited some things that used to belong to an old friend of hers who passed away a while ago. They hadn’t exactly spoken much lately, and when these things just showed up all of a sudden, it hit Mako-chan a little hard.”

In a very loose way, that was true—if one considered a past life to be an ‘old friend,’ or if you viewed the abilities to sense emotions and communicate with plants as things you could inherit. Next to the ongoing wear-and-tear picking up other people’s emotions had been inflicting on Makoto, the Aegis were almost inconsequential. Or rather, they _would_ have been, if she hadn’t gone ahead and used them in spite of all the warnings.

“Oh. I see.” Haruna sighed and shook her head. “One of you could have mentioned this sooner, you know.”

“We could have,” Minako admitted, “but we decided not to. Don’t take this the wrong way, Haruna-sensei, but when a student has a problem like this, most of the time the teacher’s reaction is to send them to a counselor. Mako-chan wouldn’t have taken that very well.”

“No, I don’t suppose she would.” There were some very distinct qualities in each of the members of this group that Usagi had gathered around herself during that year in junior high, and Haruna had gotten to know them rather well. Taken individually, it might seem odd for the five of them to be such good friends, but when seen as a whole, their relationship suddenly made a lot of sense; each contributed something that the others either didn’t have or didn’t have as much of, and their very different personalities and talents complemented each other’s best strengths and compensated for each other’s weaknesses.

Haruna didn’t say it out loud, but where Ami was obviously the brain—and Usagi just as clearly the heart—Makoto had always struck her as the ‘shoulder’ of this nearly organic friendship, both in the sense of what the others leaned on as well as what did the heavy lifting. She was a reassuring sort of person to have around: reliable; easy to talk to; supportive; a lot like what counselors aimed for.

And as the old saying went—everywhere except in Minako’s mind, anyway—doctors were always the worst patients. Something similar would likely apply here.

“She’s not too badly hurt, is she?”

“No,” Minako said. “She took a fall and got roughed up a bit, but mostly she’s just really tired. She’ll be back up in a day or two like nothing happened.” Minako paused as a thought came to her. “Unless of course Ami-chan decides to exact some sort of revenge on her...” She turned that possibility over in her mind, then shook her head and turned her attention back to Haruna. “So, Haruna-sensei; out of curiosity, why are you here today? This is the fourth time I’ve seen end-of-term marks in this place, and it’s the first time there’s ever been a teacher around to clear things out for us.”

“That’s ‘clear things up,’” Arthur corrected. “Up, not out.”

“Whatever. Has there been a change in school policy or something?”

“If there has, I haven’t been advised.” Haruna very briefly outlined her suspicions about the procedure for deciding which teacher got stuck with the last job of the year, and then added a quick explanation of her decision to move everything indoors. Ryo thanked her on behalf of the entire student body for that consideration, but Minako responded rather differently.

“You mean you’re going to just sit here for the rest of the day and _waste_ a perfectly good afternoon?” the blonde demanded in tones of outrage. Ryo blinked at her choice of words and then glanced out the front door at ongoing rain; Arthur and Haruna joined him.

“Your definition of ‘a good afternoon’ is miles apart from mine, Mina- chan,” Arthur said finally.

“Quiet, you,” Minako warned, as she looked around at the foyer and office area. “You said Niwa-san was here somewhere, Haruna-sensei?”

“Yes,” Haruna replied cautiously. “The last time I saw him was about fifteen minutes ago. I think he said he was going up to check the drains on the roof...”

“He _would_ have to be outside,” Minako muttered. She shook her head, released Arthur’s arm, and flipped up the hood of her raincoat. “You wait here; I’ll be back.” She was down the corridor and heading up the stairs before anyone could stop her or ask what she was plotting. Across the hall, Rei, Usagi, and Yuuichirou watched her go and then looked over to the others, the same question written on all three of their faces. Arthur sighed, shook his head, and glanced at Haruna.

“You haven’t had lunch yet, have you?”

# 

The first vague thought to enter Makoto’s mind as she woke up was a mild curiosity as to why the rocks beneath her were so soft, warm, and flexible. It took a moment for her to realize that she wasn’t lying on the rocky surface of a distant moon, but rather on a waterbed; once that recognition had settled in, Makoto quickly became aware of the familiar presences gathered around what she now understood to be Michiru’s bed, and opened her eyes. Mercury, Calypso, Michiru, Haruka, Hotaru, ChibiUsa, and Luna were all sitting or standing around the bed, watching her. Mercury had the Caduceus out and her visor switched on, and Makoto could feel a small spot on her forehead which was probably that little sensor-node-thing from the Mercury Computer.

“Hey,” Makoto whispered, forcing a small smile.

“Hey yourself,” Haruka replied, with something that approached her trademark cocky grin. “You still alive?”

“I think so.” Makoto tried to sit up, but just lifting her head off the pillow made her incredibly dizzy and started the muscles in her neck and back screaming in protest. “Yeah,” she added, laying back and trying to relax, “I’m alive. I hurt too much to be dead. What happened?”

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Mercury said. “A few minutes after you shoved Haruka back through the dimension door, it was destroyed by an explosion on your side. We had to come _here_ before Saturn could open another door, and when she did, there was a king-sized thunderstorm in progress on the other side. Haruka and I found you right in the middle of it, with _those_ floating around you.”

At Mercury’s nod and quick glance, Makoto reached up with one sore hand to touch the source of the faint weight that she had been growing more aware of, a group of small shapes resting lightly against her collarbone and the sides of her throat. She also felt a familiar cotton fabric, and could clearly see the sleeve of her green pajamas out of the corner of one eye.

“Why am I wearing these?”

“Well,” Haruka began, breaking into a genuine smile, “there _was_ a bit of a discussion about that when we put you to bed. Michiru was all for stripping you down and...” Since Michiru was sitting on the edge of the mattress, just in front of Haruka, the statement ended with a sudden cough.

“We were going to take you home,” Mercury said, while Michiru withdrew her elbow from Haruka’s ribs, “but Caly noticed that the Aegis were still active even after you’d changed back to normal. We weren’t sure what that meant, and since Hotaru couldn’t open a dimension door into the apartment—we’ll explain that to you later,” she added, in response to Makoto’s questioning look. “We couldn’t use a dimension door; we didn’t want to risk teleporting you again until we were reasonably sure you were okay AND we knew what the Aegis were doing; and we would have had a lot of trouble physically moving you across town, so Michiru donated her bed—again—I went and picked some things up from the apartment, and Haruka went to get Luna.”

“...who was not at all pleased to hear _why_ she was needed,” Luna stated, covering her worry and relief with an angry growl. “I thought we’d made an impression on you of just how dangerous using the Aegis is, Makoto.”

“It was an accident.” Speaking slowly, Makoto described what had happened after she had pushed Uranus through the dimension door. She explained the Furies’ apparent ability to sense the Aegis, the unexpected boomerang effect the Weapon had demonstrated when she tried to get rid of it, and the race that had been touched off as a result.

“I hit one of the Furies with Supreme Thunder,” she continued, “and it backed off, so I tried using a Thunder Dragon on the whole group. I had to jump and fire back down over the Aegis to hit them, but it worked, and they either ran or were blown away, so I tried to get the ones that were left into a single group so I could do it again. I think the Aegis had been absorbing more energy, because when I turned to fire the second Thunder Dragon, they caught up with me a lot faster than they had before. The attack hit the Aegis instead of the Furies, the Aegis started charging up for something, the Furies ran for it... and the next thing I remember is waking up here.” Makoto tried to lick her lips. “Could I have a glass of water? My whole mouth feels dry.”

“That’s not surprising,” Michiru noted. “All you’ve had to drink for the past twenty-four hours is what we’ve been able to get you to drink—and that’s not really very much.”

Makoto stared at her. “I’ve been asleep for an entire _day?_”

“Not precisely asleep,” Calypso said, turning around where she sat in mid-air to pick up an empty glass and a pitcher of water from the bedside table beyond Mercury. “There’s been a minor but steady flow of energy going into your body from the Aegis—and then back again—and a lot of that has been communication. Of a sort.” She set the pitcher down, frowned at the lukewarm water in the glass, and closed her hands around it with a look of concentration. After a moment in which her skin glowed blue, the Nereid nodded and held the now-cool glass forward for Makoto, who took it and drained it in one long swallow.

“So I’ve been talking in my sleep?” Makoto asked.

“In a telepathic sense,” Calypso said with a nod. “The information coming from the Aegis was mostly technical data about the Weapon itself and how to use it, and the information coming from you sounded rather like your personal biography.” She blushed. “I hope you don’t mind that I listened in on it. I didn’t hear all that much, and we _did_ need to know what was going on.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Makoto said, handing the glass back and then -with a fair bit of help from Mercury and Luna—pulling herself to a sitting position. Maybe it was the water, or maybe it was just being awake, but she was beginning to feel better. “Why would the Aegis want to hear my life story?”

“The Aegis are supposed to function by attuning their energy to the energy of the user,” Luna replied. “Not just the power of Jupiter, but the unique life-force of the woman herself. Everything you are has been shaped by the experiences of your past, so it makes a certain amount of sense that the Aegis would need to know what you’ve been through. That part and the subliminal instructions they’ve been giving you didn’t bother me too much.”

“But...”

“But,” Mercury said, adjusting the readout on her visor, “the Aegis are definitely doing something _more_ than just exchanging information with you. There’s unusual electrochemical activity in areas of your brain that don’t have anything to do with memory, conscious or otherwise, your red blood cell count has gone up by thirty-four percent, and your digestive system-“

Makoto’s stomach promptly growled—loudly—and she realized that she was absolutely starving.

“I think that we can guess what you were about to say, Mercury,” Haruka noted blandly. “Well, since Mako-chan’s incapacitated, and Hotaru-chan hasn’t learned how to make food appear from thin air yet, who’s doing the cooking?”

“I can have a bowl of chicken soup ready in about thirty minutes,” Michiru said, looking at Makoto and smiling. “It may not be gourmet, but it should fill you up. Does that sound okay?” The response was another stomach-growl, and the older girl nodded as she stood up. “Hotaru-chan, ChibiUsa, you come with me. We can fix some sandwiches for her while the soup heats up.”

As the three of them filed out, Calypso poured another glass of water and then looked at the nearly-empty pitcher. Shrugging, she handed the glass back to Makoto, stuck her hand into the jar to absorb the last traces of water from it, and then followed Michiru and the other two out and down to the kitchen—clearing the railing of the upstairs landing and drifting gracefully down to the ground floor in the process.

After Calypso’s casual defiance of gravity, Haruka shook her head and turned to Mercury. “How do you get used to that? The floating, I mean.”

“Gradually,” Mercury replied. “Just like the rest of her quirks.”

“We still need to have a talk about some of those ‘quirks,’“ Makoto noted, removing the sensor from her forehead and handing it over to Mercury before pushing herself up out of bed.

“Are you sure you really want to try moving around right now?” Luna asked, catching Makoto by the arm and helping her stand.

“Luna,” Makoto replied, her voice strained but level, “I don’t know what it is that the Aegis are doing to me, but you people have been pouring water into me for the past twenty-four hours. If I don’t use the washroom soon, I am going to explode.”

# 

Michiru usually tried to arrange things so that Haruka never got to answer the phone, but when the phone rang, she was busy making sure ChibiUsa, Hotaru, and Calypso cleaned up the dishes. Ami and Luna were going through the Mercury Computer’s database one byte at a time trying to find anything on the Aegis, and Makoto—from the sound of things—was just getting out of the shower, so by default, that left Haruka.

“Hello, you’ve reached Seabreeze Bed and Breakfast. Can I help you?”

“Um...” Usagi’s voice was very uncertain. “Actually, I think I may have dialed the wrong number...”

“Why are you calling us by phone when you’ve got your communicator to reach us with?” Haruka asked pointedly, leaning back against the wall.

Usagi was silent. “You know, Haruka, you’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.”

“Who said it was a joke? The way the rest of you keep crashing here, we might as well go into the overnight motel business.”

“If you’re _that_ eager to see Michiru in a maid’s uniform, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.” Usagi said dryly, and without the least trace of embarrassment. ”Now, if I can drag you away from your fantasies for just a moment...”

“Uh, yeah,” Haruka agreed hastily, wondering why _she_ was the one blushing after that exchange. “Why _are_ you calling by phone, anyway?”

“We’re at a restaurant, entertaining one of Mina-chan’s wonderful ideas. It would have been a little bit of a problem trying to use the communicators in mixed company.” She explained the situation.

“You took your teacher out to lunch?” Haruka said it with a certain slow astonishment.

“What?” Usagi demanded. “Is there something wrong with that? She did all the students a nice turn and gave up a morning’s worth of her own time, so why _shouldn’t_ we do something nice for her?”

“Well, if you’re going to try and bribe some extra points out of a teacher, don’t you think you ought to have done it _before_ she marked the test?”

“For your information,” Usagi said flatly, “I did fine on the exams.”

“Suuure you did.” There was another round of silence before Usagi spoke again.

“How’s Mako-chan doing?”

“She woke up again a little while ago,” Haruka reported, “and it looks like she’s going to make it stick for longer than ten minutes this time.” She stepped away from the wall and began to pace in an erratic fashion as she talked. Haruka tended to walk around while she talked on the phone, and so— after getting accidentally tripped up or clotheslined a few times by outstretched phone cords—Michiru had replaced the older phones in the house with newer, cordless models. “She’s in the process of making herself human again as I speak, and we managed to get some food into her and get some details about what happened out. So far, things seem more or less okay.”

“And the Aegis?”

“The brain trust is still drawing a major blank on that front. Whatever it is that the Aegis are doing to Mako-chan, they let Hotaru heal her _very_ easily _and_ made her hungry enough to eat at your pace for a while, but aside from that...” At the muffled sound of something falling down upstairs, Haruka stopped talking and pacing and looked up.

“Haruka?”

“Hang on a sec.” She looked over at Michiru, who was coming out of the kitchen with her attention and a worried frown directed towards the source of the noise. “You heard it, too?”

Heading for the stairs, Michiru nodded. She paused at the sound of another thump, and her frown went from worried to mildly curious.

“Heard what?” Usagi asked.

“Give us a minute, will you?” Haruka said into the phone, as she followed Michiru up the stairs. As they neared the top, they could hear the words of a low-key argument going on in the master bedroom, and Makoto stepped out a moment later, dried off and fully dressed, but also looking annoyed about something.

“What?” she snapped, looking crossly at the two older girls.

“We heard something fall,” Michiru replied calmly. “We thought you might have fainted.”

“I don’t faint,” Makoto said flatly. “Excuse me.” She walked past the two of them, radiating the air of someone who’s just been mortally insulted and tugging angrily at the string of the Aegis, still hanging around her neck in that precisely placed manner. As Makoto stomped down the stairs, Ami and Luna emerged from the room, glancing cautiously in her direction.

“What happened?” Michiru asked.

“She fell down,” Ami said.

“That’s it?” Haruka looked over the railing as Makoto made her way into the kitchen, radiating a cloud of indignation. “Why would that get her so worked up?”

“She tripped over her own feet,” Ami explained. “_Three_ times.”

“We only heard two,” Michiru murmured faintly.

“I caught her the last time,” Luna said, “although I think that may have upset her as much as the falling down did.”

“Will somebody tell me what is going on?” Usagi’s voice demanded from the receiver in Haruka’s hand.

“Mako-chan seems to have inherited your long-lost clumsiness in addition to your appetite,” Haruka informed her. Her eyes turned to Ami and Luna. “And do we _still_ not have the slightest idea as to why that would be happening?” Both of them shook their heads. “That’s about what I figured.”

There was a thump and a crash from the kitchen, followed closely by an explosive, “DAMN IT!”

Michiru winced and hurried back down the stairs, with Ami and Luna close behind. Haruka scrambled to get out of their way and then shook her head and raised the phone again as she followed, albeit moving more slowly than the others had.

“You should probably go back to your lunch, Usagi. I have a feeling that things are going to be a little busy around here for a while.”

“Uh-huh.” There was a sigh. “Just make sure you get Ami-chan and Mako-chan back to the apartment at some point, okay? It’ll look kind of strange if we ask Yuuichirou-kun to drive us all the way over to your place so we can check up on Mako-chan, and I think Haruna-sensei might want to see her, too, just to make sure that she’s okay.”

“’Okay’ probably isn’t the word I’d use to describe Mako-chan right now,” Haruka noted, with a glance at the kitchen. “But don’t worry too much. We’ll take care of things—as usual.”

“In that case,” Usagi said, “I’ll be sure to keep my eyes and ears open for the explosions.”

“And who says we haven’t taught you anything?”

# 

It had been a very quiet day for Setsuna—literally, as well as metaphorically. The depressing weather cut the usual flow of customer traffic to the point where Setsuna could have counted the number of actual entries into the store on the fingers of one hand, and of those, only one had actually bought anything. The weather had also had its impact on her employers; Hanna had been uncharacteristically subdued all day, and Annah—laboring under a massive case of the blahs, or so her sister had informed the employees—hadn’t come in at all. Guomo had gone in search of quieter day-to-day employment last week, and since his replacement—a sweet university freshman named Megumi—wasn’t scheduled to begin until Friday, that left Setsuna alone with Hanna and Ifumi for most of the day.

“It happens now and then,” Hanna had said, as—at Setsuna’s suggestion— the three of them sat down to lunch in the food court, within easy view of the shop in case the unlikely happened and another customer appeared. “Every so often, usually when you’re not expecting it, one of these slow days comes along, and everything just stops. Having said that,” she added, with a glance at one of the skylights overhead and the gloomy clouds above it, “this particular slowdown wasn’t quite as unexpected as some of them.”

Things picked up a little in the afternoon, though. Right around two, at the sounds of familiar voices and a familiar pulse from the strange otherspace where the Garnet Orb waited while she wasn’t using it, Setsuna looked up from a series of adjustments she was making to a pale green dress and saw Usagi and several of the others out in the store. There was a slightly older woman with them whom Setsuna didn’t recognize, but who wore an expression of familiar bemusement at finding herself in—and very much enjoying—the company of her juniors. And, as she had known from the pulse, Ryo was also present, looking a bit incomplete and perhaps even uncomfortable without Ami.

Smiling to herself, Setsuna made a mental note to mention that to Ami the next time she saw her, and then got up and went out to greet them.

“There you are,” Usagi said. “Are they still forcing you to endure endless screaming matches while they work you to exhaustion in this sweatshop?” She said it loud enough to be overheard by Hanna, who was over behind the cash register in her half of the store, going over the books.

“Annah and I don’t scream at each other, Usagi-chan,” Hanna replied, without looking up, “we shout. And I take offense at the term ‘sweatshop;’ the room in the back has excellent air conditioning.”

“I stand corrected,” Usagi apologized with a bow. “And I suppose if I mention ‘the rat race,’ you’ll tell me there aren’t any rats on the premises, either?”

“No,” Hanna agreed, “there aren’t any rats—but there is _one_ furry little long-eared annoyance we have to worry about from time to time.” She looked up, smiling, and nodded to those of Usagi’s friends she knew, these being everyone except Haruna and Arthur. While the others nodded back—and Yuuichirou hastened to explain to Rei that he knew Hanna because he shopped here every so often—Usagi got on with the introductions.

“Hanna, Setsuna,” Usagi said, “this is Sakurada Haruna. Haruna-sensei, these are Sousei Hanna and Meiou Setsuna.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Haruna said.

“Likewise,” Setsuna replied, smiling again. “Usagi-chan’s mentioned you a number of times.”

“I can imagine.”

“‘Sensei,’“ Hanna repeated curiously, although not as a question. ”Interesting. I would have expected the strain of teaching Usagi-chan and Mina-chan to give anybody who tried it white hairs.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be teaching for that to happen,” Arthur put in lightly, looking away from Minako as he spoke. He made no additional sound, but he did stand up very straight as Minako promptly stepped on his foot.

“Arthur Knight,” Usagi and Minako said together, in the same dry, flat tone of voice. Hanna smiled and turned to Minako.

“Enthusiasm is all well and good, Mina-chan, but you have to be a _little_ more gentle with men. Otherwise, they tend to run away.”

“Not much chance of that,” Minako said with a brilliant smile. “He’s visiting from England—indefinitely.” Arthur sighed, shifting his trapped arm slightly, and Hanna smiled again.

“So, what brings you all here on this most wonderful“—her tone and her smile turned a bit crooked—“of afternoons?”

“We’ve got a customer for you,” Usagi said. “Haruna-sensei needs a dress.”

“That would be for the funeral,” Hanna guessed. “The one that’ll be taking place after your mother sees your grades?” Usagi gave her a dark look.

“Good guess,” Rei complimented the saleswoman, getting a look of her own, ”but not quite the right one. As it happens, Usagi somehow managed to score well on her exams this semester—_unusually_ well, if you take my meaning.”

“Oh,” Hanna said. “You’re hoping that official testimony will help convince Ikuko-chan that you did well, is that it? So helping your teacher get a new dress is a _bribe,_ then—all right, now I understand.” Seeing that Setsuna had already gone to get her things, Hanna gathered up Haruna and moved her towards the selection of dresses in her sister’s side of the shop. Halfway there, she said, “I see you’ve been snared in the Tsukino web as well.”

“The what?” Haruna asked.

“That’s what my sister and I called it when we went to school with Usagi-chan’s mother. There’s something about the two of them—and the little one, ChibiUsa, as well—that makes it nearly impossible to refuse them something once you’ve let yourself go and be their friend. You can evade the subject; you can argue with them; you can get all worked up into a holy fury about it; and they’ll just go ‘Oh, but’ and flash those huge eyes and sweet smile at you, and you’ve lost. Am I close?”

“Fairly,” Haruna admitted, blushing. “When they found me at school today, Minako insisted that they take me out to lunch, and Usagi was right with her the entire way. I let it slip that I have a date this weekend, and Usagi immediately started talking about this place.” She shook her head. “I know they didn’t expect to see me today, but I still can’t shake the feeling that Usagi and Minako somehow had this entire afternoon planned out between them before they ever got to the school.”

“They’re quite a pair,” Hanna agreed as they reached the dresses. “Now, let’s see...” She glanced at Haruna, then at the dresses, and then over at Setsuna, who was returning with a measuring tape in one hand and a bag of assorted tools of the tailoring trade in the other. “What do you think, Setsuna? One of the green evening gowns?”

Setsuna also looked at Haruna for a moment, and then nodded. “That might work,” she agreed. “Or maybe a cocktail dress.”

Over the next half hour, Haruna found herself being ushered repeatedly back and forth between the changing rooms and the front of the store. Each time she came out, the small crowd would offer their expert critiques, after which Hanna and Setsuna would set to work, taking measurements and considering alterations. Ryo disappeared at some point between the second and third dress to make a phone call, and Yuuichirou was very careful to keep his attention and appraisal of each new outfit as neutral as possible. Arthur, however, more than made up for the overall lack of input from the other two guys. Minako would consider one aspect of the dress and offer her opinion on it, speaking as ever in her capacity as the ‘Love Goddess extraordinaire,’ and then she would immediately turn and ask Arthur for the correlating consideration from the guy’s perspective—and get it.

“Very nice,” was Minako’s response to the first dress, “but just a bit formal, I think. Too much skirt, and too complex a top. This is supposed to be a date-dress, not a ballroom gown. Arthur?”

“It looks good,” he replied, “but you’re right about the formal part. It might scare the guy and do more harm than good.”

“I don’t know,” Minako said, frowning as Haruna came out in the second dress. “It looked good on the rack, but it seems a little too understated now that she’s actually wearing it. You could wear it to a family reunion, but on a date? No, I don’t think it’d work. Arthur?”

“It _is_ a bit on the domestic side,” he agreed. “It doesn’t really try to take advantage of her legs like it should.”

“Ack!” Minako choked, waving her hands as Haruna appeared in the third dress. “Oh, this won’t do at all! She’s a woman, not a sack of potatoes! We want to _use_ her shape, not blot it out! Who designed this travesty?”

Arthur wisely said nothing to interrupt Minako, but merely shook his head.

On the fourth dress, Minako pursed her lips. “I think you might want to save that one until you know this guy a little better, Haruna-sensei. It makes very good use of your figure, but it hints at just a _little_ too much for a first date.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Arthur said, grinning. “_I_ sort of like it.”

“You just be quiet,” Minako said, brandishing a warning finger at him.

As odd as it was to have a couple of her students and a bunch of their friends helping to select this dress, Haruna couldn’t deny that she was having more fun than she would have thought possible on this wet, ugly day.

Finally, after two cocktail dresses, three evening gowns, and that one disastrous piece of work which Minako refused to dignify with the name ‘dress,’ a suitable outfit was found. Hanna and Setsuna took a final series of measurements and informed Haruna that the necessary adjustments would be finished by Wednesday.

“And now that that’s done,” Hanna said, while Haruna was changing back, ”you might as well go home with your friends, Setsuna. I think this is about all the business we’re going to do today, so I’m just going to close up the shop and head home before the weather decides to get any worse.”

“You’re sure?”

“What? Do you _want_ to stay? Go on, take advantage of my generous mood while it lasts. You too, Ifumi. Go see if that cute young man in the computer store has a break coming or something.” Ifumi cast a quick glance to the store across the hall and blushed, and Hanna, chuckling to herself, went over to get the dress from Haruna.

“Are you going to go talk to him?” Setsuna asked her co-worker.

“Well... I don’t know,” Ifumi replied, brushing nervously at her short brown hair with one hand and taking another fast, blushing look at the young man in question. Setsuna considered the situation for a moment and then shrugged mentally; why not?

“Do you believe in fortune-telling, Ifumi?”

“What? Um... well, sort of... I suppose...”

“That’ll do. Let me see your hand for a moment.” Setsuna pretended to make a show of studying the girl’s palm when in fact her eyes were searching through several thousand or so different lines of soft green probability. Setsuna hadn’t used her time-sight for a while, but as she had noticed, it seemed to go faster and easier with each attempt. She focused on points of the lines that represented six months from now, and then six months after that; then she let the vision go and folded Ifumi’s fingers closed. “Go talk to him.”

Ifumi blinked. “But... I don’t... are you certain?”

“Nothing’s ever entirely _certain,_“ Setsuna replied calmly, “but I think it’s very _likely_ that you’ll enjoy where talking to him will eventually take you.” She looked up, smiled mysteriously, and winked. Ifumi blinked again and blushed even more, then smiled back at Setsuna, took a deep breath, and strode across the hall. Minako, who had been watching the whole thing, came over a moment later.

“Meddling with the lives of lesser mortals, Setsuna?”

“If you want to think of it that way. If I have to have this ability, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t use it to nudge people towards a little happiness every now and then.”

Minako grinned. “Me neither.” She looked over at Ifumi and the dark-haired young man—who seemed to be explaining something about one of the computers on sale in the store—and her blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Her left eyebrow went up a moment later, and she smiled a satisfied sort of smile. “Not bad, Setsuna. There’s some real potential with those two. I may just be able to make a Love Goddess out of you after all.”

“I appreciate that, Mina-chan.”

“What _did_ you see, anyway?” Minako asked with a certain professional curiosity.

“In somewhat more than eighty percent of all the possible futures I saw leading off from the point where Ifumi went over to talk, she and that young man are dating—with various degrees of seriousness—within the next six months. And the same in about sixty-five percent of the possibilities where she didn’t go over to talk today.”

“Eighty and sixty-five are pretty solid numbers,” Minako noted, nodding slowly. “Sounds to me like it’s something that was going to happen anyway.”

“I sort of thought so myself. Excuse me a moment.” She went and fetched the rest of her things from the workroom.

“All set?” Usagi asked when Setsuna returned. “Okay, then. Ryo-kun just talked to Ami-chan, and she said that Mako-chan’s up and around again. And a little cranky, for some reason, but we’ll stop by to see them first anyway.”

“And then we take _you_ home to face the music,” Rei added, “and to see if your mother will believe that you got a ninety-plus on a test that didn’t have the slightest thing to do with food.”

The two of them started bickering immediately, but the others, with long-practiced skill, just guided them out of the store and down the hall to the escalators.

None of them, not even Rei or Setsuna or Ryo, noticed the slender, almost ghostly pale blonde girl who had been watching them from down the hall. She followed them a short distance and then stood silently at the edge of the balcony of this level of the mall, looking down to the main floor as the group headed out into the murky afternoon. She stayed there for a time after they had gone, lost in thought, and then she went in search of a phone.

# 

When they reached Makoto’s apartment and were let in by a worried-looking Ami, the Senshi and their companions found that Haruka, Michiru, ChibiUsa, and Hotaru were there ahead of them. Ryo had passed this on as well, quietly informing Usagi that Michiru and Hotaru had apparently both been very serious about making sure Makoto wasn’t going to start spontaneously giving off electromagnetic pulses or something similarly inconvenient. This only made sense; consideration for others was second nature to Michiru, and Hotaru had an almost compulsive need to ‘make things better,’ so their presence wasn’t really that much of a surprise. For the purposes of this situation, Haruka and ChibiUsa were essentially footnotes to the other two Senshi, and Luna was hardly an afterthought by comparison.

The presence of Ami’s mother, on the other hand, really startled the new arrivals. Ryo stood up so straight when he saw her that he seemed to gain about three inches of height in the process; obviously, this was one more item for the list of Things That He Didn’t See Coming.

“Um,” Usagi said, looking around at the living room. Michiru, Hotaru, ChibiUsa, and Ami’s mother were all sitting relatively at ease and taking tea together; Makoto and Haruka were also sitting and drinking tea, but they weren’t nearly so casual about it. Makoto’s discomfort had an obvious source, since she was bundled up in a veritable cocoon of blankets and pillows, with Luna resting comfortably on her lap; whatever was bothering Haruka was a little harder to guess at, but the cause of Ami’s worried look was very easy to figure out, since Calypso was clearly hidden _somewhere_ in this room. None of this, though, was what had sparked Usagi’s lapse into sound effects.

There were six people, one cat, and likely one concealed Nereid sitting down to tea in Makoto’s living room; nine _more_ people had just come in from the front door; and the apartment, which quite frankly had not been built to accommodate this many visitors at one time, was well on its way to feeling like the proverbial can of sardines.

“I’d offer you all a place to sit,” Makoto said, “but as you can see“—she gestured around—“we’re a bit short on space.”

“Girls,” Mrs. Mizuno said, nodding. “Sakurada-san, Kumada-san; it’s good to see you again. And you, Meiou-san; I hope there haven’t been any relapses? Headaches, dizziness, anything like that?”

“No, Mizuno-san. I’ve been well. Thank you for asking.” Ami’s mother nodded, glanced past the others to her daughter and Ryo with a knowing expression that set both of them blushing furiously, and then turned wordlessly to Minako and Arthur. That started the introductions, during the course of which Haruka rather quickly agreed to give up her seat to Usagi and then disappeared into the kitchen, mumbling something about tea. Makoto also offered to give up her place, only to be firmly told by about six different people to stay where she was.

Somehow, they managed to find enough space. Hotaru hopped up on Michiru’s lap to make room for Setsuna on the couch, and Haruna sat down next to Ami’s mother, while most of the rest of them chose a comfortable piece of wall or couch—or, in Minako’s case, a pseudo-boyfriend—to lean against.

“I’ve seen your work,” Haruna was saying to Michiru. “I’m not much of an art critic, but I have to say, you’ve done some amazing works.” She blushed a bit. “You must hear that all the time.”

“Not as often as you might think,” Michiru replied, smiling. “And even if I did, it’s still very kind of you to say so. Which was your favorite?”

“There was one of a beach,” Haruna said after a moment’s thought. “It was either sunrise or sunset, and there was a woman in a white dress standing in the surf, watching the sun. It was hard to tell whether she was happy or sad.”

Hotaru frowned. “I don’t think you ever showed me that one, Michiru-mama.”

“It’s called ‘Unknown Waters,’“ Michiru said with a small sigh, hugging Hotaru a little closer. “I painted it... it must be three, almost four years ago, now.” She smiled. “’Unknown’ didn’t do quite as well with the critics as some of my other pieces; a lot of the reviewers said she made them feel sad and even somewhat lost, and those aren’t the sorts of feelings I normally try for. Still, I was feeling a little lost myself while I was painting her, so I suppose it only makes sense that something of that carried over.”

“I don’t know about ‘depressing,’“ Haruna said. “I always thought that she’d just had one of those _really_ bad days—you know, the sort of day that makes an absolute mess of things and forces you to rearrange large parts of your life.” Her smile was wry. “I’ve had a few days like that myself, so I suppose you could say I understood where she was coming from.”

“Art is a subjective thing at the best of times,” Ami’s mother said in a clinical tone, taking a sip of her tea. “People see what they want to see, regardless of what the artist tries to put in. I prefer realism, myself.”

“Isn’t reality just as subjective, though?” Michiru asked. “Don’t we see in the world around us what we _choose_ to see?”

“Perhaps we do at that, but there are certain constants that hold true whether or not we choose to see them. I wouldn’t be a doctor if they didn’t.”

“And I wouldn’t be able to paint if there weren’t other things there as well—the sort of things that exist only as long as we choose to see them and let them exist.” Ami was starting to look very concerned about the direction this conversation was heading, but her mother just laughed softly.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’m not about to get into _this_ argument again. When I look at a painting, I want to see defined shapes and colors; I don’t go looking for abstract or emotive concepts. Why don’t we just leave it at that?”

“Oh, if we must.” Michiru smiled and looked around; with the exception of Ami, Luna, and Haruna, it was pretty obvious that the two of them had lost everybody else in the room during the course of that discussion. Even Setsuna was looking mildly confused. “So,” Michiru said, turning back to Haruna with a mischievous light in her eyes, “would today qualify as one of those very bad days you mentioned?”

“Hey!”

“If I’d had to answer that this morning,” Haruna replied, deliberately not looking at Usagi, “I would have said yes. It’s been a good afternoon, though—so no, this isn’t one of those bad days.”

Mrs. Mizuno looked at the younger woman and then around at the others. ”What exactly _have_ you girls been up to that would require the presence of a teacher? _After_ school has been let out?”

“I think Usagi’s ultimate plan is to use Haruna-san as a human shield against her mother,” Rei said.

Ami frowned. “I thought you said she actually did well this time, Ryo- kun.”

“Hey!”

“She did,” Ryo replied. “That’s the problem.” Usagi stared at him and then settled into a sullen pout.

“There’s just no pleasing you people, you know that? I do bad, and you’re all on my case; I do good, and I get snide remarks. This isn’t helping to boost my academic self-confidence!” She sat there for a moment, glaring at them, and then looked over at Makoto. “Mako-chan, do you have any strawberries in your fridge?”

There wasn’t enough room for a facefault, so instead, the sudden track-jumping of Usagi’s train of thought set off a lot of eyeblinks and sweatdrops.

“There’s some strawberry swirl ice cream in the freezer...” Makoto said cautiously.

“Close enough.” Usagi stood up and stalked into the kitchen.

“Now is that a pregnancy craving?” Ryo asked, nodding towards Usagi, “or just a regular craving?”

“With her,” Rei said, “it’s impossible to tell.”

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

Even though all the Senshi were currently in the apartment, they still automatically glanced at their communicators when they heard the sound, and then they all did their best to cover that response as Ami’s mother checked her pager. Ami, seeing the faint smile on Ryo’s face, nudged him warningly in the ribs with her elbow.

“May I use your phone, Mako-chan?”

“It’s in the kitchen.” Ami’s mother nodded and left the room. When she returned a few minutes later, she was shaking her head.

“Bad news?” Makoto guessed.

“There are times when it feels like that entire hospital is being held together by chicken wire and good intentions,” Mrs. Mizuno replied, still shaking her head.

“I know _that_ feeling, too,” Haruna said, sharing a resigned smile with Ami’s mother before the older woman went out to the closet to get her coat.

“Well, it was nice to see all of you again,” Mrs. Mizuno said as she collected her things. “Kaioh-san, I’m glad I got to meet you. And you too, Hotaru-chan,” she added with a smile. Hotaru beamed and waved good-bye. “Ami, I’ll call tonight at about eight—unless of course, you had other plans?” She looked very directly at Ryo, and both he and Ami blushed.

“No, Mother.”

Mrs. Mizuno sighed again. “Mina-chan, do me a favor and try to talk some sense into them, would you?”

Minako grinned. “Consider it done.”

Ignoring her daughter’s expression, Mrs. Mizuno nodded and turned to the kitchen. “Tennou-san.”

“Ma’am,” Haruka replied, nodding somewhat awkwardly and then letting out a small sigh of relief as Ami’s mother left, and the conversation in the living room gradually switched over to a discussion of grades.

“Is it just me,” Usagi said from behind her, scaring Haruka half out of her skin, “or have you and Mizuno-san met before?”

“What...” Haruka caught herself and shook her head. “Just go eat your ice cream, koneko.”

“Not until you explain to me why you were avoiding her,” Usagi said, absently gulping down a spoonful of strawberry swirl.

“I wasn’t avoid... oh, fine.” Haruka knew better by now than to try and deny her way out of something around Usagi. “Yes, I have met her before. I took a spill on my bike a few years back and busted my collarbone, and Mizuno-san was the attending physician at the hospital. I didn’t really pay that much attention to her at the time, and it was before I’d met any of you, so I had no idea she was even related to Ami until she walked in the door today.”

“And?” Usagi pressed.

“And it was embarrassing as hell, because it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been paying attention to what I was doing. Now can we just drop the whole subject?”

Usagi got the distinct impression that there was a lot more here than a case of wounded pride, but she decided to let it go. For now.

# 

Proteus observed closely as the body of its captive daimon disintegrated into a colorless, odorless dust, leaving a smoky plume of something black and cold to swirl around inside the liquid of the pod that had been holding the creature. Whatever the blackness was, it teemed with the creature’s version of life-force, and it passed through the viscous fluid and the multiple membranes of the containment pod as if it were not even there.

Killing this particular specimen had been a reluctant move on Proteus’s part, but quite probably a necessary one. Even after being fully contained, the small daimon had continued to struggle for freedom, completely ignoring the influx of chemical compounds that would have been enough to stun a fair-sized elephant into the same stasis in which Proteus’s small onboard collection of humans currently dozed. Most of Proteus’s attempts to examine the vicious little monster had failed as well, the various restraints and probes being torn apart or simply proving ineffective against the daimon’s supernatural physiology, and there had been the strong possibility that the Senshi would have tracked the creature down. They seemed to be quite good at that, which made Proteus’s keeping the daimon much akin to having a large red bull’s-eye painted on its body.

It had learned a few things of use, however. The daimon’s body, for instance, was not the reality of the thing; it was a shell, an assumed form which allowed the creature to interact with the physical substance of this world. The energy, the black vapor released in the moment of ‘death,’ _that_ was the daimon, and Proteus suspected very strongly that it was still alive, that the destruction of its false form had broken whatever bonds were holding the being here and allowed it to return to wherever it had originated. Such reasoning was based partly on its awkward analysis of the daimon, and partly on what Proteus had been able to learn from spying on Archon and his apprentice as they discussed various aspects of magic.

With the daimon gone, Proteus began to reabsorb the empty pod and then considered its current situation. It had access to almost twenty human specimens now, three of them already fully reengineered, and two of those—Tetsuo and Hana—still awaiting testing. The process of infection at the hospital was proceeding more or less on schedule, although Proteus was beginning to despair of ever getting control of the staff of the floor where its devices had been established; they moved around too much, leaving the area where spore density was at its optimum level and giving their immune systems time to fight off the infection. Some of the patients had been moved as well, and even the most advanced of these cases were likely to prove irretrievable, but these setbacks still left some two dozen humans nearing the end phase of the infection cycle.

It was time—and long past time—to test Tetsuo and Hana. Regardless of the number of subjects obtained, future experimentation would not be possible until these two designs had been fully evaluated, their strengths and weaknesses determined, enhancements designed, and any unplanned developments accounted for. A test was required; this just left the question of where and when to conduct it.

*How to get the attention of the Senshi,* Proteus thought, *without attracting notice from the Atlanteans?*

It went without saying that Archon’s apprentice must be avoided. Proteus had a small contingent of its rat-spies keeping track of the girl’s movements— from a very respectful distance—so that should not pose much of a problem. It would also be necessary to avoid touching off a media uproar, as had happened with the last Atlantean mission, and it would have to be done without developing a large support structure. Proteus still keenly remembered the near-total annihilation of its citywide network, and had no wish to risk a repeat of that mysterious mass destruction.

After considering the problem for a time, Proteus’s thick, centipede-like body hunched up in what might have been a shrug and then began to move out, surrounded by a protective screen of several hundred rats as it trundled towards its destination.

*When in doubt, stick with what you know.*

# 

Usagi and her ‘entourage’ had stayed at Makoto’s apartment for the better part of half an hour before Minako had finally suggested that they leave and allow Mako-chan to get back to her convalescence. Those weren’t the exact words she had used, of course, and it had been her unexpected mention of a convent which had convinced the others it was probably time to get going. They’d traded Ryo for ChibiUsa and Luna, said their good-byes, and left; that had been about fifteen minutes ago, which meant that by now, they were at the Tsukino household.

“Do you suppose it’s going well?” Ryo asked. He was sitting next to Ami on the one couch, and Calypso was seated on the air off to her sister’s right, frowning as she read one of the books they had purchased at the mall on Friday. In her human form, Calypso appeared to be one of those people who trace each line with one finger as they read; none of the others really thought to ask if that was in fact the case, or if it was just a mannerism she’d picked up somewhere, like the thin-rimmed reading glasses she had created for herself.

“You’re the almighty seer,” Haruka quipped. “You tell us.”

“I was under the impression that you can see things, too.”

Haruka chuckled at that. “Only if I’m _really_ drunk—or suffering from a concussion, or outright unconscious.” She paused to take a drink of her tea. ”Seriously, though, I get premonitions from time to time, and I usually know when things are going wrong right _now,_ but the whole psychic hotline has always been more Michiru’s area of expertise. I think it has something to do with the way her perception of reality is naturally different, whereas _I’m_ one of those people who usually has to be impaired in some fashion in order to start thinking and seeing outside the box.”

Still holding Hotaru—who appeared to have taken advantage of this prime opportunity for a nap—Michiru gave her partner a long, flat look, obviously debating whether or not that last remark had earned Haruka another shot to the arm.

“What?” Haruka asked ingenuously. “It’s the truth.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Michiru said bluntly. Haruka’s answering expression was all wounded innocence, and over in her chair, Makoto started to laugh. Michiru gave her a look, too, but Makoto just laughed harder.

“What’s it like?” Ryo asked, ignoring the laughter and hard looks. “I mean, I _know_ what my visions are like, and I’ve heard Ami-chan and the others talking about Rei-san’s fire readings often enough to have a pretty good idea of what she must go through, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a description of your particular... um... talent.”

With one last warning look at Haruka and Makoto, Michiru turned to Ryo and began to answer his question. “If you have an idea of how Rei calls up her visions, what I do is almost the opposite. I hear things more than I see them— or perhaps ‘feel’ is a better term for it—and I always learn the most when I’m relaxed. The less I _try_ to find something, the more easily it comes to me. Dreams can be especially informative. At the same time, though, where Rei can focus her effort and attention on one specific target at a time, I tend to gain awareness of a lot of things at once. It’s like rain falling into a lake; each individual raindrop creates its own sound and ripple, but they all meld together and lose their details. Only the larger raindrops—the more important or dangerous events—send out ripples strong enough for me to interpret properly.”

“And the Mirror?”

“It’s very much the same, except that the Mirror is able to detect and discern between a far greater number of event-ripples than I can. The problem is that the Mirror doesn’t ignore anything, and whenever I ask it a question, it draws on _everything_ it can detect to provide an answer. That’s why so many of the images it returns are vague and difficult to understand.”

“Have you ever been able to _not_ hear things?” Ryo’s tone was casual, but Ami, Calypso, and Makoto all looked at him, picking up on a distinct lack of ‘casual’ in his thoughts and feelings.

“Quite frequently,” Michiru was saying, nodding slightly. “I’ve found that the more I focus on something—anything—the less likely I am to pick up on the noise all those events make, and when I paint or play my violin, I can shut it out entirely.” She looked more directly at Ryo then, her head tilted slightly and her eyes speculative. “It’s important to you to hear this, isn’t it?”

Ryo frowned and then followed the brief shift of Michiru’s line of sight to Ami, Calypso, and Makoto, who were all still watching him. He blushed and coughed. “Um... yeah. Important.”

“What it’s like when you see something?” Ryo blinked at the question, and Michiru smiled faintly. “I’m allowed to be curious, too, aren’t I? I don’t have much more idea of what you go through than you had of what I do.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose fair is fair.” Fair or not, it took him several moments to begin talking, and even then he sounded reluctant to speak. “There’s always a kind of empty rushing noise, sort of like what I’d expect an echo of an underground river to sound like, right before a vision starts. It doesn’t get louder or softer, and it doesn’t really go away; it’s more like it rises out beyond the range of hearing when the images come. If I want to try and force a vision, I start by focusing on that noise, and trying to recreate it inside my head.”

“And you never have any idea when it’ll start?” Michiru asked. “Or what you’ll see?”

“No, and only very seldomly. When I try to force them, about one in every three or four visions seems to relate to whatever I’m concentrating on, and even then they can range from minutes to months into the future. When they come at random...” Ryo shrugged. “Before that time-trip we took, I didn’t have the slightest clue what caused the visions to go off like that, but after Setsuna explained about the auras she saw around Rei-san and I, and about the time-energy she saw floating around everywhere, I started thinking, and talked it over with Ami-chan for a while.”

“We concluded that Setsuna’s theory was probably correct,” Ami said, “and that most of Ryo-kun’s random visions must have occurred when he moved into the presence of a large amount of temporal energy. The stronger the energy, the stronger the resulting vision, and the longer he remained in contact with the energy, the longer the vision would last. I was able to set up my computer to locate pockets of time-force within a short radius, and we tested the theory a few times by walking him through. We were right.”

“Sounds like getting Setsuna to teach you how to see Time like she does would be a smart move,” Haruka noted.

“That would be nice,” Ryo agreed. “It’s probably not going to happen, though. Even Setsuna seemed to need the Garnet Orb to do it, and somehow I don’t think she could loan it out to me. I’d settle just for knowing how to get rid of the headaches.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

“Do you always get them?” Michiru asked.

“There’s always a little disorientation,” Ryo replied. “I mean, one second I’ll just be walking down the street, and then my eyes are full of someplace else, and then in the next moment, everything comes back. That can get really confusing at times, and the clearer the vision is or the further into the future it lets me see, the more drained I am afterwards—but I only feel _real_ pain when the images are bad.”

“And of course,” Haruka added, “you’re not above hamming it up for sympathy points the rest of the time.”

“Not in the slightest,” Ryo agreed, without a trace of shame. “After all, it’s for a good... cause...” He broke off there and closed his eyes in a pained expression. “And then,” he added a moment later, “there are the all the times when the pain is genuine to help keep me honest. There’s ice in your freezer, right, Mako-chan?”

“Of course. I’ll...”

“You’ll just sit there,” Calypso said, putting her book aside and letting her glasses dematerialize. “I can handle this.” She floated around behind the couch and reached towards Ryo, a small bag taking shape in her hand.

“Uh, thanks, Calypso,” Ryo said quickly, moving to stand. “But I can make do with...”

“You just sit down, too.” Caly caught him by one shoulder and pushed him back down with startling ease, making him lean back so she could put the icepack on his forehead. Ryo could almost feel the amusement of the girls, and he really _could_ feel Ami’s.

“Nobody laugh,” he said, raising one hand warningly. “She could do it to you, too.”

“But she wouldn’t,” Ami said. “Isn’t that right, Caly?”

“Entirely,” the Nereid agreed.

Ryo sighed wearily. “And why is that?”

“Because it’s more _fun_ to do it to you,” the sisters said in unison. Makoto immediately started sputtering again, and Haruka threw back her head and laughed. Michiru held herself to a small smile and a slight shake of her head.

“Mmmm... what’s all the noise about?” Hotaru yawned, raising her head from Michiru’s shoulder and looking around with sleepy eyes. She blinked when she saw Calypso pressing the ice to Ryo’s head. “Why are you doing that, Caly?”

“Ryo-kun has a headache,” Calypso replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh.” Hotaru looked at Ryo. “I could take care of that...”

“That’s okay,” Haruka said, grinning. “I think Calypso has everything well in hand."

Gradually, Makoto managed to stop laughing. “So, Ryo; what did you see this time?”

“Mars,” he said. “She was throwing fire at a person—I think it was a man—in some extremely expensive-looking armor. From the looks of the scenery, they’d already been fighting for a while, and I think there was something wrong with Mars’s leg.” Ryo frowned, closing his eyes under the rim of the bag of ice as he recalled the image. “Her opponent didn’t say anything, but his breastplate had that silver circle-symbol on it.”

“Another Atlantean, then,” Michiru said, a little needlessly. “Can you get any idea of his powers just from the vision?”

“He’s not actually _doing_ anything like that,” Ryo reported, “but he does have a sword, and _it_ has a sort of red glow along the edge, which probably isn’t good news. He also looks plenty big enough to do a lot of damage the old- fashioned way, although that might just be the armor. It’s a pretty extensive suit, and it’s almost entirely red and gold, with a helmet that looks like a dragon’s head. That suggests fire, to me, but then again, I have a history of misreading things that I don’t actually see.”

“You said there were signs of a drawn-out fight?” Michiru asked.

“They’re on top of a parking garage, and there are scorch marks all over the cement. I saw a few holes, too, and one or two things that might have been cars at some point.”

“Rei-chan is always fairly careful about how she uses her powers,” Ami remarked. “A lot of collateral damage by fire would most likely come from the other side. Unless she got mad, of course.”

“We should probably see if Luna or Artemis can teach Rei-chan anything that might be useful for that fight,” Makoto said. “How to melt metal, or something like that.” She paused. “When _is_ the next training session, anyway?”

“Tomorrow night,” Ami replied. “And before you ask, yes, we’re going to let you attend. Luna and I dug up a lot of exercises designed to help you hone your control of the Aegis, and I’m sure we’d all feel a lot better if you were practicing under one of Hotaru-chan’s Shields rather than somewhere unprotected. Just in case.”

“That reminds me,” Ryo said, sitting up for all of an inch before Calypso caught him and held him, making an irritated little sound in her throat as he tried to push the ice away. “It’s not that bad, Calypso.”

“Don’t make me put you to sleep again,” she countered. Ryo was silent for a time, but Calypso’s little smile said enough for both of them, and she settled the icepack into place again.

“Hotaru-chan,” Ryo asked, a little shortly, “are you afraid of bats?”

“Not really,” Hotaru said, blinking. “Why do you ask?”

Since Hotaru had been napping the first time, Ryo quickly explained his and Ami’s theory about the trigger-mechanism for his visions, and the experiment they’d tried.

“And one of the visions I had showed a bat with a wingspan equal to about twice your height flying at you,” he continued. “I’m pretty sure normal bats don’t get that large, but I’m not entirely sure if it was a monster; the vision didn’t have quite the same feeling to it as most of the ones I’ve had with monsters in them, and I couldn’t see your face to get an idea of your reaction to it.”

“Are there any other interesting details of this experiment that you’d like to share with us?” Haruka asked.

“No, that was it. Most of the other visions I had were of things that happened within about ten minutes, at the most. The only other long-term vision besides the one of Hotaru-chan and the bat was of a minor car accident downtown.” Ryo shifted, and the ice clicked and sloshed.

“Stop that,” Calypso admonished.

“Calypso,” Ryo said with an exasperated sigh, “I’m fine. Really. My headache’s gone.”

“Really?” she asked, drawing the word out suspiciously.

“Really.”

“Okay.” Just like that, the icepack was gone, collapsed into blue mist and reabsorbed into Calypso’s body. Smiling brightly, she leaned over to look Ryo in the face, upside-down. “All you had to do was ask.” She patted him on the cheek and then floated back over to her place beyond Ami, retrieving her book and recreating the glasses as she settled down into her reading once more.

After staring grimly at the Nereid for a time, Ryo glanced at Ami—who smiled and shrugged—and then Makoto, who shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“I heard that,” Calypso said, not looking up from her book. Ryo blinked, then looked at Ami again.

“She wasn’t scanning you,” Ami replied, speaking to the question that had appeared through the mindbond, “but anybody with eyes could have read your expression and made a pretty good guess as to what you were thinking. When you project like that, it’s hard not to notice, especially at this range.”

“Oh.” Ryo frowned, then turned to Calypso. “Sorry, Caly. I’ll try to be... um... quieter?... in the future.”

“There’s no need for that,” the Nereid said, raising her eyes from her reading. “It’s not like hearing your thoughts _hurts_ me; I’m _supposed_ to communicate like that, and since you can’t ‘accidentally’ broadcast things you’d prefer to keep private, there’s no harm in me picking up the occasional errant thought, is there?”

“Well... ah... I suppose not...”

“It’s still creepy,” Haruka muttered. “I prefer to give people a piece of my mind the old-fashioned way.”

“You always did,” Calypso said. “As a race, I think the Venusians were really the only humans who never had a problem with being around telepaths—but then, they were so open about everything anyway that it didn’t really matter whether you scanned their minds or just talked to them.”

“It probably had something to do with fear,” Ami said. “Or rather, the lack of it. There were all sorts of things other people worried about that didn’t bother the Venusians at all, and a lot of the fear value goes out of the idea of mind-reading when you don’t have anything to hide or be ashamed of—and when you know you can trust the person doing the scanning, that deals with whatever fear may be left over.”

“And if you _don’t_ know OR trust the telepath?” Haruka countered.

“Then it would be another story,” Calypso agreed. “I have a bit of a bias in this regard, but even _I_ can understand that sharing thoughts is much more comfortable with someone you know than with someone you don’t—but since you know and trust me, that’s not the case. And you _do_ trust me, don’t you, Haruka?” She asked that with a little moue and eyes that were suddenly large behind the glasses.

Haruka’s features scrunched up into a look of reluctance. “Yes,” she finally admitted, “I suppose I do trust you“—Calypso broke into a terrific smile—“but only as far as I know you.”

If anything, that little add-on only made Calypso smile even more. For some reason, Haruka suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her neck trying to rise.

# 

“Enter.”

The door of the royal chambers slid silently open, and Archon entered. ”Your Highness,” he began, “I have completed...” The archmage stopped and looked around at the empty foyer and the adjoining chambers. “Highness?”

“We’ll be with you in a moment, Archon,” Janus’ voice said, coming from the direction of the bath. “Continue your report.”

“As you say, my Lord.” He was alone in the room, but out of a lifetime’s worth of habit, the wizard nodded his head respectfully anyway. “I have completed the full range of tests that our current circumstances allow. So far as I can determine, there is no way for us to disable the shield at this time.”

“Is it impervious to our capabilities, or is it just that we don’t have the necessary power reserves to make a serious attempt?”

“The latter, Highness, though I suspect the shield will prove quite resilient, should we ever seek to neutralize it.”

Janus didn’t miss the tone in the wizard’s words. “You don’t think we should bother with it?”

“No, my Prince. I had several units teleported to various locations within the city an hour ago, with orders to do nothing but wait and report at regular intervals. As of yet, nothing has interrupted those reports.”

“So this shield doesn’t detect or interfere with teleportation?” Jenna asked.

“More precisely, my Lady, I suspect it was set only to react to objects which cross _through_ the barrier’s sphere of effect, instead of those that move _within_ it. I’ve chosen to hold off testing whether or not the barrier will react to dimensional spells until the next operation: if it does, the arrival of another contingent of daimons would provide a useful distraction; and if it doesn’t, we may be able to spring a surprise attack when the Senshi appear to destroy the nexi. Does this meet with your approval?”

“Yes,” Janus replied, stepping into view wearing an elegant golden robe. The robe was long enough and heavy enough to hide most of the evidence to the fact that the unnatural dichotomy of the Imperial person was not limited to the face. “We’ve suffered too many setbacks and delays these last two months,” the Crown Prince continued. “This next mission will likely be our only chance to make up for our losses, particularly in light of all the effort that’s going into it. If it fails...”

“It will be another ten days before our forces are fully prepared, Highness,” Archon reminded them. “If you wish to revise or abandon the plan, there is still ample time to do so.”

“No,” Jenna replied firmly. “There’s no point in second-guessing ourselves, and abandoning our efforts at this stage would cripple us. We’ll proceed as planned—but if you have any additional suggestions to make, by all means, make them.”

“There _is_ one detail that requires consideration, my Lady. You may recall the reports of increasing activity along the perimeter over the last two weeks...”

The expression of male side and female side alike twisted into grim distaste. “I take it that there have been additional sightings, then?” Janus asked.

“It goes a bit further than that, Highness,” Archon said. “Four hours ago, one of the guards was... contacted. He was in the company of several of his comrades at the time, so he was restrained and brought in for study and treatment without any incident. Lady Istar conducted the examination herself and found very obvious traces of psychic tampering, but so far as she has been able to determine, it was limited entirely to a single message.”

“Which was?”

“As unusual as it may sound, my Lord, it appears that they wish to speak with us. They left precise instructions on how to contact them and arrange a face-to-face meeting.” There was no immediate response, but Archon waited with his usual unflappable patience.

“Laraea... was certain of this?” Jenna finally asked.

“Very certain, Princess. She described the residual energies as inviting attention, and aside from the initial shock, the guard suffered no detrimental effects. Neither is characteristic of how these creatures normally operate. Quite simply, they _wanted_ us to have that message, and to have every reason to believe it.” Again, there was a long silence, and again Archon waited calmly.

“After being down here for so long without so much as a rumor of their presence, I’d almost begun to believe that the things had died off during our exile. It seems that was too much to hope for.” Janus sighed. “Very well, then. See it, Archon. And put units on the security patrols to insure there aren’t any further ‘contacts.’“

The wizard bowed. “As you command, my Prince.”

“You’re _certain_ you want to risk this?” Jenna asked her brother once Archon had exited the room.

“I’m certain that if we don’t play along, they’ll keep at us until we do— and I for one don’t want to antagonize them if it can be helped. Laraea and Lilith are our best psychics, and I’ll grant you that they’re both very good, but they can only do so much. We have no more than a score of mentalists to back them up, and most simply don’t have the same degree of talent or training. How long do you think a defense like that would hold up under a sustained psychic assault from fifty of those creatures? A hundred?”

“What do you suppose they want?”

“No way to know until we meet them, but it could be anything—and it’s most likely something unpleasant.” Janus began to slowly pace about the room. ”We move in ten days. If all goes well, the operation will yield enough energy to get us back on schedule—and we _can_ reshuffle that schedule to give the security systems top priority, without hampering our overall efforts. In the interim, we’ll have to cut back on the restoration projects in the outlying chambers and make sure no one gets left working alone. Can we afford to pull Laraea and the other mentalists from their assignments to assist with security?”

“We can,” Jenna replied. “So long as it’s only for the ten days.”

“Good. The guards will be on full alert after that ‘message,’ and Archon’s artificers probably have a dozen different spells wrapped around each of their heads by now, but we’d better make sure everyone is informed. It’ll ruin their night’s sleep, but I think most of them would rather lose a little sleep than risk the alternative. I know I do, even _with_ our minds shielded as they are.” The right side of the mouth twisted up into something that might have been a smile. “Our little parting gift from Athena. Do you suppose she saw this particular day coming, all those centuries ago?”

“She may well have,” Jenna said evenly, “though I doubt it. Pluto may be the Guardian of Time, but that makes her more its servant than it does its master. You never really seemed to understand that about her.”

“I wasn’t the one who constantly wanted her to read my future,” Janus reminded his sister.

“I grew out of it—with a little help from Athena and her mother.” Jenna sighed. “I miss Lyssa almost as much as Athena, sometimes. She always seemed to know what to do—and you can’t tell me you wouldn’t mind having her or any of the other Senshi, past or present, as allies,” she added, knowing the way her brother’s thoughts would inevitably turn.

“Gods know we could certainly use Mercury right about now,” Janus admitted grudgingly. “Even an ordinary Nereid would be an unmitigated blessing.” His side of their face twisted into a humorless smile. “And while I’m wishing for the impossible, I guess I’ll go ahead and try to summon Excalibur, the Grail, and the Phoenix Egg and all nine Shields as well.” They waited expectantly, looking about the room, and finally Janus’s smile shifted. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“One thing at a time, brother,” Jenna said mildly. “Let’s send that alert, and then some rest. If we’re going to meet with the Deep Ones, then I for one want to get all the uninterrupted sleep I can beforehand, because I doubt we’ll have much chance for it later.”

# 

The silence in the apartment was nearly total. Only a low-pitched buzzing coming from the living room broke the stillness. Every so often, the buzzing ceased with a soft ‘click,’ after which the faint but steady electric hum would resume. It was almost a clockwork rhythm:

Buzzzzzz—click.

Buzzzzzz—click.

Buzzzzzz—click.

Buzzzzzz—click.

Still sitting in her chair, trapped inside blankets and pillows and the constant surveillance of her so-called friends, Makoto was toying with the Aegis to amuse herself. She was repeatedly pulling one of the small electrified orbs away from the rest and then releasing it at about arm’s length, at which point the two hair-thin lines of energy connecting the orb to the rest of the Aegis would whisk it back to its place in the necklace. Every once in a while, Makoto would move the orb back and forth while she held it, setting off a shifting effect where the ‘buzz’ would become louder or softer or slightly differently pitched depending on where she moved it:

Buzzzzzz—click.

BuuuUUUuuuUUUzzzZZZzzzZZZ—click.

BuuuUUUzzzzzz—click.

BuuuzzzZZZZZZ—click.

Buzzzzzz...

“If you’re trying to annoy me to the point where I’ll let you get up,” Ami said calmly, “you should know it isn’t going to work.”

Makoto sighed and let go of the orb. Click. “I’m not trying to annoy you, Ami-chan. I just... I just need to DO something. And don’t suggest that I read a book,” she added. “I’m not in the mood.” Ami stayed silent, and Makoto’s smile was smug. Then it faded. “Can I at _least_ get up to look after my plants? The rest of you were so busy trying to take care of me that you completely neglected them.”

“You don’t want to trip and break one of your flowerpots, do you?” Ami countered. Makoto sighed again. “But seeing to your flowers is fine. Caly and I can bring them to you.” She signaled to her sister to start moving the plants, and then headed out to the closet to get the watering can. While she was reaching for the green plastic jug, Ami noticed a bag of soil which had been stuck inside a large plastic flowerpot sitting at the bottom of the closet. The pot was two feet high and almost as wide across the top, though it narrowed to less than half of that at the bottom. Both the pot and the bag had pricetags on them, and Ami was fairly certain they hadn’t been here last week.

“Mako-chan,” she said, coming back into the living room with the watering can in one hand, “when did you buy that flowerpot and bag of dirt out in the closet? And what for?”

In the middle of checking the undersides of the leaves of one of the two plants Caly had already brought her, Makoto looked up, blinking. “I’d forgotten about those,” she said. There was a vague, distracted note in her voice that Ami didn’t like at all. “Could you bring them in after you get the water? Thanks.” She went right back to her careful examination of the leaves, leaving Ami to stand there staring at her in worry. Without looking up, Makoto said, “I’m fine, Ami-chan. I just can’t pay much attention to you right now. Just go and get the water, okay?” And once again, she went back to work.

Makoto spent the next twenty minutes tending to her plants. She would straighten a few stems, brush traces of dust from some of the shaggier-looking leaves, and remove any apparent dead growth, then water the plant and set it aside for the next. At one point, she sent Calypso to fetch a couple of smaller pots so she could move two of her larger plants into fresh soil; that took about a quarter of the dirt in the bag, and the rest went into the massive flowerpot, which then stood there for the next ten minutes as if forgotten. All the while, Makoto was softly humming to herself a tune that Ami didn’t recognize, but which sounded like any number of childhood lullabies she could think of.

The two sisters both gave a start when they realized that the Aegis were visibly glowing again, but Makoto didn’t appear to notice the soft green light, and continued on with her work. Finally, she set aside the last of the plants, turned her attention to the large pot, and took the small, heart-shaped silver acorn out of her blouse pocket. Ami wasn’t really that surprised to see it. Makoto had been carrying the odd little thing around constantly since Sasanna’s tree had given it to her, and there had been more than a few times—particularly during the exams—when Ami had looked up and noticed Makoto holding the acorn and looking at it intently. She was doing it again now, gazing down at the silver shape in her palm and appearing almost reluctant to plant it.

“Mako-chan? Is something wrong?”

“What happens when I plant this, Ami?” Makoto said it without looking up. ”I know it’ll grow—it’s too full of life to do anything else—but _what_ will it grow into? Sasanna said her brother couldn’t produce seeds, and she said she couldn’t have children, but this _is_ a seed from that tree, and that means it’s as close to being her child as makes no difference—but _what_ is it going to become? And what do we do with it if...”

“If what?” Ami asked gently.

“What if it grows into one of those giant trees the dryads lived in? And what if there’s a _dryad_ in there right now, waiting to be born? She’d be just like Caly, the only one of her kind in the world, except that she’d have a huge tree to draw attention to her, in the middle of a city of millions of people who wouldn’t have the slightest idea what she was. Do we have the right to do that to her?”

“Look at it this way,” Ami said. “Even if none of us can say for certain what this seed is, we have to believe that Sasanna and her tree _did_ know, and that they would’ve told you everything _you_ needed to know when they gave it to you. Did they ask you to plant it?” She waited for Makoto’s nod. “Did they tell you anything else _except_ that?” Again, Ami waited, this time for a slow shake of the head. “Then plant it, Mako-chan, and look after it just like all your other plants. Trees don’t grow very fast, so you’ll have a long time to get used to any special problems that come with this one. And if it _does_ grow into a dryad... well... we’ll think of something,” she finished, a bit lamely.

Makoto hesitated a moment more, then nodded and looked around. “I need a spade to...” She broke off as Calypso held out her hand—or more precisely, the wedge-shaped object at the end of her arm—and dug a small hole with a grand flourish and a small ‘taa-daa.’ While Ami sighed at her sister’s antics, Makoto took one final look at the strangely-shaped acorn before setting it down in the hole and letting Caly cover it. The Nereid patted the soil down, restored her hand to normal, and made a quick flexing motion to get rid of any dirt clinging to it before reaching for the watering can. Peering down the top, Calypso frowned and shook the can, sloshing the remaining contents.

“Just enough, I suppose,” she said, turning back. “Would you like to do i- YIIII!” Calypso shied away violently, nearly dropping the can as the green glow of the Aegis returned. The orbs had come away from Makoto and were orbiting in a perfect ring above her hands, which she had placed atop the soil, palms down, in an almost prayerlike fashion. She was staring down with a fixed intensity, murmuring something under her breath that even Calypso couldn’t make out, as the verdant energy spread to all four corners of the room, washing over everything. When the expanding force reached Calypso, she blushed pink and began to giggle, and even Ami could feel a tingle in her skin. For a moment, she almost thought she saw some of the flowers move, straightening themselves and uncurling their petals to better receive the radiant energy.

It went on for nearly a minute, and then, with a long sigh, Makoto slumped back in her chair, her eyes closed and her head bowed. The light of the Aegis faded slowly as the orbs returned to their owner, once again arranging themselves in the shape of a pretty, unassuming necklace. Ami was right behind them, racing over from the couch to check on Makoto, and after a few final giggles, Calypso calmed down enough to look concerned.

“Is she okay, Ami?”

“Her pulse is steady,” Ami said tersely, “and she’s breathing normally. I think she just tired herself out.” From the look on her face, Ami was fully ready to shake Makoto and shout at her for using the Aegis like that, but instead, she closed her eyes and let out a _very_ long breath. “Let’s put these flowers back where they belong,” she said, “and then put Mako-chan to bed.”

They did that, placing the large pot over in front of the glass doors to the balcony. When they went to move Makoto, Calypso dematerialized herself, flowed into the spaces between Makoto and the blankets, and then resolidified in the form of a free-floating cushion, pushing all the blankets aside and easily lifting the sleeping girl without disturbing her in the slightest. Then, leaving the Mercury Computer on Makoto’s bedside table on an automatic, continuous scan, the sisters went to bed as well. At Ami’s request, Calypso woke her up every two hours to check on Makoto and the computer’s findings, then put her back to sleep about ten minutes later with the same handy trick she had threatened to use on Ryo earlier in the day.

When Calypso woke herself up at 6:08 the next morning, she decided not to wake Ami again. The Nereid knew that this wake up/back to sleep pattern her sister had going wasn’t healthy for a human, and the computer had said again and again that Makoto was sleeping a perfectly normal human sleep. Even the Aegis appeared to have gone into some form of dormancy, for aside from the weak magnetic force that was holding them in place, their energy level was down to virtually nil.

Nodding to herself, Caly drifted out under the door to avoid waking Ami by accident and, still in her cloudy state, moved towards the fridge. She was a bit thirsty, and one or two ice cubes from the freezer would be just what she needed. Halfway to her destination, though, the Nereid paused and shifted back into human shape. It was an instinctive sort of reaction, because Calypso was fond of the feel of many human facial expressions, and she needed eyes in order to stare properly at the very unusual thing her more-than-human senses had informed her of.

There was a small shoot of greeny-brown wood sticking out of the pot in front of the sliding glass door. It was about twenty centimeters tall and perhaps three centimeters across at its base, with a half-dozen dark brown buds scattered along its upper length. As the Nereid’s big blue eyes stared in amazement, those buds opened, blooming within seconds into a half-dozen pale green leaves, translucent against the morning sunlight streaming in through the door.

Not taking her eyes from the sight, Calypso floated back to the bedroom to wake up Ami.

 

# 

 

_(The scene is outside the Tsukino home. Streamers are visible through the front windows and the sounds of a party are faintly audible when Usagi slips though the door, they grow briefly louder before she closes the door.)_

**Usagi** : Okay, everybody else is celebrating my marks, so I’ve got time to do the moral without any wise-cracking comments.

_(On cue, Shingo pops up from behind the bushes, Super Soaker (TM) in hand, and blasts his sister. Then, suddenly serious and sober, he turns to the camera.)_

**Shingo** : And the moral, illustrated by Usagi’s marks, is that you can do anything when you put your mind to it, no matter *how* impossible...

**Usagi** : SHIN-GO!

_(They take off down the street, running at top speed while Usagi shrieks at the top of her lungs. The door opens a moment later, and Rei and Luna stick their heads out and look around.)_

**Rei** : Should we go after her?

**Luna** : I don’t think it’s necessary. Anything that tries to get between her and Shingo is going to be lucky to escape alive.

**Arthur’s voice** : And for my next trick, I will turn into a talking cat!

_(Luna and Rei blanch and quickly go back inside to stop him.)_

12/07/01 (Revised, 22/08/02)

Another reasonably quiet episode. Odd, how I had to rewrite large parts of it about three times before it would work.... maybe I just have an easier time writing those crazy fight scenes... oh well.

Why did I get into such a long discussion about the differing natures of the prescient abilities of the resident psychics? Trust me, it’ll make some degree of sense in the near future.

And, without claiming psychic powers myself, I have the distinct feeling that NOBODY who’s read this far has ANY doubts about what’s going to happen to that little sapling in Makoto’s living room.

In the future:  
-Spring has sprung, the grass is ris, I wonders where the bad guys is?  
-Spring is also supposed to be the time of year for love, right?

Enough procrastination. This one must get out to the public without any further delays. *Raises hands in dramatic fashion* Go, my pretties! Fly!

*The winged monkeys look at their ‘master’ oddly and then wander off in search of a banana, leaving said ‘master’ alone with a whistling gust of wind and some errant leaves.*


	25. Matter Of - And Over - The Mind, and A Few Nasty Surprises

# 

Janus and Jenna stood before the large, circular portal, looking out into the circle of light that streamed from the window, illuminating a small patch of whitish-brown sand and the water above it. A pale, ghostlike fish with a mouth almost large enough to swallow a grown man drifted slowly past at the far edge of the light, its huge white eyes staring endlessly out from opposite sides of its head. A long, slender-bodied crustacean made its way through the flat-packed sand below the fish, its long feelers extended in search of food and its tiny organs quite visible through its translucent white exoskeleton. These and other creatures periodically appeared from and then returned to the void, a darkness so deep that it was not easy to avoid the thought that it was trying to crush the tiny space of light that it surrounded, to drive it away from this place that had always been dark and cold.

The thought of crushing came rather easily when you were at the bottom of the sea, though neither of the twins was particularly concerned about it. The transparent substance of the window was quite obviously not glass, and if twenty-five centuries of exposure to the pressure of the deeps had not cracked it, another twenty-five minutes wasn’t likely to make any difference.

The Imperial siblings had their minds on something else entirely, something which was far more dangerous than the pulverizing force or lethal chill of this dark, alien world, something against which the apparently indestructible window would be no defense at all. For that task, should it become necessary, the twins were relying on their entourage. The ten finest members of the Imperial Guard stood along the walls of the corridor, each one bearing his or her full battle gear: the faceless silver helms had been joined by matching full-body suits of smooth, nearly seamless silver armor; each guard held a fully-charged fire-lance in one hand; and all carried two mana blades, the wirebound and jewel-inset hilts hanging easily on either hip, inert but ready to spring to life and produce the intense, white-hot beams of energy which served as their blades.

To the twins’ left stood Lilith, uncharacteristically subdued today in the form of a regally beautiful woman with blue-black hair and eyes, wearing a formal dress of green and gold that hardly clung at all. Beyond her was Lady Istar, who was as always blue-eyed, white-haired, and wearing the silver mantle that proclaimed her standing as one of the Lords of the Inner Circle. Laraea Istar, the head and sole surviving member of her house, was the most formidable mentalist the Atlanteans possessed, and although much of her talent lay in the direction of prediction and prognostication, her telepathic abilities—a legacy of a Nereid great-grandparent, or so the rumor had been in the city before the Fall—were second to none. Laraea was inclined to patience and study in much the same manner as a Nereid, seldom employing her abilities with any kind of aggression, but it was defense Janus and Jenna required her for. If it happened to come down to aggression, Lilith would more than make up the difference.

Opposite Lilith and Lady Istar was Archon, his ornate robes the same as ever, his black eyes coolly impassive, although still far warmer than the darkness of the deep ocean. The archmage’s only _visible_ precaution for this event was the addition of a small golden circlet, from which a single diamond hung over his forehead. Janus and Jenna had nothing to fear from mental invasions, and Lady Istar and Lilith were both more than capable of shielding their own minds. In all honesty, Archon could probably have done the same even though he was not a psychic, but the task of guarding his thoughts would keep him distracted and unable to utilize much of his magic, and so, like the guards, he relied on a shielding device—although knowing the archmage, there were at least three other such devices hidden somewhere on his person.

The last member of the waiting group needed no such device. The black-armored giant stood behind the Imperial person, its arms folded and the eyeslot of its dully-glowing visor pointed directly forward, waiting.

All told, there was enough destructive potential in this small group to decimate a fair-sized city—and for all of that, the only member of the group not showing some outward sign of apprehension was the black knight.

Lady Istar raised her head slightly. “They’re here.”

Janus took a deep, slow breath. “Tell them they may approach, and then be ready.”

Nodding respectfully, Istar fixed her attention on the darkness, the set of her features shifting ever so slightly and then relaxing back to normal. For a long moment after that, nothing seemed to happen.

There is a very old belief that all life on Earth came from the sea. The human body is mostly water, after all, and there is something compelling about the ocean, the ultimate source of that water, that continues to make itself felt and known. The romantics point to the ever-expanding literature of the sea, from the most ancient creation myths with their cataclysmic floods and ocean deities to the most recent boat movies or oceanic documentaries, and say ‘There is the proof. This is where we came from. This is what we are.’ The scientists go on about the origins of life, the steady climb up the evolutionary ladder from bottom-feeding bacteria to opposable thumbs, and the interdependency of life, every living thing interconnected to all the others. The ordinary people go swimming, fishing, or boating, and are more or less content.

When the first and most ancient animals came up from the sea, flopping unsteadily on dry land as they struggled to breathe air instead of water, it was the force of life trying to spread itself to a new environment. This spread was not merely outwards and upwards; it was also inwards and downwards, and in the ocean, ‘down’ leads inevitably to the cold, crushing darkness. Down there, in the darkest of the deeps, the rules are as alien as any to be found on other planets, and down there, in the most primordial blackness and slime, there is life. It is not something to be found in romance or science; it is a part of the forgotten past, something that can at most be only half-recalled in dark dreams. In their earliest history, as they were exploring the secrets of the Earth, the Atlanteans encountered that life in its many gruesome forms. If these creatures ever had a name for themselves, humans never learned it, but the Atlanteans gave them one, a name that was cursed and feared and spoken only in hushed voices even at the height of Atlantis’s power:

The Deep Ones.

The first four creatures to emerge from the oppressive darkness bore some vague similarity to humans, for they had two arms, two legs, and a torso in between to hold the rest together, but they were quite unmistakably inhuman. Each of them stood closer to three meters in height than to two, and each was nearly as broad as it was tall. Their limbs were fat with a degree of muscle physically impossible for humans and ended in long, tentacular digits numbering anywhere from three to seven. Tendrils trailed behind the massive beasts as they trudged forward, and their faces—if that was the word—were nests of thick and thin tentacles hanging from the front of bloated, misshapen heads. Their color was mostly a dark green, save for the red glow of their small, bulbous eyes, two on each side of their heads.

The ugly, brutal giants advanced at the points of a square, and between them floated two creatures who were at once similar and yet very different. They too resembled some grotesque cross between humanoid and cephalopod, but these beings were markedly smaller than their escort, no taller than an average human and quite slender, particularly when contrasted with the lumbering bulk of the other four. Their delicate, four-fingered hands were held folded before their bodies in an almost prayer-like fashion, an image reinforced by the heavy, flowing robes of blue-black that completely covered their bodies from the neck down. The robes included hoods, but these did not cover the faces of the wearers, and the almost-human appearance of the rest of the two bodies made the exposed, pinkish-purple flesh of the faces that much worse to behold. Four slender tendrils hung around each of the small, remora-like mouths, on either side of which were the eyes, two soulless orbs that were as blank and staring as the eyes of the departed mouth-fish, but that the watching humans somehow knew could still see with perfect clarity.

When the two leading giants were within ten meters of the window, all four of them came to a halt. The two robed figures drifted forward a little further before stopping, each of them just ahead of and to the ‘in’ side of the line formed by the two giants behind it. That left the space between the four monsters empty in a rather obvious way.

The seventh creature did not arrive from the distant darkness, but from above. Its massive tentacles descended first, spreading themselves widely along the bare patch of ocean floor to form a base upon which the torpedo-shaped body could balance. The least of those trailing arms was larger than any one of the muscular beasts, and there were ten of them, the longest pair ending in viciously hooked sucker-pads. Two eyes, each larger than a man’s head and as black as the water beyond, stared unblinkingly out from opposite sides of the darkly blue-green body, just above the point where the mass of tentacles began. Dark, low ridges of some sort of horn or water-callused hide rimmed the great eyes and adorned the front of the massive body, from which wide, translucent fins stretched a short distance out to either side, rippling slowly in the icy water.

The Deep Ones stood there, waiting. A moment later, Istar twitched slightly and whispered, “They’re scanning, Highness.”

“Let it pass,” Janus replied, speaking just as quietly as she. The twins didn’t have to see Istar’s face to know that she didn’t like the idea of allowing one of these deadly psychic creatures to have access to the minds of her Prince and Princess; Janus and Jenna weren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect either, but they had to be sure that their curious psychic immunity extended to the mental powers of the Deep Ones as well as it did to those of humans.

*You are the leader?*

The eerie, gurgling voice registered clearly in the minds of all, even the twins, totally unimpeded by the deep, cold waters or the impenetrable window. There had been no movement to suggest it, but it was implicit in the words that the speaker was the robed being standing to the humans’ left—and it was just as implicit that this creature was speaking on behalf of the great squid.

Janus had to repress an urge to smile. There had been very few contacts between human and Deep One during the entire reign of Atlantis, and even fewer of those had involved conversation, but one thing all the records agreed upon was that the Deep Ones did not bother to ask questions: they took the information directly from your mind. Neither of the twins possessed the necessary psychic abilities to withstand the intrusions of a mindwalker of the Deep Ones, nor were they carrying any of the various magical devices designed to provide such a defense. And still, the creatures had to ask that question.

In spite of himself, Janus said a silent thank-you to Athena. “I am,” he said aloud. “I am Janus, of House Imperator, Crown Prince of Atlantis. Why have you requested to speak to us?”

Istar psychically relayed the words, and her communication was followed by a long, motionless silence on the part of the Deep Ones. Janus doubted that the creatures liked learning that there was a human who had immunity to their powers without the benefit of spell or device or training—and they would not like the suppliant nature suggested by the use of the word ‘request’, either—but when the gurgling voice resumed, it gave no hint of the speaker’s feelings in that matter.

*Your presence here disturbs us, human. Since the fall of your empire, we have been left in peace, undisturbed by the intrusions of your kind into our places. Only recently have humans begun to venture into our domain again, and always they come in small numbers, in their metal ships. They come in small numbers, and their minds are asleep; they do not concern us. But you... you come in force. You come with your unwelcome mind-walkers, and the mindless ones whose unthoughts contaminate our awareness. You are not wanted here.*

“We know this,” Janus replied calmly. “We have not forgotten the warnings your ancestors gave to ours when they intruded on you long ago.” Indeed, the horror-stories that had grown out of the records of the ‘cleansing’ of several undersea colonies, unknowingly built too close to the hidden cities of the Deep Ones, had terrified whole generations of Atlanteans, young and old alike. “We are here in your realm only because we must be here, and we have no intention of remaining any longer than is necessary.”

*And yet you have already stayed here longer than you had planned,* the response came. *These ongoing delays are unacceptable.*

“They were unavoidable,” Janus said sharply, speaking directly to the squid. “Much about this world has changed in our absence, and those changes forced us to alter our original strategy. There are very crucial requirements we must meet before we can depart your realm, and we will _not_ hasten the completion of our work here merely for your comfort.”

When Istar’s translation reached it, the monster’s tentacles rolled in what might have been agitation. *You cannot wait forever,* the speaker said, its voice snapping harshly. *Time is of the essence in your plans, and you are fast running out of it.*

“True,” Janus agreed, “but there remains sufficient time for us to finish our work—and to deal with some... unexpected opposition we have been encountering.”

*The Senshi are the least of your problems,* the speaker announced flatly. The twins glanced out of the corner of Jenna’s eye to see what Lady Istar’s reaction to that statement was, and found her unsurprised expression to be quite out of place.

“You knew,” Jenna said quietly.

*I suspected,* Istar corrected, her words appearing in the twins’ minds, unheard by the other Atlanteans and unknown—if not entirely undetected—by the Deep Ones. *I give you my word that I will explain, Jenna—later. For now, I suggest that we finish dealing with our... guests.*

“Resume,” Janus said, before turning his attention to the Deep Ones. “What do you mean by that? What do you know of them?”

*We remember the power of the Senshi of your empire,* the speaker said, *and we remember the power of the Senshi of the years after your empire. Though they had not walked this world for nearly a thousand years, when we felt the new powers awakening, there was no question that they were Senshi.* The creature paused. *Though we sense something else about them that is... different... from their predecessors. Echoes of their minds on the Astral Plane suggest a duality; age that exceeds their age, memory beyond their own. We do not understand it.*

The speaker’s telepathic voice had changed in tone. In those words, it conveyed the impression that it was now speaking for itself, an aide offering a personal but expertly informed opinion. There was actually a note of mild interest, like that of a researcher faced with a new and intriguing problem.

“We can offer little explanation for anything you may have detected about them,” Janus said. “We ourselves have had only one direct contact with these new Senshi.”

*You have had two,* the speaker corrected. *The mind your archmage encountered on the Astral Plane twelve days ago was the mind of the Senshi of Mars.* This got Archon’s immediate and undivided attention. *That was the first time we sensed her there so strongly. The duality was much more pronounced in her for a time, and then it was not. We cannot explain it, nor how she could have affected such a large region of the Plane.*

“We’ve observed similar incidents with some of the other Senshi,” Janus said. “Displays of power and ability which exceed our previous records of what they should be able to do—and yet you say that they’re not what we should be concerned with?”

*No. There is another power there that you have not faced yet.*

“What sort of power?”

The Atlanteans were rather surprised when the squid’s nest of arms rolled and thrashed in a display of agitation that, if anything, was even greater than the last. Both of the robed Deep Ones shifted, seeming to clench their long fingers, and even the impassive giants moved slightly.

*We do not know,* the speaker admitted, its voice once again that of a translator, but full of its own frustration as well as that of its leader. *It has appeared at times in the distant past: once long before your empire; again shortly before your war with the daimons; and then after the fall of your city, during the death-days of your empire. We felt it many times in the centuries following, but we could not perceive its nature, save for the silver light of its power. It slept long, its awakenings coming upon us too suddenly and too briefly to be studied, and it was... distant... from this world. And yet this world reacted to it. _All_ worlds react to it. You have seen the flows of power?*

“The ley lines?” Janus said. “Yes, we’ve studied the changes...” He stopped short and stared at the creature as he realized what it had been leading up to. “That isn’t possible. No single man-made device has _ever_ had the power to affect mana energy on a planetary scale.”

*This one did, and does—and it has done much more. We remember that in all the history of your empire, there was never a time when there were no Senshi, and yet the silver light somehow removed them from the world for the last ten centuries. In all that time, we felt only the echoes of that which you call the Time Gate, the whispering traces of the woman with the eyes of Time, and she was always alone. It was about twenty years ago that the Senshi began appearing once again, but is only within the last four years that any of their powers became active.*

*FOUR YEARS?* Janus thought. His expression and his sister’s were both calm, but their minds were racing. *With no support or teachers except for Athena, these women have developed their powers this far in just FOUR YEARS?*

*The light reappeared with the Senshi,* the speaker continued, *as did the darkness, and we have felt all of them grow. You have missed far more than you think during your exile, Prince of Atlantis; in the last five years, this planet has been besieged by everything from the physical essence of a daimon lord to the Galactic Senshi herself. Every time, we have felt the Senshi involved, and we know that you have barely begun to see the full extent of their powers. We know also, that as strong as the Senshi have become, this silver power that is with them is even stronger.*

Janus was silent for several very long minutes. “Why are you telling us all of this?” he finally asked.

Again, the squid’s tentacles shivered, and the mouth-tendrils of the two robed Deep Ones twitched nervously as well, sharing in whatever emotion their leader was displaying. *We know what is coming,* the speaker said in an even tone. *It is that which has kept us from removing you from our realm, and which has driven us to speak to you here. We offer no untruths to you, human; we have as little use for your species as you have for the lowest vermin, and at any other time, we would gladly expunge you from our domain. But not now. This world is our home as well, and it is threatened. If assisting you is the price of saving our home, then so be it.*

“Assisting us,” Janus echoed, trying to spot some trace of familiar emotion on the alien features of the squid and its aides. “You have the authority to make such an offer in good faith?”

*I do.* The voice was NOT that of the speaker; it was as cold and dark and deep as this ocean floor, powerful and malevolent, and with just those two words, it raised the hairs on the back of the twins’ neck and chilled their blood. Once again glancing out of Jenna’s eye, they could see that Lady Istar’s face had gone chalk white, and that even Lilith looked as though she was about to be sick. To their right, Archon did not appear to be moved at all.

“And in what capacity would you aid us?” It took an effort to keep his voice level, but Janus managed it.

*You have sufficient physical resources for your tasks,* the speaker said, *and you have the means to acquire the energy you will need to fulfill your plans. What you lack is accurate information on the world above, to properly plan your assaults. We can provide that, as well as further and more detailed knowledge of what has passed during your exile. It is also within our power to conceal the movements of your forces, to confuse or mislead—or remove—those who may attempt to interfere.*

That was about what Janus had expected to hear. The Deep Ones could not long tolerate exposure to what humans considered a normal environment. They required the cold, the darkness, and the omnipresent water; even the crushing pressure of these lightless depths was in some measure necessary for their comfort and survival. They fared better than humans attempting to brave the deep oceans, but the end result of prolonged exposure would be about the same. Their mind-walkers, though, could ‘visit’ the surface through any one of a hundred different psychic techniques and suffer not in the slightest. Such abilities as they were known to command would make for a formidable intelligence network, and they were quite correct in their assessment of the Atlantean situation; they needed information just badly enough to accept such an offer, even from the Deep Ones. Working in such a role would allow the creatures to assist the Atlanteans while avoiding the necessity of venturing to the surface and also maintaining a distance both sides would find more comfortable than associating face-to-face.

Then too, it would have been a warm day on Pluto before Janus even considered being a party to a repetition of what had happened to those long-ago colonies.

“It is certainly a... unique offer,” the Prince said slowly. “What is it that you seek in return for this assistance?”

*The continued purity of our realm,* the speaker stated. *We shall aid you so long as your mind-walkers and mindless ones are kept away from our places, so long as your minds remained turned towards the surface, where your tasks lie. Do that, and leave our realm when you are fully prepared, and you will have our aid.*

“Information in exchange for privacy.” Janus nodded. “A fair exchange—but we must give it some consideration.”

*Consider quickly.* Again, the giant squid had spoken for itself, and with those words, it apparently considered this meeting to be over, for it rocketed away into the void with a backblast of water that made the tendrils of its minions and the robes of the two mind-walkers flap wildly. The muscular green creatures slowly turned and began trudging back the way they had come, but the last two remained, and though they did not so much as turn towards each other, Janus had the distinct impression they were conversing. Then the one that had not yet spoken did so, its voice as watery and weird as its counterpart’s, but instantly recognizable as _not_ being that voice.

*One thing more,* it said. *The source of the silver light has changed in recent months. It no longer sleeps, but remains awake, and while we still cannot fully perceive it, it is close enough to us that we can feel a restriction upon its power, a limitation which has grown along with its awareness. It is waiting for something—what, we do not know, but with its power restrained, you have a chance to act without risking its interference.*

*However,* the first creature added, *as the silver power has lessened, we have become more aware of other forces that are somehow connected to it: another light; a darkness; and a strange grey power. We cannot perceive much about any of them, except that your forces have already encountered the darkness in some measure, and may do so again. Though they do not feel as strong as the silver power, we advise you to be wary of all three, particularly the grey. It is the least dangerous of the three, but it is the only one of them currently active, and it evades us even more readily than does the silver power.*

Without another word, they disappeared. For several minutes, the silence was absolute.

“Well,” Lilith said, “_that_ was perhaps the most distasteful thing I’ve had to do in...”

“Be quiet, Lilith,” Jenna snapped. Right on the end of that, Janus added, “The council hall,” in a note of command.

“As you say, my Prince.” Archon bowed his head and spread his hands, and the entire group was standing in the hall. While the twins ascended to the throne—the giant knight moving around behind them and resuming its silent immobility—the ten guardsmen remained where they stood, two precise rows defining a corridor in the middle of the room. Archon, Istar, and Lilith stood at the end of those rows nearest the throne, waiting—Archon and Istar with their respective patience, Lilith with her lack of it.

“Captain,” Janus said, overriding the tightly-woven spell-fields that had kept the guards essentially deaf to all that had been said during the meeting, “you and your people are dismissed.”

Faceless and featureless in that silver armor, the nearest of the ten guards touched the tip of the firelance he carried in one hand to his opposite shoulder in salute, then gave an order that was muted by his enclosing helm but still carried clearly to the other nine soldiers. They saluted in turn and then marched, double file, out of the hall.

For some reason, Janus found himself considering the fact that three of these elite soldiers were women, and yet were completely indistinguishable from their brothers-in-arms while they all wore their armor—which of course was the entire point. The armor was as much weapon as defense, showing the enemy only his own features, warped and distorted by the convex surface of the mirror-mask, and making each guardsman appear to be a clone of the next. Additionally, all the guardsmen were trained and conditioned to the point where they not only looked alike, but _moved_ alike, fighting in perfect tandem. Present a specific attack to a hundred guardsmen, and you would get the same answer one hundred times—the best answer. They did not fight with the rigid, mindless repetitions of units, but with intelligence and precision, and always that peerless synchronization. Defeat one such warrior, and the next would fight so much like him that you were never entirely certain that it was NOT him. The value of that kind of intimidation was yet another weapon in the guardsman’s arsenal.

Right now, though, it profoundly disturbed Janus to see how similar all ten of those soldiers were, how _exactly_ alike each was to the next in shape and movement. The massive warriors of the Deep Ones had been just the same way.

While Janus was pondering that unsettling little revelation, Jenna turned her attention to Lady Istar. “You said you would explain, Laraea. I’m waiting.”

“There were several factors,” Lady Istar replied calmly, folding her arms. “My suspicions were raised a month ago, when you told us that the advance force of units had been destroyed or recalled. From Draco’s and Stone’s reports, I knew that any modern weapons powerful enough to eliminate our units would have caused noticeable collateral damage to the city; Archon would have detected and dealt with any conventional magical resistance; and Lilith and I would likewise have noticed any traces of psionic activity on that scale. Since none of those three seemed to be the case, it was safe to assume that the problem was shielded against magical and psychic detection, but I couldn’t tell anything more than that for some time. Then you assigned me to try and track down the source of that energy Archon encountered.”

“Mars, according to the Deep Ones,” Janus said, “which would explain why neither you nor Archon have been able to find it—her—again.”

Istar nodded and continued with what she had been saying. “I’ve spent a great deal of time on the Astral Plane in the last two weeks, and I noticed a very pronounced change in it four days ago. I was able to confirm the cause of that change to have been the passage of a large number of daimons, and since I know that you would not employ such creatures without a very compelling reason, I reviewed all the factors. An apparently undetectable magical force, strong enough to destroy units with great speed, and which can seemingly only be held at bay by daimons adds up to the Senshi: they are shielded against most forms of magical or psychic detection; they could take control of almost any elementals sent against them; higher-planar beings would not consent to attack them; and daimons are the only lower-planar creatures strong enough to confront them with any chance of success.”

When Istar had finished, Janus raised his hands and applauded slowly—but it was Jenna who shook her head and sighed. “Sometimes I forget that you were training for a post with the intelligence service before the Fall, Laraea.”

“My training can’t claim full credit,” Istar admitted. “Several of my divinations have hinted that we’re facing opposition from multiple elements, and you don’t usually see fire and water aligned together. Mars and Neptune would explain it, though.”

“And once you realized this,” Jenna said, “I suppose you did a horoscope for Athena, as well?”

Istar nodded. “Support and shelter from the same alignment of forces that opposes us—air and water, fire and ice, thunder and metal.” She looked at her Prince and Princess. “I took it to mean that Athena has managed to find—or get herself found by—a full team of Senshi. Is that correct?”

“So far as we can tell, yes—with some differences. For one thing, it appears that the Mercury of this generation is a human, and Cestus fought a Senshi of Venus who was masquerading under a different guise four nights ago. There also seem to be several other Senshi that weren’t around in our time.”

“That would explain the rest of Athena’s horoscope,” Istar mused. “The influence of the moon was twice as strong as anything else, and it was paralleled by a male earth-aspect. There were also signs of several lesser influences: two were aligned with the moon; another was aligned to Mercury, but very strongly influenced by Pluto; and there were several others that didn’t show any major alignments.” She smiled and chuckled faintly. “All in all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reading quite that crowded. Athena even has Saturn aligned in her favor.”

“Saturn is not usually in _anyone’s_ favor,” Archon said, sounding suspicious. Janus and Jenna had only a vague grasp of astrology, but Archon’s long experience and general expertise of magic gave him a reasonable understanding of its many fields, including the sometimes quirky study of the stars.

“Normally, no,” Istar agreed, “but with the influences of all the other powers added in, Saturn’s usual detrimental effects were canceled out. As I said, it was a crowded horoscope, but it essentially says that Athena is either going to have a year where nothing happens, or a year in which _everything_ happens. It depends on how you interpret the position of Pluto.”

“Has anyone besides yourself been in a position to ‘interpret’ this horoscope?” Janus asked.

Istar’s answering look was proud and just slightly reproachful. “Naturally not, your Highness, and you have my word of honor that unless or until you give the word, no one will. You may have Lilith scan me if you wish to confirm that.”

“That won’t be necessary, Lady—but I _do_ want you to start wearing one of Archon’s shielding devices. I trust your honor, but I _don’t_ trust the Deep Ones.”

“That won’t be necessary, either, your Highness.” Istar reached up and drew a small silver pendant out from beneath her robes. At Jenna’s look, the white-blonde Lady smiled faintly and shrugged. “I don’t trust them, either, and more importantly, I don’t know the full extent of their mental abilities. I wasn’t going to take any chances.”

“Good.” Janus closed his eye and raised his arm, elbow on the edge of the chair and knuckle braced against the bridge of his nose in a thoughtful pose. “They were doing their best to give us every reason to trust them,” the Prince murmured, “and that in itself makes me suspicious.”

“Do you believe that they lied to us?” Jenna asked.

“Not in the sense that anything they said was a deliberate falsehood, but I _also_ don’t believe for a second that they told us _everything_ they know. And did you notice how concerned they were about this ‘silver power?’”

“If it really _can_ alter the ley lines,” Jenna said, “then I’d say that they have _plenty_ of reason to be concerned about it. Particularly if they aren’t able to tell what it is.”

“But why _tell_ us that they can’t identify this thing?” her brother countered, opening his eye and gesturing with his hand. “The Deep Ones seem to want us to believe what they say, so in that respect, they _had_ to tell us about the existence of this thing; otherwise, they would have lost credibility if and when we found out about it on our own. But they _didn’t_ have to go into detail about what it’s capable of; if anything, telling us made the thing even more dangerous, because now that we know what it can do, we’re that much more likely to try to seize it and use it against them.”

“I see what you mean.” Jenna frowned. “So... they either want us to go after this silver power, or at the very least they want to make sure that our attention is fixed on it.”

“And that,” Janus said, leaning back on the throne and drumming his fingers on the armrest, “at least to me, suggests that there’s something else that they _don’t_ want us looking at too closely. Something important to the Deep Ones, but which has little or nothing to do with the Senshi, this mysterious power, or the ‘other forces’ that the mind-walkers warned us about.” His fingers drummed to a halt. “We’ll have to worry about it later. Archon, what’s our status?”

“Preparations for the next operation are thirty-six percent complete, Highness. One nexus, two squads of first-generation units, and one half-squad of second-generation units. We’ll be finished in another six days.”

“Six days,” Janus repeated, plainly not happy at having to wait that long. He sighed. “Very well. We’ll stall the Deep Ones as long as we can, Archon, but have your people concentrate on the nexi just in case we have to move ahead of schedule. We can reinforce the units with earth elementals and use daimons as distractions if we have to, but I don’t want those sucker-faced mutants getting it into their heads that we’re not strong enough to be of help to them.”

# 

Usagi woke up early on Wednesday. It wasn’t her idea.

Monday as a whole had left her completely exhausted. Gloomy, ugly-weather days like that sapped a person’s energy as well as any monster, making everything five times harder to do than normal, and even on the best of days, trying to deal with her mother’s reaction to her latest test scores was something guaranteed to leave Usagi feeling wiped out. Trying to deal with her mother being _happy_ about her test scores for once had been no less draining than the usual routine, because after years of cringing, evading the subject, wheedling, whining, and wailing, Usagi’s reactions were almost instinctive. Every time Ikuko turned in her general direction, Usagi automatically went into cringe mode; she couldn’t help it, and it was only with great effort that she managed to stop herself from going any further than a few nervous fidgets.

There’d been other reasons to fidget as well. Introducing ‘Arthur’ had gone over without a hitch for all of five minutes, and then Ikuko had insisted that he and Minako—and Haruna, Rei, and Yuuichirou as well—stay for dinner. At that point, Usagi had seriously considered hiding under the bed for the rest of the evening. Everybody would ask questions about Arthur, and he and Minako would answer them—with Minako undoubtedly making it up as she went along, with her usual flair and potential for disaster—and then all the Senshi would have to try and get the story straight for future reference... but only after Minako had forgotten about half of everything that she’d said...

Dinner wasn’t a complete disaster. Artemis was at his best, blending the behavior of a perfect English gentleman with that of a not-so-perfect English schoolboy and maintaining that slightly textbookish accent to his Japanese to spin a convincing front. Usagi knew that Artemis had been to England just that one time with Minako, for six months at the most, but ‘Arthur’ talked about it as if he really had been living there his whole life, and the discussion of soccer—beg pardon; the discussion of _football_ that he got into with Shingo took on an almost religious intensity. He repeated the story he had given Umino about studying business; he commiserated with Yuuichirou about the ups and downs of campus life; he described friends, family members, and other fictional acquaintances with casual familiarity. Through all of that, he somehow managed to keep reining Minako in before she went too far or said too much. He even found time to eat.

Once all was said and done, the dishes washed, and the guests on their way home, Usagi had dragged herself upstairs and collapsed, fully intent on sleeping through Tuesday.

Ami’s call over the communicators at just a little past six in the morning had almost spoiled that plan, but after sending Luna to see what was going on, Usagi went right back to bed and slept for another six hours straight. She spent the entire day in her pajamas, if not in bed, absolutely reveling in the knowledge that school was over for a whole blessed month, and that—regardless of the consequences in the distant future—those ‘impossible’ marks had earned her a huge dose of indulgence from her parents.

But after such a lovely, lazy day, Usagi was too well-rested to stick with her usual sleeping pattern, and so when Setsuna woke up at sunrise, she was startled by Usagi’s somewhat moody, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Usagi-chan.” Setsuna looked at her, taking in the flat-lipped set of her mouth, the straight-backed posture as she sat up against the headrest and wall, and the lack of bleariness in her eyes, and decided not to inquire as whether Usagi had slept well. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“I had some toast about half an hour ago. Mom wasn’t up.”

“Ah.” In Usagi’s case, the commandment that Ikuko was the only one in the house allowed to cook or grant permission for others to cook was less of an inconvenient restriction than it was a necessary safety measure. Setsuna pushed back the sheets and swung her legs over the side of the mattress, reaching for her housecoat while sliding her feet into her slippers. As was usually the case, she could hear the sound of the shower. “Well, she’ll be downstairs in three minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Shall we...”

“Do you have to do that?”

In the middle of rising from the bed, Setsuna blinked. “Excuse me? Do I have to do what?”

“Be so... so... _precise_,” Usagi said. “Do you always have to say _exactly_ how many minutes and seconds it’ll take for something to happen? Can’t you just say ‘she’ll be a few minutes’ or ‘it’ll just take a minute’ like the rest of us?”

For a few brief moments, Setsuna actually sat there with her mouth open and no words coming out. “I... never actually noticed I was doing it,” she said slowly, folding her arms and tapping her chin thoughtfully with one finger. “Now that you mention it, though... I’ll try to be a little less exact in the future. Okay?” Usagi grunted something which Setsuna took to be agreement; nodding, she stood up and neatly remade her bed, then took a few steps towards Usagi, intending to help her up.

“Do you have to do _that_, too?”

Again, Setsuna stopped with a puzzled look. “Do what?”

“Sway your hips like that when you walk. Well, you do,” Usagi added, seeing the startled expression. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how half the guys in town turn their heads whenever you go by.”

As a matter of fact, Setsuna _had_ noticed this general behavior trend among the male population, but she dismissed it for the moment as she stood there—hands on the hips in question—and looked at Usagi, trying to figure out what the source of these unusual outbursts was.

“And don’t look at me like that,” Usagi ordered, slouching down where she sat, appearing just about as pouty as could be with her lips locked into a frown, her shoulders hunched, and her arms crossed over her belly... oh.

“So _that’s_ what’s bothering you.” Usagi looked up again at the sound of Setsuna’s voice, which had regained some of its old, eerie certainty in that statement, and followed the gaze of those crimson eyes. She blushed and made as if to cover her stomach, then stopped and released a sigh that carried away the angry tension and left her looking just depressed.

“I had a back twinge when I went downstairs this morning,” Usagi said gloomily, as if it were the end of the world, “and I had all kinds of time to sit and think about what it means. I haven’t been able to run—I mean _really_ run—in months, and pretty soon I’m not going to be able to walk very far without a break. I’m just going to keep getting bigger and bigger until I can’t even get across a room without having to stop and rest, and everybody will have to work even harder to try and protect me, because I won’t be able to do _anything_, and then one of you is going to get hurt because she’s looking out for me more than herself... and don’t try to cheer me up,” Usagi warned, as Setsuna came over and sat down on the edge of the bed, her back to the wall.

“Actually, I was going to tell you to scoot over. Go on,” Setsuna said, nudging the suddenly confused girl to one side to make room for herself. She lifted her feet up onto the mattress, drew the end of her housecoat up and laid it across her nightgown-sheathed legs, and nodded in satisfaction. “I prefer to have a complete seat under me when I sit down; sitting half-on and half-off of something makes me feel as if I’m about to fall over the side. Maybe it’s the hips again.” She paused and pushed down on the mattress with both hands. “Hmmm... I can see you gave me the more comfortable mattress. Well, that won’t do; we’ll have to switch. Your mother said the other day that she was going to air them out by the end of the month, so...”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Usagi said flatly.

“You _are_ in a bossy mood this morning, aren’t you?” Setsuna mused, locking her arms about her knees. “I’m glad Luna spent the night at Mako-chan’s, or the two of you would have been at each other’s throats by now—and if you’re going to insist on talking about your pregnancy, then let’s talk about it. You are _not_ going to suddenly swell up to four hundred pounds between now and the end of June, Usagi-chan, and your condition doesn’t mean you’re going to become a complete invalid, even at eight or nine months; it just means you have to be careful. Yes, it probably will get to the point where you’ll be staying at home, and yes, your back will hurt if you walk around too much, but since when have sitting or laying down been a problem for you?”

Usagi almost took offense at that. Almost. “What about school?” she countered, barely believing herself that she’d said it.

“Easily handled. Your mother and Haruna discussed it at some length Monday evening, and Haruna said that as long as you had someone keeping you informed of the regular assignments, you could do your math and sciences work at home with your textbooks and a few supplements from the library. Some of the other courses might be a little trickier, but you have Ami-chan and all the other girls to help you already, so you likely wouldn’t need a tutor—and if it becomes necessary, I’m sure Michiru wouldn’t object to helping you study.”

“But that just brings it all back to what I was worried about before!” she objected. “If you’re all busy helping to look after me, you won’t be able to concentrate on Senshi business!”

“Nonsense. If anything, your staying put in this house will make it _easier_ for us to focus on our other problems, because we won’t have to race up and down half the streets in the city looking for you when there _is_ trouble. Luna at least will always be with you during the day, and ChibiUsa and I will be here in the afternoons and evenings. You can add whichever of the others draws watch as well, and on top of that, you still have the ginzuishou to call us in a real emergency, remember?”

Usagi blushed; in her haste to get in a good pout, she’d forgotten to take the crystal into account, and she mumbled as much.

“That’s what I thought.” Setsuna put an arm about Usagi’s shoulders. “Worrying is a natural response when things get hectic, Usagi-chan, but you can either worry a lot and not be able to help fix the problem, or you can worry a little while making yourself as useful as you can. Right now, to be useful, you have to _not_ do anything that would make the rest of us worry, so that we’ll be able to take care of you and deal with everything else without any distractions. Okay?”

Usagi mumbled something else. “Good,” Setsuna said, nodding. “Now, stop feeling sorry for yourself, you silly goose,” she said gently, pulling Usagi close and kissing the top of her head. “The only two people you can blame for your condition are yourself and Mamoru, and since you love each other, there’s no point in blaming either of you, is there? Particularly since you _do_ sort of _have_ to have this baby.” Setsuna looked over at ChibiUsa, who was still asleep, snoring softly. Usagi also looked, with eyes that were narrowed.

“You left out two of the people that I can blame,” she said, extending one arm. “I can blame _her_”—she pointed at ChibiUsa—“for coming back and starting the whole chain of events that told us who she was, and I can blame _you_”—she pointed up at Setsuna—“for letting her come back in the first place. What do you have to say about _that_?”

“If you accept that she couldn’t have come back without my help,” Setsuna said calmly, “then it isn’t ChibiUsa’s fault, either—and can you really blame me for something I don’t even remember doing?”

Usagi started to say that _of course_ she could still blame her, but no words would form in her mouth, and she went back into pout mode, slouching against Setsuna. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered, as ChibiUsa snored a little louder. “And you be quiet, too,” she added, as Setsuna began to laugh.

“As you command, Princess,” Setsuna intoned dramatically.

They sat there together for several minutes, watching the sunlight grow steadily stronger outside. As the light increased, Setsuna looked overhead, at the shelf which held the Phoenix Egg, and recalled what she had been told about the overnight sprouting of the seed Makoto had planted. Could something similar happen to that peculiar little object sitting barely more than a meter above Usagi’s bed? Could that Egg somehow be hatched? And what might cause it? What effect might the light of the sun—as obvious a symbol of fire as the firebird itself—be having on the Egg?

*And am I just worrying myself to distraction like Usagi was a moment ago?* Setsuna finished wryly, shaking her head and sighing. “Come on, Usagi- chan. Let’s go talk to your mother about breakfast.”

Usagi didn’t reply, or move, and when Setsuna looked down at her, she couldn’t help but blink; the girl had fallen asleep. Setsuna gave her a mild shake and repeated her name, and the only response was a small snore not unlike the ones coming from ChibiUsa. She thought about getting up and carefully sliding Usagi back down to her pillows, but the first move Setsuna made to rise caused Usagi to murmur in protest, then settle in closer, lock her arms around her new pillow’s waist, and murmur again as she drifted back into slumber.

Even if she’d been awake, ChibiUsa would have been no help at all. What one Usagi did, the other was also likely to do, and a ridiculous but nonetheless highly probable image of the two odango-haired girls fighting over a pillow with her own face on it popped into Setsuna’s mind as soon as she considered waking the pink-haired girl up. Luna would certainly have been helpful, but she was not here. In its empty otherspace, the Garnet Orb pulsed once, reacting to the presence of the ginzuishou but otherwise taking no notice of Usagi; similarly, while she could feel the crystal pulse its own recognition of the Orb, she could also feel that it seemed quite content to leave things the way they were. The Phoenix Egg did nothing that Setsuna could see or sense, and she was shocked to discover that even her own body was betraying her; her arms, apparently moving of their own volition, placed themselves around Usagi, and from her throat came the soft, strange notes of that familiar-feeling but utterly unrecognized song she so often found herself humming.

Which is why, when the door opened five minutes later, Ikuko’s puzzled face appeared and found Setsuna looking back at her with her arms around Usagi and a helplessly happy expression fixed on her face.

“Shall we try breakfast in bed today?” Ikuko asked with a gentle smile.

# 

Proteus checked the systems of an electronic clock it had temporarily fused into. 11:37. Two minutes since the last time it had checked.

Waiting had become curiously difficult for Proteus. In its original, near- mindless existence, it could have waited for months on end for a task to begin, but now that it was intelligent, able to realize the infinite possibilities in each second and then regret the loss of them in endless waiting, the entity had begun to discover the emotions of boredom and impatience.

All the pieces for its next test were in place. The site had been chosen, the two hybrid units—11:38—were ready to go, and rat-units were scattered about to observe. The only thing Proteus needed was for the clock to hit 12:08, this being the time that—according to its observations—the most humans would be moving through the test zone. 11:39. Maximum exposure would bring the Senshi in all the faster, and get the experiment finished sooner.

But the clock would not cooperate. It continued to count at its maddeningly steady pace, ticking away the seconds—11:40—moving right along and somehow failing to get anywhere. If Proteus had possessed fingers or feet, they would have been tapping in annoyance.

11:41. *How do humans put up with this?*

# 

Tapping one shoe absently against the floor, Minako checked her watch—11:41—for the tenth time in as many minutes.

“A watched clock never tolls,” she sighed.

“That’s ‘a watched pot never boils,’” Artemis corrected.

“And they’ll be here,” Ryo added. “Trust me.”

“Uh-huh,” Minako said, not really paying attention to either of them.

They were sitting in a booth at the Crown Center, waiting for the rest of the girls to show up for a lunch date. Emphasis on the ‘date’ part, as far as Minako was concerned, and emphasis on the ‘lunch’ part, as far as Artemis and Ryo were concerned.

“Here’s your soda, Mina-chan,” Unazuki said, coming over and setting down a tall glass of cherry pop almost as bubbly as Minako. “And your grapefruit juice, Ryo-kun, and your milk, Arthur-kun.”

“Thanks, Una-chan,” Minako said, taking a sip of her drink and not commenting on the fact that Unazuki had been just a little breathless when she addressed Arthur. Motoki’s sister was between boyfriends at the moment, her last romance having fizzled out shortly before exam week, and she was in the middle of that delicate phase that follows most break-ups, where pretty much any relationship she tried to get into was almost guaranteed to fall apart. Minako was trying to think of ways to prevent that and nudge Unazuki back towards her third-to-last boyfriend, Aiden. The young Love Goddess had only seen the pair together twice, but she had picked up a strong vibe both times, and she was bound and gagged to get them together again.

But in the meantime, a nice harmless crush on a perfectly charming and completely unavailable guy would do the girl some good, and keep her out of trouble until Minako had been able to come up with something.

“Likewise,” Artemis added, politely not noticing as his smile made Unazuki’s cheeks turn red. Instead, he glanced at Ryo’s glass. “I still don’t see how you can drink that stuff.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Ryo admitted, sipping at the sour pink juice and making a small face. “Actually _liking_ it is another story.”

Unazuki blinked and put her hands on her hips, briefly forgetting about Arthur. “If you don’t like it, then why did you order it?”

“Because he enjoys making pretty girls run pointless errands for him,” Makoto said from behind him, as she and Ami came in.

“Well, that goes without saying,” Ryo admitted, neither turning around nor missing a beat, “but the other reason is that it seems to help with my headaches. It’s strange, but they’re never quite so bad after I’ve had a bit of grapefruit to eat or drink.”

“That does sound rather odd,” Ami admitted, sitting down beside him.

“In which case it suits him perfectly,” Makoto added, taking a seat next to Artemis.

“Very true,” Unazuki agreed, before going into waitress mode and asking Ami and Makoto what they wanted. She left, came back with Ami’s water and Makoto’s lemon-lime soda, and then, since the place was otherwise empty, took a seat in the next booth to chat with them. “So, Ami-chan; aside from the weirdness of your boyfriend and the possibility that you and Mako-chan are going to kill each other, how’s life treating you?”

“Not badly,” Ami said. “And you?”

Unazuki shrugged. “Can’t complain. By the way, I saw that article in the newspaper yesterday; congratulations. Again.”

“Thank you.”

“Article?” Minako asked, looking up from her drink with a blank expression.

“The one which said Ami-chan got the highest overall marks in the district,” Ryo announced with a grin. “She also had the best average for our grade level in the last eight years, and...”

“Cut it out, Ryo-kun,” Ami interrupted.

“What?” he asked innocently. “You deserve proper recognition and praise for your genius.”

“You _know_ I hate it when people go on about how smart I am all the time.”

“You didn’t seem to mind it so much while you were talking to your mother on the phone yesterday,” Makoto said, taking a drink of her pop.

“That was different. We were talking about my application for university” -Minako choked and nearly shot cherry soda out of her nose at that—“and the part-time job I’m taking at the hospital.”

While Artemis clapped the wheezing Minako on the back, Unazuki frowned. “They hire students to do the grunt and go-for work, don’t they? If you’re going to be a doctor, shouldn’t you be using that time to study or take some kind of pre-pre-med correspondence course?”

“Mother thinks it’s important that I get some working experience in a hospital, both to see if I can handle the added workload and to give me a better idea of exactly what sort of medicine I want to get into. I happen to agree with her.”

*And it doesn’t hurt that working in the same building will give you a chance to see each other on a daily basis again,* Calypso—hidden today in the form of a neat blue vest—added silently.

*That too,* Ami admitted.

“It’s nice to see somebody with her whole life ahead of her, making all those plans to take the world by storm,” Unazuki sighed, affecting the tones of a world-weary working girl. “I’m more or less resigned to the fact that I’m going to be working in this place and waiting on tables until I’m a grey-haired old granny.”

They knew she was lying about that. Half-lying, anyway. Unazuki liked her job, because she liked talking to people, and people liked talking to her. Yes, she probably would be working in the Crown Center for years to come, but it wasn’t likely that she’d be waitressing her way through the next forty years; her family _did_ own the place, after all, and somebody was going to have to take over the general management once her mother and father decided to retire. Since everybody knew that Motoki had other plans, that left Unazuki to look after the family business. Truth be told, she was probably better-suited for the job than her brother, even if the female clientele generally wasn’t going to go around falling in love with her at first sight.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Makoto said, smiling. “Once I open a restaurant, you can come work for me.”

“That’s assuming my folks will ever let you quit once they’ve got you working in _our_ kitchen,” Unazuki replied. “I think they’ve been considering a full-scale restaurant-quality expansion to this place, and if that happens, we’ll need a good cook.”

“Me, work in a joint like this? Are you insulting my culinary abilities?”

“Just trying to put them to good use. As Ami-chan said, everybody needs at least a little work experience.”

“And you’d be the expert on that,” an older woman’s voice said, “seeing as how you always seem to be doing as little work as possible whenever I come in here.”

“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming in today or not, Reika,” Unazuki said, turning around where she sat and smiling. “My day simply isn’t complete without a visit from my favorite sister-in-law.”

Reika gave her an amused look. “I’m not your sister-in-law, Una-chan.”

“Oh, like there’s _any_ doubt left in _anybody’s_ mind that my poor brother’s going to try to marry you.”

“You never know,” Reika said, spreading her hands. “He might still decide to throw me over for Mako-chan.”

“If he does,” Makoto replied, “I’ll throw him back to you.” She paused, adding, “Eventually, anyway.”

“Train him to clean up after himself while you’ve got him, and it’s a deal,” Reika laughed. “Ami-chan, Mina-chan, Ryo-san; it’s good to see you all again.”

“Likewise,” Ami said, nodding while Ryo mumbled a polite reply.

“And this,” Minako said grandly, “is Arthur Knight. He’s a friend of mine from England. Arthur-kun, this is Nishimura Reika.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Artemis said, his dazzling smile a bit spoiled by the milk mustache adorning his upper lip.

“It’s a pleasure,” Reika murmured, holding back a smile of her own. Artemis blinked, noticed the amused looks everybody was giving him, and ran a finger along his lips, making a face at the milky residue before reaching for a napkin.

“So much for first impressions,” Unazuki said, standing up. “You’ll be having the usual, Reika?”

“Yes, please.” Unazuki nodded and headed for the counter. Reika sat down, sighing as she did so.

“I take it the search isn’t going well?” Makoto asked sympathetically.

“That depends on how you look at it,” Reika replied with a weary smile. “There’s been a run of university and corporate research grants in the last year or so, and all those professors are hiring assistants, assistant assistants, and so on from here out to the moon. The science department at the university’s so crowded right now that you can’t take two steps without ending up ankle-deep in someone else’s work.”

“But...” Makoto pressed.

“But, nearly all of those grants are going into engineering and physics, and after spending the last five years studying biology, chemistry, and geology, I’m a little underqualified in the other fields. It wouldn’t be such a big issue if I didn’t need the money, but I do, so it is.” She sighed again.

The others were silent, unsure of what to say. Considering the emotional roller-coaster ride she had been on—and by association, dragged them all along with her on—before leaving to study in Europe, Reika’s cheerful reappearance in Tokyo early last summer had been a surprise, to say the least. Right at first, everyone had figured that she was just back on a break—those foreign schools had really weird schedules—but whenever somebody stopped to ask her how her studies had been going, Reika had said “fine, thank you,” and then disarmingly changed the subject. It wasn’t until halfway through August that they learned through a hushed conversation with Motoki that Reika had lost her scholarship, and with it, her ability to afford studying abroad.

Everyone had been fairly quiet on the subject since; there had not been so much as one whispered hint of it during Usagi’s party, months gone. Reika had always been very devoted to her academic achievements, and the fact that they had come up short when it really counted had badly shaken her self-confidence. That was really much worse than the loss of the scholarship itself, for in the months since, while Reika had continued her studies, she had done so with nowhere near her original drive. She was obsessive about checking her work, not as if looking for mistakes, but as if she no longer trusted herself to know the answers. Where before she had always been eager to study overseas, now she never mentioned it.

This sort of thing happened, of course, but it was particularly saddening to see in someone whose first and foremost dream had always been her academic career. About all anyone could do to help Reika right now was to be there for her until she was able to reestablish her confidence on her own. Getting a new job would help with her self-esteem at least as much as it would help with her bank account, but with the progress she was _not_ having, improved confidence and improved cash flow both seemed distant possibilities, at best.

“I don’t suppose anyone is planning a field study of some kind?” Ami asked. Reika shook her head.

“That would be wonderful, but nobody’s been able to find the money for something like that. All those grants have more or less dried up support for anything outside the labs.” She looked off into space and added, “I wonder how evil it is of me to wish some sort of misfortune on my colleagues for stealing all the money away from the rest of us. A minor outbreak of pox, a pestilence of roaches—a complete failure of all the electron microscopes _and_ the particle accelerator.”

“Offhand,” Ami replied, “I’d say it was a little evil.”

“Just a teensy bit,” Minako agreed. “But that’s okay; you’re allowed to be a teensy bit evil.”

“Thanks.”

“No charge.” Minako grinned.

“If you people are picking on a future member of my family,” Unazuki warned as she returned and set Reika’s ‘usual’—a very frothy cappuccino—down on the table in front of her, “I’m going to start spilling things on you and having Motoki dock your tickets and prizes in the arcade.”

“We’ll be good,” Minako promised immediately. Prizes from the Crown Center were one of the cornerstones of her existence, to say nothing of the continued growth of the mountain of plushies that inhabited her bedroom. “You’re being awfully quiet all of a sudden,” she said a moment later, changing the subject by turning to Ryo. “Is there something you want to share with the rest of the class, Mister Urawa?”

“No,” he replied, “I’m quite happy to just sit here and listen to Unazuki-san threaten you with a rain of hot coffee and an embargo of crane prizes. But thanks for asking.” He took another small drink of his grapefruit juice and made another face. Swishing the glass’s contents, Ryo felt someone’s eyes on him and raised his head; Reika was giving him a considering, puzzled look. “Something wrong, Nishimura-san?”

“Forgive me for asking this again, but are you _certain_ that we hadn’t met somewhere before Usagi-chan’s party?” she asked. “I know that you said we hadn’t, but I’m almost positive that I’ve seen that look before.”

With their attention fixed on Ryo, Reika and Unazuki didn’t notice the fast, multidirectional look that passed between the three Senshi and Artemis. As a matter of fact, Reika and Ryo _had_ met once before that party—long before it, when Endymion had been collecting the seven carriers of the Rainbow Crystals. The resetting of Time would have suppressed or even totally wiped out that memory for a normal person, but then Reika was no more a normal person than Ryo, and who knew what knowledge the youma sleeping inside of her could have passed on? If anyone might be able to realize the existence of Ryo’s darker half, it would be one of the other six former crystal carriers; small wonder, then, that he tried to avoid them.

And he _did_ avoid them. Thinking back, Artemis, Makoto, and Minako realized that except for this moment and a few minutes of polite conversation with Reika and Rei’s grandfather at Usagi’s party, they had never seen Ryo around any of the others. They hadn’t thought much of it at the party, believing at the time that he had been busy dodging Ami’s mother, which in truth he _had_ been doing, just with two other names beside hers on the List of People To Avoid. Ami, naturally, had noticed all of this and questioned Ryo about it, and he had been his usual forthcoming self, with the same black moodiness that always came over him when the subject involved the thing trapped somewhere inside his soul.

There were hints of that depression now as Ryo searched for a way to convince Reika that their only prior meeting had been that one time. He let out a sigh of very real relief when the door opened to admit Usagi and ChibiUsa, who, as usual, became the center of attention.

“Rei-chan couldn’t make it?” Minako asked as the new arrivals sat down, Usagi next to Makoto and ChibiUsa on the seat at the head of the table.

“Yuuichirou said when I called that she’d been gone for a couple of hours,” Usagi replied. “She didn’t tell him where she was going, of course.”

“Of course.” Minako rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Does Rei-chan really like him?” Unazuki asked a bit skeptically. “I’ve only seen them together a couple of times, and she wasn’t exactly being what I’d call warm.”

“There have been hints,” Minako replied. “You have to look for them, but they’re there. Part of the problem is that once Rei-chan gets an opinion in her head, she doesn’t change it; her first impression of Yuuichirou wasn’t exactly the greatest in the world, but she’s getting over it. Gradually.” She finished off her pop in one big gulp, set the glass down, and looked around the table. “So, who’s up for Chinese?”

# 

As sometimes happened, Rei had woken up today with an urge to get out of the temple for a while. It was a completely natural impulse for any sensible girl who was stuck living with one foolish old man and one foolish young man, a feeling which Rei viewed as a sort of safety valve that kept her from exploding at her grandfather or Yuuichirou more often than was absolutely necessary. Granted, there were times when one or both of them really _needed_ to be yelled at, but there was a difference between shouting at someone for his own good and shouting at him for no good reason—and so, whenever this feeling came over her, Rei took heed and took off for a while, to blow off some steam.

Needless to say, she steered clear of Usagi during these times. By extension, that generally meant avoiding the other girls as well, which was a little unfortunate, but probably for the best; Rei knew that her bad tempers could sometimes be nonselective, and she had no more desire to needlessly scream at her friends than she did to scream at her grandfather or Yuuichirou.

On this particular morning, Rei had first headed down to the park, which was in the tail end of that intermediary stage between winter and spring, when it was too warm to be winter, but too grey to be spring. There were sufficient signs of spring to keep the place from being all grey and depressing, though, and there were enough other visitors to prevent Rei feeling as though she was completely alone.

Thrax, for example. When the weather had started getting warmer, Thrax had begun taking long flights away from Hikawa, either to get away from Rooky’s constant chattering and Phobos’s and Deimos’s suspicious attitudes for a while, or just because he liked to fly. Rei had guessed that the park, being the closest thing to a real forest for miles, would have suited Thrax very nicely, but she was still a bit surprised when he suddenly settled down on a branch of a nearby tree, looking down at her with his head tilted to the left. That pose gave Rei the distinct impression that Thrax was just as surprised to see her here as she was to see him.

“I haven’t been following you,” she said. “I just needed to get out for a while.”

The raven croaked a reply that sounded sympathetic, then drifted down to perch on the back of the bench Rei was sitting on, looking for all the world like a prince of birds who had deigned to grace a lowly ground-crawler with his regal company.

Not for the first time, Rei wondered about what or who Thrax might really be, for there was no doubt in her mind that there was more to him than met the eye. Setting aside the fact that he had been living with one of the most famous wizards in history and mythology when they first met, there was the question of how she had known what his name was as soon as she looked at him. Then there was his obviously more-than-animal intelligence. Merlin had admitted that Thrax lacked even Rooky’s crude, beak-accented command of old English, but Rei suspected that Thrax had no trouble _understanding_ human speech—and not just in English. Several times during their exam week study sessions, Rei had looked up and seen Thrax looking down, paying attention to every question, answer, and argument between the Senshi as if he had clearly grasped what they were saying. And most of it in Japanese, no less, which not even Rooky could understand more than a few words of.

What really had Rei convinced that Thrax was hiding something was the fact that, while he could not speak, he had but to look at her to clearly convey an opinion. Just one look, and Rei somehow knew what was on the mysterious raven’s mind. Not even Phobos and Deimos could do that, and they had been with her for a decade.

Thinking about it now, Rei reached a decision. She was most comfortable using her mental abilities with the aid of the fire at Hikawa, but from the times in the past when the Senshi had combined their powers and their minds, Rei had learned how to attune her mind to other things. She did so now, projecting her thoughts towards Thrax, focusing on the raven to the exclusion of all else, save for the unseen fire that burned within and around her, the waiting essence of Mars. As if he were aware of what she was doing, Thrax turned his head so that both his eyes were fixed on her, and then...

“Rei-san?”

“WAI!” Rei shouted, jumping nearly a foot straight in the air from where she sat. Thrax let out a squawk almost as loud as Rei’s startled exclamation and flapped away, coming to a halt perched on another tree branch and glaring back over his shoulder in extreme annoyance.

“Keiko!” Rei burst out, turning where she sat to look at the girl. “I’ve asked you not to sneak up on me like that!”

“Sorry, Hino-san,” Keiko said faintly, blushing around the hand she had pressed to her mouth. Himeko, who stood to Keiko’s left, was trying to cover a grin and keep her glasses on straight, while over to Keiko’s right, Anya was glancing up at the sky and shaking her head ever so slightly. To her right was a small girl with blue-grey hair and eyes, who Rei recognized as Hayaikawa Karima, a member of T*A’s swim team—and she was blushing and hiding a smile as well. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Rei sighed. “You didn’t upset me, Keiko-san. Not that much. Just don’t do it again, all right?” Still blushing furiously, Keiko hurriedly nodded; Rei glanced at Himeko, who was still turned off to one side, and then noticed that all four girls were carrying gym bags. Considering Karima’s presence and the time of year, Rei then said, “Practicing for the swim team tryouts, I take it?”

Karima nodded. “Of course. I don’t want to lose my place.”

“You always make it, Kari-san.”

“Because I always practice,” Karima replied. Rei nodded, understanding the reasoning.

“What about you, Anya-san? Going to try out for the team?” Rei smiled. “Or you, Keiko-san?” Keiko shook her head, of course—she just wasn’t much for sports of any kind—but Anya gave a small shrug.

“I’ve never been on a swimming team before, but Kari-san said that I should think about it,” she said softly.

“And I agree with her,” Himeko said, finally having recovered from her bout of hilarity. “You’ve got a good rhythm, and I still don’t think you were trying half as hard as you could have.” Himeko pushed her glasses back into place atop her nose and turned back to Rei. “So, Rei-chan, before Keiko-chan tries to scare you into your next incarnation again, did you have any plans?”

“Not particularly, no. Why?”

“Ah, I was just wondering if you wanted to join us for lunch. We’d have eaten at the rec center, but their cafeteria’s refrigeration failed last night, so there wasn’t much of a selection. And we were going to check out the latest inventory at the sports stores after lunch—and then the bookstores, at Anya-chan’s and Keiko-chan’s insistence.”

Rei thought about it, and stood up. “Thank you, Himeko-san. I’d like that.”

“Does your friend want to come, too?” Rei blinked at the question, then followed the tip of Himeko’s finger over to Thrax and smiled.

“No, I think he’ll be okay by himself.” Thrax looked back over his shoulder at her, cawed, and turned away again, his attention on something near the ground that Rei couldn’t see. “See? He’s already forgotten about me.”

A few moments after the five girls had started to move off, a brownish shape appeared below a tangle of leafless bushes. It looked like a rat, and it also did not look like a rat, though anyone who saw it would have had a hard time explaining what exactly was wrong with it. The fact that it was out in the park in the middle of the day might have had something to do with it; so might the greenish patches on its shoulders and back.

The rat stuck its head out from the cover of the still-hibernating bushes and looked around, studying the area for danger before emerging fully and racing across the open area to the shelter of some nearby tree roots. These it raced amongst until reaching the crest of the small hill upon which the tree stood, where it looked around again, and ended up focused on and following the five girls.

That was enough for Thrax. Having remained utterly motionless at the base of his perch, half-hidden by the trunk of the tree, the raven had observed the strange rodent’s movements without being spotted in return. Now, moving in silence, he spread his wings, soared down behind the thing, and extended his talons.

The rat stopped and turned its head, the eyes glowing unnaturally red, but Thrax’s claws were already closing about its haunches, and it took only a split-second for his beak to ram home, striking deeply between the eyes, shattering the rodent’s skull and skewering the brain. The furry body quivered once and then went limp, the unnatural light in the eyes guttering out. Thrax began working his beak free, croaking distastefully at the foul smell coming off the thing and scraping at his beak with one leg.

He backed away in a hurry, croaking more loudly and flapping his wings in surprise as plumes of reddish vapor hissed out of the rat’s body, increasing the intensity of the odor and also preceding the sudden dissolution of the body. It melted down into a puddle of red liquid, which continued to steam until there was nothing left but a small black smear on the grass.

Thrax looked at the acid-burn for a long moment before scraping one last time at his beak and then taking wing.

# 

Proteus noted the destruction of its rat-unit with passing appreciation for the speed and skill of the raven, no real regret for the loss of the unit itself, and concern that—thanks to the combined efforts of the raven, three different cats, and a very messy encounter with a truck—it was now blind to the movements of Archon’s apprentice. And she had been headed in the general direction of its testing site.

Proteus checked the time. 12:05. *It will have to do.*

Somewhere, the two half-human units awoke.

# 

At 12:06, Setsuna was just sitting down to her lunch break in the food court when people all around her started shouting and running. She took a moment to be amazed and pleased with how her mind and body both automatically shifted into a kind of high-gear battle-readiness at the slightest sign of danger, and then turned around, sliding off her chair and kneeling down, facing the direction from which all the noise seemed to be originating.

There were two of those green mold-creatures out there, and... no, wait. Setsuna’s eyes narrowed as she looked more closely, and realized that these were not the usual brand of units. They were more like that odd variant that Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus had dropped through the skylight here a few weeks ago, the one that had held a man inside—but that said, they both looked quite different from it.

The larger one was big enough to have made two or even three of its companion. Its shoulders were twice as large as any normal human’s, and its limbs were of a similarly powerful build, giving it the appearance of being short and squat even though Setsuna could see that it was taller than she herself. The outer surface, while still green, was smoother and more skin-like, more like an animal and less like a plant, than the last such humanoid’s had been, and it had eyes, the same red-glowing pods that the more standard units had borne in profusion as weapons. There were other such growths in the backs of its arms; Setsuna saw the creature raise one arm and fire a short beam of red light at a running man, hitting him squarely across the shoulders and sending him down, groaning. Long black vines or creepers hung from the back of the entity’s head, just like hair, snapping back and forth as the entity looked around, but not moving of its own accord that Setsuna could tell.

The second creature was shorter and considerably more slender than the other, but it had the same smooth-textured skin, the same long hair and glowing eyes—and it was much, much faster. One moment it was on the floor, and the next it was three meters away, airborne, lunging at another fleeing man and striking him in the shoulder with the flat of its palm, discharging a burst of electric red energy that dropped the victim instantly. As soon as its target had fallen, the creature turned to another, leaping and this time kicking out, striking the next man in the back of the knee with another flash. As it landed this time, the smaller being snapped its arms out, and long vine-whips seized a nearby woman, who stiffened and opened her mouth in a silent scream as more of that sizzling red energy coursed down the tendrils and into her body, first paralyzing her and then sending her into unconsciousness.

Watching it, Setsuna could not escape the impression that the smaller monster was female. Even distorted by the outer layer of green skin, the shape and proportion of the body was wrong for a man, and some of the movements reminded her very strongly of various movements she had seen during the Senshi training sessions.

*No time for that now,* she chided herself, looking around for somewhere that she could duck out of sight to transform. The nearest possibility was a side corridor which led to a staircase and an emergency exit. Several people had used the exit, but the stairs might be clear. Setsuna slipped off her high heeled shoes, waited until both creatures were looking in different directions, and then made a break for it.

About halfway to the corridor, she realized she wasn’t going to make it completely unscathed—and sure enough, less than a second later, something hot and HARD slammed into her left hip. Setsuna staggered from the blow but managed to keep her footing for another three steps before the next blast hit her low in the back, spinning her around as she reached the mouth of the corridor and quite literally fell into it. As she went down, she saw that the larger creature had one arm pointed at her, the red growth on the back of the forearm glowing. It watched her fall, then turned to fire at other people, apparently content that she had been dropped by the last shot.

Setsuna managed to get her hands beneath her to break the fall, but her midsection felt almost numb. She looked back over her shoulder to make sure the creatures weren’t looking before she gritted her teeth and forced herself back to her feet, to stumble unevenly down the length of the corridor and into the stairwell at the end. Here she paused for a moment, leaning against the wall, wincing at the pain and the worse lack-of-pain, and looking around for any sign of other people or any security cameras. Satisfied that she was alone, Setsuna transformed, and Pluto stepped back into the corridor much more easily than she had left it. The pain was not entirely gone, but it was far, far less, and the numbness had ended. Heading back towards the scene of the battle, she raised her communicator and sent out a general signal.

“There are two units attacking people at the mall. They seem to be like that man who was being controlled, so I’m going to need some help to deal with them, because I don’t think I can undo this metamorphosis without hurting the people inside.”

She switched off the communicator and looked cautiously around the corner. Both creatures had their backs to her. Perfect. Pluto stepped out of the corridor and raised her staff. “STASIS BOLT!”

At the flash of red light and the clearly-voiced command, the smaller creature spun about on one foot, almost pirouetting, just in time to take the hit head-on and freeze into immobility, its hair and built-in whips hanging weirdly in the air.

Pluto leapt to one side and rolled as her other enemy opened fire with both arm-weapons and its eyes as well, a rapid barrage of bolts which were individually less powerful than the ones that had clipped her before, but which made up for that with sheer force of numbers. Glass displays shattered, mannequins exploded, and various forms of merchandise were torn to shreds, but the onslaught missed Pluto completely, and she took cover behind a low wall that separated the tables of the food court from the open floor around them. The red bolts continued to slam into everything in the area, and she estimated that she had another two minutes and seven seconds before the wall gave way.

One hundred and twenty-seven seconds of Time, when even one second could be an absolute eternity. Pluto took her staff in both hands and bowed her head, concentrating. “MARCH OF TIME: QUICKEN!”

The light of the Garnet Orb flared, and the world around her slowed to a snail’s pace. The bolts, which a moment ago had been striking at the rate of about twenty per second, were now moving slowly enough for her to actually see their irregular, shifting shapes, and count their small explosions as they hit the wall across from her, maybe one or two in each second.

The larger unit—Tetsuo—saw a wide streak of crimson light surge out from behind the wall and cross the floor. When the blur ceased moving forward, the hybrid unit could make out the features of the woman it had been shooting at, and began to bring its weapons to bear. Bolts erupted from its eyes, and the blasters in its arms cut a swathe across the line of shops in the far wall, blowing apart the counter displays, juice machines, and menus which filled most of them as they tracked towards their intended target. It took only a second for the creature to have all its armaments firing straight at Pluto again.

A second was just too slow.

“STASIS FIELD!” The air in front of Pluto blurred crimson as she spun her staff rapidly with one hand, slowing the molecules of the air to a near halt. When Medea had fashioned such a shield, it had nearly been able to hold up in the face of a combined attack from six different Senshi; this one absorbed the full force of the mutant unit’s attack with almost disdainful ease. It also seemed to drain off the March of Time, slowing Pluto back down to normal speed, but now that the Field was in place, she had a much better defense behind which to plan her next move.

Planning didn’t really enter into it, though. Moving more on instinct than conscious thought, Pluto took a step back from the shield, turning sideways and continuing to spin her staff in her right hand, causing the Garnet Orb to glow increasingly brightly. When she caught the end of the weapon with her left hand, it was level to the ground, the now-radiant Orb pointing towards the shield; Pluto took a small step forward and stabbed the head of the staff directly into the center of the field of Time-force, calling out, “SURGE!”

The staff seemed to jump in her hands as the energy in the Garnet Orb discharged into the Stasis Field, and then all those molecules of slowed air sped up and shot forward, becoming a molecule-thick disc which blasted across the intervening space at an incredible speed, sweeping up all of the flying energy bolts before smashing into the massive creature. For all its size, the thick-bodied unit was caught up in the Surge as well, and hauled along until it collided with its still-frozen partner. Here, its relatively irresistible force faced with an essentially immovable object, the Surge ceased.

From the instant her staff had jolted, Pluto had heard absolutely nothing, but when the Surge and the unfortunate unit crashed into the other, she heard a thunderous blast, an ear-piercing howl, and then another explosive crash, all in rapid succession. The noises, she realized with awe, were the sounds of the Surge’s effects just reaching her ears: the blast of its launch; the howl of its passage through the air; and the final crash. It had happened _that_ fast.

Then she saw the green shapes sitting on the floor where the unit’s feet had been, and realized that they were the bottoms of its feet, ripped clean off while the rest of the thing had been accelerated in the other direction. Staring at those two green, pancake-like masses, Pluto involuntarily covered her mouth and tried not to think of what might have happened if there had been someone in the way when she fired.

Swallowing heavily, she returned her attention to the two units. The Surge and the Stasis Bolt must have canceled each other out, for the female creature was moving again, charging directly at her with both hands low, fingers clenched around crackling spots of red energy. Pluto blasted it with a Dead Scream, and the monster fell back—for all of two-point-four seconds. Then it got up, ignoring the heatless burns that marred its originally smooth surface, and leapt high into the air, jumping at Pluto and lashing out with both whips. Up came the staff, batting away one of the lashes and then, when the second coiled around its midsection, rising up over Pluto’s head as she turned and brought her arms, her weapon, and the enemy that was now being pulled along down towards the floor.

The creature hit hard, but not hard enough to stop it kicking out at her legs, and Pluto had to leap back to avoid the crackling energy of the red bead sunk into the green heel. Aware that she was in a very bad position, right between both of her enemies, Pluto turned so that her left side was facing the female and her right facing the other. Looking out of the corner of her right eye, she could see that the larger unit was spread out on the floor, the feeble movements of its arms saying clearly that it was still stunned from her last attack; from her left eye, Pluto was able to see the smaller creature flip to its feet and snap both arms down, cracking its whips loudly against the floor. Tiles popped as the red energy sizzled down those green lengths, and then the unit charged.

For the next twenty-six seconds, Pluto concentrated entirely on defense. Without the March of Time, she was only slightly faster than this unit, and the tips of its two lashes were much faster than the rest of the creature. She side-stepped, ducked, and twisted, spinning her staff into another blur to keep those paralyzing whips at bay. She would have liked to raise another Stasis Field, but using her powers that much in such a short span of time had drained even Pluto’s strength, and she needed to recover. More importantly, this unit was striking from too many different directions for a flat, stationary shield to have been effective.

In the middle of all that nearly-instinctive self-defense, Pluto found that her mind was analyzing everything around her, taking it all into account to formulate her next move with clean precision. It was an emotionally-detached frame of mind, a mechanical kind of logic, and it found something about her enemy’s movements to be unusual. When this round of attack and defense had begun, Pluto was between the two creatures, but now the smaller unit was between her and the larger one, and it was making no move to change that.

Pluto took an experimental step to the left, and one of the lashes snapped out hard, forcing her back. She danced to the right, and her opponent moved to pace her, always directly between her and the fallen unit.

That settled it. The apparently female unit was trying to protect the injured one, the male. Could that mean...

The line of thought ceased abruptly as Pluto saw an opening. “DEAD SCREAM.”

They were so close to each other that when Pluto brought her staff around to launch the attack, she jabbed the unit in the stomach with the weapon. At point-blank range, this Dead Scream had far more effect than the last, and the unit went flying backwards through the air, crashing down atop the other.

Pluto dashed over to them, extending one hand to seize the leg of the large unit, and touching the other with the Garnet Orb. She concentrated, seeing green and golden yellow, and then there was a flare of red light...

# 

When her communicator beeped, Rei covered by tapping it like an ordinary watch that had just gone off. It was a believable gesture, all the more so because Himeko’s button-heavy sports watch had done the same thing five or six minutes earlier.

“I think you might want to adjust the time on that, Rei-chan,” Himeko advised helpfully, breaking off from her ongoing monologue without any difficulty. “You don’t want to start adopting Usagi-chan’s timing after having held it off for so long.”

“I could never be _that_ late for anything,” Rei replied wryly, casting about for a way to lose her four companions long enough to check in with the other Senshi and find out what was going on.

“Speaking of Usagi-chan,” Karima said, “and Juuban, and all... Rei-san, do you know if Mizuno-san is going to be trying out for their swim team this year?”

“I haven’t heard her mention it,” Rei admitted, “but then, I hadn’t thought to ask. Would you like me to?”

“Would you?” Karima asked hopefully. “It would really help out our team if we knew for sure what we were going to be up against.”

Anya was frowning. “This is a team sport, Karima-san. You make it sound as if one person will make all the difference.”

“Ami-chan is the kind of person who _would_ make the difference,” Himeko replied. “You wouldn’t think someone who spends all that time with her nose in a book would be much of a swimmer”—Anya and Keiko both looked a little offended at this remark—“but once you get Ami-chan into the water, she moves like a fish. I don’t think anybody’s ever beaten her.”

“Now you’re exaggerating,” Rei said.

“Oh, am I?” Himeko countered. “Name one person you know who’s ever beaten Ami-chan in a flat-out race. Someone she didn’t _let_ win.”

“Kaioh Michiru,” Rei replied immediately. “She beats Ami-chan about half the time whenever they race each other.” Half the time when they didn’t end up in a tie, actually, which _was_ about half the time.

“Could you set the bar any higher?” Himeko asked. “I’ve heard about that girl, Rei-chan; the national and Olympic teams are in an ongoing despair because she won’t set aside her painting and music long enough to compete professionally.”

“_I_ heard she won’t compete because she doesn’t want to spend time away from her boyfriend,” Karima said.

“I’ve heard that, too,” Himeko admitted. She smiled dreamily. “And I can believe it.” Karima and Keiko made sounds of agreement; Rei just shook her head and made a mental note to repeat this part of the conversation to Haruka sometime.

“You don’t agree with them, Rei-san?” Anya asked curiously.

“I have a slight advantage,” Rei replied dryly, as the five of them started around the corner of a parking garage that had a ‘Closed for Renovations’ sign hanging across the drive-in entrance. “I know for a fact that Haruka is just a bit less charming once you’ve actually talked...”

She didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence, because when they stepped around that corner, they were within plain view of both the mall and the crowd of mid-day shoppers that was pouring from all the exits. Rei stopped and stared at the exodus, as did the other four girls.

“What in the world...” Anya began.

“I don’t know,” Himeko said, her glasses slipping above a worried frown, “but I do know that whatever it is, I don’t like the look of it. Maybe we’d better...”

There was a bright red flash from the ground floor of the garage, and all five girls blinked—Rei did so a second time when her psychic warning system twinged, hard—as the previously empty parking level was given some occupants. Two of them were down in a heap, while the third was jumping backwards from the pair

“Hey!” Himeko blurted in amazement. “That’s...!” She broke off and gave a small jump when the sound of her voice made Pluto’s head turn sharply in their direction. Rei twitched a bit herself, for Pluto’s look had not been at all happy to see them, but it lasted only a moment before the Senshi of Time returned her full attention to the two green-skinned humanoids that had appeared with her.

“Come on,” Rei said, reaching for Himeko’s sleeve. “I think we’d better get out of here before those things see us.”

“Gah... buh,” Himeko said, pointing towards the imminent fight as if she wanted to stay and watch.

“Keiko, give me a hand.” Keiko nodded, took Himeko’s other arm, and helped Rei drag her bodily away from the garage. After one quick last look, Karima and Anya followed. Three seconds later, there was a muffled explosion, and a plume of dust billowed out where they had been standing. The girls jumped collectively and moved faster.

*That was too close,* Rei thought. *I have got to figure out how to get in there to help Setsuna.*

“Hey, look!” Himeko said, struggling against Rei and Keiko to point back the way they had come. Rei followed the gesture in spite of herself and saw Mercury and Venus descending towards street level from the rooftops, a sight which prompted a sigh of relief—at least until Himeko started struggling again. “Let go, you two! Come on!”

“Himeko,” she snapped, “what are you doing?”

“That was Sailor Venus! Haven’t you heard what everyone’s been saying? SHE might be the real Sailor V! I’ve got to get her autograph!”

Rei was profoundly relieved when Venus led the charge into the garage, for it meant that she hadn’t heard Himeko. *That just leaves me with one lunatic to deal with,* Rei thought. “Himeko, calm down and think straight!”

“Let go!”

# 

“Monsters, mutants, and misanthropic misfits, prepare to meet your maker! I am...”

“Er, Venus?” Mercury interrupted. “I don’t think they’re in any condition to be impressed by you.”

Stuck in midpose, Venus blinked at Mercury, and then blinked several more times when she realized that both creatures were laying on the floor, twitching and struggling to rise. Her eyes shifted to Pluto, who was standing over the downed monsters, leaning slightly on her staff, and breathing hard for the first time that either of the younger Senshi could recall.

“THIS is your idea of needing help?” Venus demanded in tones of outrage. “We dropped lunch and ran all this way for a fight that was already OVER?!”

“Oh, quit griping,” Uranus said, as she, Neptune, and Saturn walked down the ramp from the second level. “A little hard running won’t hurt you.”

“Saturn,” Mercury said, ignoring the banter, “I need your help here.” Saturn nodded and hurried over, looking at a pair of luminous holographs that appeared from the jewel atop the Caduceus. “I don’t like these readings,” Mercury said, pointing at clusters of red in each humanoid image. “There’s a rapid build-up of extremely acidic compounds. I think it may be a self-destruct of some sort.”

“But...” Saturn looked down at the two units, her eyes glowing and her face paling. “There are people... inside...” She did not finish, but a very angry look crossed her face as she raised the Silence Glaive. Both units twitched briefly, the red blotches on Mercury’s holographs vanishing.

“Good, that’s got it. Now, we have to figure out how to unwind the connections between their nerve endings and this... stuff... without hurting them. It’s in pretty deep; do you think you can do it?”

“I’ll have to take it slow,” Saturn admitted as she raised the Silence Glaive. “Be sure to tell me if anything starts to happen.”

While Mercury and Saturn worked on the two hybrids, Neptune walked over to Pluto and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay, Pluto?”

“No.” Pluto straightened and opened her eyes. “There were a dozen or more people laying around inside, and when I brought these two down”—she indicated the units with a quick nod—“I checked their short-term futures and saw that they were extremely likely to try and use some of those people as shields. So I teleported them out here...”

“You teleported yourself AND both of them?” Mercury asked, looking up from her computer in shock. “Pluto, if you try a group teleport and the other person doesn’t have the power for it, then you have to make up the difference from your own energy. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“Would you rather I’d left them inside with the opportunity to hurt someone?” Pluto replied sharply. She sighed as Mercury and the rest blinked at her, startled that she had raised her voice. “I’m sorry, Mercury. I just... between the effort of moving them out here and all the times I’ve used my powers in the last five minutes, I’m worn out.” Pluto winced and shifted, dropping her free hand to her hip. “I have to sit down.”

Looking worried, Neptune gestured sharply to Uranus, and together they helped Pluto sit down against a wall. “What did you do to yourself, Setsuna?” Neptune said flatly.

“The big one shot me a couple of times before I was able to get clear and transform,” Pluto admitted. “It didn’t bother me after I’d transformed, but now that I’ve gone and worn myself down, it’s starting to hurt again.”

“No problem,” Uranus said. “Saturn can just...”

“No!” Pluto said quickly. “Someone may have seen me get hit, and I’m almost certain that the security cameras in the food court would have recorded it. Nobody else that I saw was able to stand up to one hit, and if I show up looking like nothing happened after I was shot twice...”

Neptune and Uranus looked at each other. “She’s right, you know,” Neptune said. “Based on everything the Mirror has shown me, we have to assume that we’re being watched every time we go out in public.”

“Maybe,” Uranus muttered, looking down at Pluto. It was strange to see her, the Guardian of Time, looking worn out and hurt. In a different setting, Uranus might have made some comment about it bringing Pluto back down to the same level as the rest of them, but she found that she didn’t feel like making jokes just now.

“How’s it going, you two?” Venus asked, walking over from the entrance, where—for lack of anything better to do—she had been keeping watch.

“Steadily,” Mercury replied. Saturn, concentrating on the dark radiance surrounding her, the Silence Glaive, and the smaller unit, said nothing. “Why?”

“Well, there’s a bit of a crowd starting to form out there. I haven’t seen any police cars or news vans yet, but I’m guessing they’ll be along shortly.” She grinned. “Rei-chan is trying for all she’s worth to keep Hime-chan from running in here. She probably wants an autograph or something.”

“You really think so?” Mercury asked.

“It’s what I’d be doing.” Venus looked over her friend’s shoulder at the units and frowned. “Now _that_ is the darnedest thing I’ve seen in a while.”

“What?”

“These two,” Venus said, pointing at the half-human creatures, “are a good marriage prospect for one another. I would stake out my tiara in the sun on it.”

Uranus gave her a weird look. “You’re playing matchmaker to mildew, now?”

“Hey, don’t shoot the passenger pigeon. I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

“The people inside may know each other,” Pluto said. “When I shot the big one down, the other tried to protect it. Has that ever happened before?”

“Not that I can recall,” Neptune admitted. “But then, the usual rules seem to have gone out the window with this latest group. We normally only see two enemies together when one is a commander who doesn’t want to bother with fighting us and the other is a subordinate that’s been summoned to fight us instead.”

“Typically covering the commander’s ass in a retreat at the same time,” Uranus added.

“Saturn, stop!” Mercury said sharply. “Something is... no!”

A moment later, the green casing sloughed away, leaving a man and a woman, both of them good-looking and somewhere in their early twenties, laying unconscious on the concrete floor. Although that appeared to be a good sign, Mercury looked at two flat lines in the upper sections of the holographs, sighed, and switched off the display.

“What happened?” Neptune asked. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re gone,” Mercury said quietly, lowering the Caduceus and deactivating her visor. “Saturn almost had the woman free, but there was a surge in neurological activity, and a second synaptic pattern appeared, like something else had entered their minds... and then it all shut off.”

“’Shut off?’” Venus echoed.

“Like the first one. Whatever was controlling them must have realized what we were doing, and taken steps to protect itself. The autonomic nervous system— the part that controls the heart and lungs and everything else—is still going, but the higher brain functions have almost totally shut down. Memory, motor control, personality—it’s all just... gone.”

They all looked down at the pair. “Is there... anything...?” Venus asked. “Could Usagi-chan use the ginzuishou later... or Saturn, she could... she could... there has to be something we can do!”

“Venus,” Uranus began. Venus cut her off with a harsh look and one finger raised in warning.

“Not a word,” she said flatly. “Not. One. Word.” Although she was older, stronger, and a better all-around fighter, even Uranus backed up a step in the face of that look. Venus waited until she had, and then turned to Mercury. “I asked you a question. Is there anything we can do to help them?”

“I... I don’t know,” Mercury said hesitantly. “Their mental energy was absorbed into that other signature, so it might still be intact... and if it is, and we find whatever did this, we might be able to retrieve them...”

“All right, then. So we’ve got a plan.”

“But, Venus, even if we do manage to find the thing that did this, there’s no guarantee that...” Now Mercury got the warning gesture.

“That is the _last_ bit of negativity I want to hear out of anybody on this subject,” Venus declared. “Sucking people’s brains out is bad enough, but nothing and nobody gets away with messing up a good romantic match on _my_ turf. We _are_ going to find it; we _are_ going to kick whatever sort of butt it possesses; and we _are_ going to put these people’s minds back where they belong so they can live a long, happy life together. Right, Saturn?”

“Definitely.” The little Senshi’s tone could have shattered rocks. Venus nodded.

“Right. But for now,” she added, glancing towards the sound of approaching sirens, “I think that’s our cue to make like a tree and grow leaves.”

It was a measure of their dismay over the result of the battle that none of the others thought to correct her. While Saturn opened a dimension door back to the house, Uranus and Neptune helped Pluto stand.

“Got enough left in you to have that giant marble show us where you hid before transforming?” Uranus asked.

“Don’t make fun of my marble,” Pluto said levelly, raising her staff and summoning an image of the staircase within the Orb. Uranus studied the scene closely, and then, in a glow that was partly yellow and partly deep red, the two of them vanished.

“She’ll jump back to the house after dropping Pluto off,” Neptune said, turning to Mercury and Venus. “Are you two coming with us?”

“No,” Mercury replied. “I can teleport us back to the restaurant.”

“Okay.” The two of them looked over to Venus, who was kneeling next to the two former units, apparently fixing their features in her memory, and then they glanced at Saturn, who was watching Venus from her place next to the dimension door. Then the two Senshi of Water looked at each other and nodded slowly, silently sharing the same concern.

“Venus,” Mercury called, as Neptune headed for Saturn and the door. “Time to go.”

“Right.” Venus got up, dusted off her knees, and hurried over. They joined hands and concentrated, and just before the blue and gold light blotted out everything, Mercury looked at the man and woman laying side-by-side on the floor, and saw that Venus had placed their hands together.

# 

*Well,* Proteus thought. *That could have gone... better.*

Granted, it had wanted to test the units in action against a Senshi, but such a test meant nothing when the Senshi in question spent half the fight moving so fast that she barely registered on the sensors, and then somehow teleported herself and the two units right out of the testing area altogether! By the time Proteus had managed to track down where its creations had been moved and reestablished full contact, the fight was quite finished, and some sort of barrier was interfering with the sensory input of the two units. Worse yet, the self-destruct systems had somehow been overcome, and something was steadily pulling Hana out of its control.

The purge had almost not worked. The force that had been unraveling the connections between Hana’s body and the bioweave had the same feeling—or non-feeling—as the untraceable power that had obliterated its original network. That seemed to confirm that it was one of the Senshi, which added a very high risk factor to any further encounters with them. And if Archon’s student had witnessed any of this test...

It was high time to get underway again. Proteus released its connections to the mall’s security system, recalled its observers, and began the long march down into the deeper tunnels. Along the way, the entity ran through its stores of information and its inventory of humans before selecting two more—Hana’s roommate Mariko, and a man named Samoru—as its next test subjects. Work on Mariko would have to wait until it could get her down into the tunnels, but Samoru was already encased within one of the containment pods. Samoru had also been modified to an extent already; in light of the results of this test, some adjustments were in order.

*The sort of raw physical power given to Hiroshi and Tetsuo has proven ineffective,* Proteus thought to itself as it considered its options. *Tetsuo’s energy weaponry was somewhat useful, as were Hana’s speed and mobility. Overall defensive power remains lacking... analysis of the second-generation unit’s biomatter has provided potential for limited metamorphic capacity... replication of daimon energy not possible at this time...*

Caught up in considering its choices, Proteus didn’t notice the sound of approaching feet until a group of humans in strange attire rounded the corner of the tunnel ahead. Proteus registered white searchlights and red lasers first, then a spoken command, garbled by some sort of encoding device. Then an uncomfortably large number of high-velocity projectiles and about four different kinds of even higher-velocity high-energy particles began tearing into the rats and Proteus’s own body.

The swarm of rats fought back as best they could, but their armaments would be of limited effectiveness against an ordinary human, and these humans were armored as well as armed; the narrow red beams launched from the mutant rodents did them no more harm than spitballs. Proteus’s own blasts were more effective, but it took three clean hits to drop just one of the enemy, who was promptly dragged back from the front and replaced by another. And when energy blasts started hitting it on the left flank, Proteus realized it was surrounded.

# 

In his office, the Security Director watched his bank of monitors intently as the weird green insectoid lurched backwards, its outer skin shattering and burning under the focused fire of the three squads. It was heading for a maintenance ladder, the only possible escape route left, while the dwindling horde of unwholesome-looking rats massed to cover its retreat.

“Beta 2, disable that ladder. Betas 3 and 4, seal it.”

The live feed coming from three helmets changed; different weapons were raised, and four large, expanding globs of something that the Director knew was even stickier than it looked flew up to form a tight web at the top of the ladder. At the same time, a large gooey mass which was even slimier and slipperier than it looked arced low over the retreating creature, splattering on the bars of the ladder. The insect appeared not to care; its body crashed into the ladder and began attempting to climb, tendrils lashing wildly and heavy claws tearing apart everything in reach as they tried to get a solid grip on the slicked-over ladder.

“Alpha 10, Beta 10, deploy flamers. Target the rats, two-second burst.” Plumes of orange-white fire appeared on most of the screens, and when they ceased a moment later, the number of rats was down to a tenth of its previous strength. “Alpha squad and even Gammas, maintain fire on the rats. Beta squad and odd Gammas, focus on the leader.”

In another thirty seconds, it was over. The rats had been reduced to crispy black husks or dwindling red puddles, and the body of their leader— whatever it had been—was a charred husk, laying in a heap at the bottom of the ladder. Some of the lights in the tunnel had gone out, the power lines running between them slashed by the mutant’s frantic escape attempt, but the visors within his people’s helmets had compensated automatically, tinting everything on the Director’s screens a distinctive shade of green.

“Orders, sir?” a voice asked, surprisingly calmly.

“Alphas 6 through 10, keep an eye on that mess; if it moves again, fry it. Betas 4 and 5, see to Beta 8; the rest of you, secure the area and wait for the clean-up crew. Police and paramedic units are already en route, so do not enter the building unless contact with additional hostiles is made.”

“Understood, sir.”

The Director sat back in his chair as the members of the three squads split up and moved out. After considering the battered hulk of the giant green insect for a time, he reached for his phone.

“Science Division,” a cool, female voice replied.

“My teams have found something you might be interested in.”

# 

*Where did THEY come from?* Proteus demanded in tones of silent anger, its body quivering with rage.

Dumping its awareness into the city’s electrical grid had been a move of desperation; by spreading itself out through a few thousand kilometers’ worth of wiring, Proteus had run the risk of its entire consciousness being permanently scattered. Still, the gamble had paid off; it had successfully traveled through the network of wires and found its way back to the ‘safe zone’ it had established for its cargo of encapsulated humans before beginning this last experiment, passing from the cables, through a power-absorbing growth, and into the small nest of bioweave that had held the pods for the last day.

Proteus set aside its plans for those captive humans, forced down its anger, and got to work assembling a new body for itself.

# 

Setsuna looked out the window of the hospital room. It was the same hospital as before, but a different room from the one she’d been put in to recover from the events of New Year’s Eve.

Uranus had gotten them back to the stairwell with no difficulty. The trouble had been getting her to leave before someone came along and found them. _That_ would have caused no end of trouble, and Uranus had known it, but even so, she had been reluctant to take off and leave Setsuna by herself when she was hurt. She had only agreed to go when Setsuna checked the Garnet Orb and told her that the door would open in another minute.

Actually, it had been six minutes, but Setsuna knew that if she’d said that, Uranus would have stayed—or worse, tried to take her out somewhere that she’d be found sooner. Not that she had _wanted_ to spend six minutes alone, sitting on a cold floor, with her hip and back aching, but it was better than trying to think of answers to the thousand or so questions that would have come up if she’d done anything else. A little better.

“I would have thought that you’d be sick of the view from this place,” Mrs. Mizuno’s voice said from the door.

“It’s a different window,” Setsuna replied, turning slowly where she sat. “A slight change of perspective can make all the difference.”

Ami’s mother smiled crookedly. “You didn’t get hit on the head again, did you, dear? Because now you’re starting to sound like my ex-husband.”

“If I say I did, can I get Yotogi-san in here instead of you?”

“Quite possibly,” Mrs. Mizuno admitted, “except that today is his day off. So, I’m afraid that you’re stuck with me.”

“And... uh... how long will I be ‘stuck’ here with you this time?” Setsuna asked, looking nervously at the heavy envelope in the older woman’s hands.

“Not long at all,” Mrs. Mizuno reassured her. “The x-rays didn’t find anything worse than our original diagnosis suggested, so as long as you take a few days to rest, there’s no need for you to stay here. As it happens, I’m going to take the rest of my lunchbreak in a few minutes; if you like, I can drive you home.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble...”

“It’s no trouble.” Mrs. Mizuno smiled. “Just try not to get attacked while you’re in my car, okay? You seem to be making a habit of it, and my insurance is stretched pretty thin at the moment.”

“How _is_ it going with you?” Setsuna asked, a slightly guilty frown forming on her face. “I haven’t really gotten around to asking Ami-chan about the situation with your house recently.”

“It’s progressing. Slowly. It took me a month to find an affordable contractor, and aside from taking measurements and gathering the materials, there wasn’t very much he could do while there was still snow everywhere. Now that spring’s on its way, he says he’ll make better progress; I’m reserving my judgement on _that_ until I see it.” She looked down at the envelope. “Speaking of seeing things... I have something here you should take a look at.”

She opened the envelope and drew out four large photographs, which she handed to Setsuna. They were x-ray images, one a general view of the midsection, the next an enlarged view of the lower spine, and each of the last two was centered on one hip. Setsuna had no idea what her own bones looked like, of course, but it was a safe bet that these were hers; the photos had her name down in the bottom corner.

“Should I be concerned that there are photos of me floating around this hospital?” she asked with a small smile.

“Not unless we have any osseophiliacs down in Radiology,” Mrs. Mizuno replied, smiling briefly in return. “I’ll check on that for you, but what I wanted you to see was this.” She took the two enlarged images of the hips, upper thighbones, and pelvis, and had Setsuna hold them more or less side-by-side. “Now,” she said, pointing at the image of the left hip, “these marks here were caused by that hit you took to the hip, and they’re the sort of damage we expect to find with blunt force trauma. As I said, nothing to worry about so long as you take it easy for a week or two. What’s unusual are these marks here.” She pointed further down and to the right on the first image, then to a matching place on the second. “You see? These two parallel groups against the pelvic region? They’re much too faint—too old—to have been caused by the injuries you sustained today.”

“I don’t understand,” Setsuna said. “Are they from what happened on New Year’s, then?”

“No, Setsuna. I had to do some checking to be sure, but these are two, maybe three years old, and their placement...” Mrs. Mizuno sighed. “Their location, depth, and size are all consistent with the stress placed upon the pelvic region during labor.”

There was a long, long silence. Then, still looking at the pictures, and speaking in a terribly quiet and almost inhumanly calm voice, Setsuna asked, “What?”

“I went back and examined your medical record,” Ami’s mother said, “but I didn’t find...”

“You didn’t find anything,” Setsuna interrupted, still speaking in that awful tone, “because there’s nothing to find. I don’t... I can’t have had a baby. I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, Setsuna, but you did.”

“You don’t understand,” Setsuna said, her voice still quiet and her eyes shut tight. The photos were crackling as her fingers curled. “There isn’t... I can’t have... I can’t... they would have... someone would have told me...”

“Setsuna?” Concerned by the way the younger woman’s breath was beginning to speed up, Mrs. Mizuno caught her wrist with one hand and raised her chin with the other. “Setsuna, open your eyes and look at me. Talk to me.”

There is an old saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul. When Setsuna’s eyes opened now, Mrs. Mizuno looked into a soul that was falling in on itself, collapsing under agonies of loss. After she had been struck down two months ago, her memories torn away, Setsuna had made incredible progress in adjusting to life, but now, all of that was going to pieces. Ami’s mother cursed her own stupidity; she had never been very good at the emotional side of medicine—or of life in general, for that matter—but even she should have known better than to bring something like this up now.

“Setsuna? Setsuna, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t... I don’t know what I was thinking...”

“Please,” Setsuna said in a tiny voice. “I want to go home.”

 

# 

 

_(Ami, Balance, Calypso, and Mamoru are playing a four-way game of chyetsa. The omnipotent spirit is, as usual, losing.)_

**Mamoru**   _(glancing at the last scene)_ : If that doesn’t make Usako want to kill him, I don’t know what will.

**Ami** : She hasn’t been too thrilled with the fact that you’re on the other side of the world, you know. I hate to think what she’d do to Caly and I if she found out about this.  _(She gestures at the four of them and the chyetsa board.)_

**Mamoru** : I can imagine.  _(He looks at the script again.)_  Why is that second scene all blotted out, anyway?

**Ami**   _(looking at the board)_ : Editing mistake.  _(She makes a hasty move.)_  Your turn, Caly.

**Calypso** : In a moment.  _(She turns to the camera.)_  The chosen moral for this episode is that no one is invincible. It’s illustrated by the unfortunate series of events which happen to Setsuna, and by Proteus’s own turn of bad luck. The Atlanteans also demonstrate it to some extent, with their concern about the Deep Ones, who are themselves nervous about several issues.  _(She switches into telepathy.)_ There’s also Usagi to consider, now that some of the unpleasant realities of her pregnancy have finally caught up to her.

**Balance**   _(having heard the whole thing)_ : Nicely said. Now move; you’re holding up the game.

**Calypso** : Oh, fine.  _(Still facing the camera, she reaches back and moves a piece that looks like a dragon in front of a line of pieces Balance controls. About five of the pieces vanish as the dragon-piece spouts a long plume of fire at them. The dragon roars in triumph.)_  There. Your turn.

**Balance** : .....  _(He makes a move.)_

**Mamoru**   _(having missed the telepathic piece)_ : How did she do that without looking?

**Ami** : She doesn’t need eyes to see, remember?

**Mamoru** : Oh, right... um...  _(He’s looking at a chyetsa piece.)_  How do these little men with robes move, again?

14/08/01 (Revised, 22/08/02)

Okay, whoever’s heating up hot pokers to probe my innards, or planning anything equally unpleasant because I’m being mean to Setsuna, stop. This is an important part of the story.

About the Deep Ones: Those of you who have the right experience with modern fantasy will probably have recognized the illithids for what they are, and therefore have a pretty good idea of just how much trouble they can be, given half a chance. For those of you who don’t recognize the tentacle-faced mind- readers: don’t worry, you’ll get to see what I’m talking about with them eventually. And for those of you to whom the word ‘Cthulhu’ means more than a sound people make when they sneeze, and who feel now or in the future that I’m not living up to the standards of H.P. Lovecraft with my portrayal of evil squidlike entities—well, tough. I know very little about his work, and this IS a Sailor Moon fanfiction, after all.

Oh yes, one other thing. Since this IS based on anime, and we DO have horrific creatures with tentacles wandering around now, I will put it in writing:

THERE WILL **NOT** BE **ANY** H-RATED TENTACLE SCENES AT **ANY** TIME DURING THE COURSE OF MILLENNIALS.

Thank you.

On the horizon:  
-Birdwatching;  
-The problem with Makoto’s green thumb (or whatever);  
-Ami goes to work; and  
-the Atlanteans make a formal engagement.


	26. The Day That Went From Bad To Worse, or Worrying Time

# 

“Two of them,” Archon said flatly.

“And not like the ones you’ve been using,” his apprentice replied. “I only got a quick look, but these seemed more advanced than your first-generation designs. They were still made out of that green substance, but it was smoother, and looked more human. I didn’t get a chance to see what their performance was like, but Pluto looked as though she had them both well in hand, so it can’t have been all that much of an improvement.” The young spellcaster gave her teacher a look. “You don’t know where they came from?”

“No,” Archon replied, “I do not. And I cannot spare the effort to seek out their source at this time.”

“The next operation?”

“In part, but there have also been some recent developments for us that you should be made aware of.” The archmage’s hovering image turned away from the girl for a moment as he gestured at something in his spell lab, and when he faced her again, he held two small crystals in his hand. One, the girl recognized as a memory crystal; the other, mounted on a small silver chain, was unfamiliar.

“This device is designed to shield the mind of the wearer from magical or psychic probes,” Archon said, indicating the pendant. “You have spells which will achieve the same end, but you must concentrate on those spells for them to be fully effective, which impairs any other spells you attempt to cast. This”— he held the pendant out—“will function with no effort on your part. I have also enchanted it with the capability to shield you against some of the more common physical afflictions that magic can visit; blindness, paralysis, confusion. It will also give you a limited degree of resistance to extremes of temperature. I would suggest that you get accustomed to wearing it at all times.”

The girl reached out and took the pendant and the memory crystal, unsurprised that they went from holographic image to solid matter as soon as she touched them. She slipped the silver chain over her head and tugged it down, hiding it as best she could under the fabric of her blouse.

“And this?” she asked, holding up the crystal.

“Records from the archives. Once you have examined them, you will understand the necessity for the shielding pendant.” Archon turned away from her again, speaking words which did not travel through his image before he turned back. “You will not likely hear from me again until we are prepared to commence the next operation, but regardless, I expect to see progress in your studies when I return.”

“Yes sir,” the apprentice said, as her teacher’s image disappeared. When he was gone, the girl looked down at the memory crystal for a time before holding it forth and activating it.

She could tell almost immediately that the records were very old. The small timer in one corner, when translated from Atlantean script and terms, gave the date and time of the scenes as shortly after midnight, on the third of June, in the fourteen hundred and fifty-ninth year of the Empire. That put it about eleven thousand years ago, give or take a century or two either way. The picture—the quality of which was as good as or better than DVD—seemed to be footage from a security system in an Atlantean base of some kind. A colony. An *underwater* colony, to judge by the fish that had just gone through the circle of light outside one window. Despite the hour, there was a goodly number of people visible, dressed in a mix of extremely ancient clothing styles, all of which suggested a certain flamboyance.

*Must be a party of some sort,* the girl thought. *Why would Archon have wanted me to see this?*

She found out a moment later, when the muted sounds of celebration were interrupted by a long, piercing shriek that no human throat could have produced. Delicate glasses shattered, and several people fell to their knees, covering their ears; a few passed out entirely before the dreadful noise subsided, and another began. This was a softer, stranger sound, almost like the noise of crumpling tinfoil, and it was coming from a section of the wall which appeared to have become unstable. A wide, circular area of the shining blue-white material was moving, rippling like the surface of a pond after something has been thrown in. And then a thing stepped out of it.

That was the only word the startled apprentice could come up with. It was huge, powerful, and hideously inhuman, all slimy green skin and quivering tentacles. It stood there for a moment, silent, as the shocked humans recoiled on all sides, and then it reached out with the suddenly extending tentacles of its left hand, to seize a man who had been overcome by the terrible cry. The telescoping digits wrapped about the man’s torso and lifted him easily, carrying him back over to the creature, which raised its other hand and enveloped the unconscious man’s head in a smothering grip.

Quite casually, the thing crushed the man’s head, and then dismembered his body by the simple expedient of closing its left hand. The bloody tentacles reached out again, to be answered by a gout of flame and a racing bolt of lightning, apparently cast by some members of the crowd not quite so far gone with drink or terror as the rest. The hits staggered the giant and seemed to melt away a dozen or more of the tentacles hanging over its face, leaving behind great greeny-grey burns and blackening one of its blood-red eyes. Seconds later, the damaged flesh regenerated itself, the incinerated tendrils growing back to full length as the extinguished eye reopened and blazed anew. The monster shifted, the tentacles on its face shaking as it gave another of those terrible shrieks; the noise was answered in chorus as other giants stepped through the walls.

‘Slaughter’ barely even began to describe what followed. The rubbery, crushing tentacles appeared to be the favorite weapons of the brutal giants, but some of them had short, blunt nozzles on their heads, from which they periodically sprayed thick jets of a foul blue-green slime. The stuff slipped away from the creatures’ own skin as easily and harmlessly as water, but it dissolved the slick-looking building stone on contact, and did far worse to any other living matter it touched. There were other creatures as well, frail- looking pink-skinned beings in dark robes which unleashed bursts of deadly magic and some other, unseen force which sent their victims to the floor, screaming and thrashing.

After those two initial retaliatory strikes, there seemed to be almost no attempt at defense, and even less success. Unprepared wizards were overwhelmed by the brute force of the invaders, and warriors with little in the way of weapons or armor fell even faster. Most of those who had magic were using it to attempt escape, but few were managing it. By this time, the image coming from the memory crystal had widened to show a dozen different viewpoints at once, and in all of them, the grotesque monsters were butchering everyone they came across. One screen showed a broad window, through which a small vessel was visible as it sped away from the colony, only to be snatched by a pair of enormously powerful tentacles and embraced by a forest of smaller arms. The hull of the ship buckled and collapsed under the pressure, sending a spray of bubbles up into the black waters as the wreck sank towards the bottom, released by the vast, dark beast that had killed it and all those aboard.

Another image showed a woman with long blue hair and the ruined tatters of a blue gown clinging to her body as she wielded an elegant trident against one of the giants. Each sidelong slash of the three blue-tinted spearheads cut away more rubbery tentacles; each short thrust left a line of holes; and unlike the far more intense damage of the fireball and lightning bolt earlier, these wounds did not close, but instead released trickles and gushes of a cold-looking, blue-green blood. The injured giant fell back, discharging a stream of the viscous acid at the woman, but while the spray of slime almost burned away the tatters of her dress, it parted around her body, leaving her flesh undamaged. The woman retaliated with a blast of water that hurled the monster back down the hallway, but the effort seemed to drain her—and when two more of the green-skinned hulks appeared, with one of the smaller spellcasters close behind, the woman let out a despairing sob before she disappeared in a burst of blue light and flashing spray.

After that, Archon’s apprentice switched the crystal off and set it down on the table. If things had deteriorated to the point where even a Senshi was forced to retreat, then there wasn’t really much to be gained from watching that part of the recording any further. She reached this decision with her eyes closed, one hand pressed to her mouth, and the other arm crossed over her stomach, trying to convince her lunch to stay where it was.

It almost worked.

# 

“But you’re sure she was okay?” Usagi asked. She and the rest were heading back to the Tsukino home after their interrupted lunch, with Ami and Minako—but mostly Ami—filling the others in on the details of the fight at the mall.

“Setsuna was certainly tired out from using her powers,” Ami replied. “And a bit sore, I’d imagine—and she was closer to shouting at us than I’ve ever heard her before. But I ran a scan of her vital signs after she told us she’d teleported those two... people... and everything was within acceptable limits, if not exactly perfect.”

“I think we have a different definition of ‘acceptable limits,’ Ami-chan,” Usagi said sourly.

“Don’t get nasty,” Makoto said firmly. “Setsuna told them to leave her, Usagi-chan, and you know they wouldn’t have done it if she was really badly hurt.”

“Yeah... well... I’m allowed to worry, aren’t I?”

“No,” Minako said firmly. “We made sure that worrying was crossed off your can-do list months ago.”

“That’s a ‘to do’ list,” Artemis corrected. “There is no can-do list.”

“Actually, there is a no-can-do list,” Minako said, “and worrying is at the top of Usagi-chan’s.” Artemis closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead with the hand on the end of his unglomped right arm, while an unhappy rumbling noise emanated from his chest. “Artemis?” Minako asked, looking up with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mina-chan,” he replied wearily, lowering his hand and opening his eyes. “Nothing at all.”

“Uh, Ami-chan,” Ryo interrupted, looking up ahead with a slight frown. “Isn’t that your mother’s car parked in front of Usagi-chan’s house?”

Ami blinked, looked, and blinked again. “It is. Why would...” She stopped and looked at the rest of them; after a long moment of silence, they all hurried forward.

*STOP!* Everyone skidded to a halt at the telepathic shout from Calypso. *That’s better. All of you, remember, you’ve just gotten back from lunch, and you don’t know anything about a fight at the mall. As far as you’re concerned, Setsuna is still at work, so act normally and don’t mention her until someone else does first.*

Ami sighed and covered her face with one hand. “I should have thought of that. Thank you, Caly.” Moving at a more regular pace, they approached the yard.

Shingo was sitting just inside the gate, watching the front door, and absently scratching Luna behind one ear. That got the girls’ attention; Shingo was no longer so deathly afraid of cats as he’d once been, but he wasn’t especially friendly with them, either, and Luna in turn had little reason to want to put up with a boy who sometimes used her for target practice with his water pistols. That the two were able to sit together quietly indicated strongly that something else had their minds occupied.

Boy and cat both looked up at the sound of footsteps. “Finally,” Shingo said, getting up.

“What do you mean ‘finally?’” Usagi demanded, while ChibiUsa bent down to pick Luna up. “What have you been doing, Shingo? And why is Ami-chan’s mother here?”

“I haven’t done anything,” Shingo protested. “Mizuno-san’s here because she brought Meiou-san home from the hospital, and... well, I’m not sure what’s going on,” he admitted, with a glance at the house. “Mom chased me out before I had a chance to ask, but Meiou-san didn’t look very well.”

“How do you mean? Was she hurt?”

“I just _said_ that I don’t know, odango-atama,” Shingo replied peevishly. “Meiou-san didn’t have any bandages or anything that I saw, and she wasn’t crying, but she _looked_ hurt; I think the expression on her face was just about the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” Luna made an unhappy sound in apparent support of that. “See?” Shingo said, pointing at her. “Even your cat agrees with me.”

*Can we panic NOW, Calypso?* Usagi asked, heading straight for the door. “How long have they been here, Shingo?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

They found Ikuko and Mrs. Mizuno in the kitchen, with a pot of tea and two cups between them. Ikuko’s was about half-emptied, but her guest’s was practically untouched; Ami’s mother, they all noticed, did not look particularly well herself.

“Mother?” Ami asked, going over and placing a worried hand on her shoulder. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

“There was an... incident... at the mall today, dear,” Mrs. Mizuno replied. “Your friend Setsuna was caught up in it, but she wasn’t too seriously injured. Bumps and bruises, mostly; nothing a few days of rest won’t fix.” She sighed. “Nothing physical, at least.”

“I don’t understand, Mother.”

“Your mother made a very unfortunate mistake this afternoon, Ami-chan,” Ikuko said. Ami blinked.

“She’s right, dear,” Mrs. Mizuno said, patting her daughter’s hand to stop her from saying anything, while smiling weakly at Ikuko. “She’s just being polite by not calling it a stupid mistake—which I’m afraid it was.”

# 

“She WHAT?!” Haruka shouted.

The three Outer Senshi were sitting—or in Haruka’s case, standing—in their living room, listening to Luna describe the events that had transpired at the Tsukino household.

“You heard me,” Luna said. “Ami’s mother has found convincing medical evidence that—at some point—Setsuna had a baby.”

“But HOW?!” Haruka demanded. “I mean... where? _When_? WHO?”

“Sit down, Haruka,” Michiru said, not unkindly, as she reached out, caught the gesturing woman by one arm, and pulled her back to the couch. “Obviously, we don’t know where, or when, or whom—unless she told ChibiUsa?” she added, turning back to Luna.

Luna shook her head. “If anything, ChibiUsa was even more surprised than the rest of us; she nearly dropped me when Ami’s mother was explaining what had happened.” Only a talking cat could have said that, even if she wasn’t currently a cat. “She went up to try and talk to Setsuna afterwards, and then came downstairs about twenty minutes later looking like she was going to cry. Usagi sent me out to tell you what’s been going on a little while after that.”

“Is Setsuna okay?” Hotaru asked in a small voice.

“No, Hotaru,” Luna sighed, “she’s definitely not okay. From what Ami’s mother and Ikuko said, Setsuna’s been sitting on her bed and staring out the window since she got home. ChibiUsa said she wouldn’t even look at her or speak to her.”

Haruka shook her head. “That’s bad. If she won’t talk to the munchkin, I don’t see that there’s much chance of any of the rest of us getting through to her—except maybe Hotaru.” She frowned and added, in a disapproving tone, “Unless you, Ami, or Calypso were thinking about trying something...?”

“Only if it becomes absolutely necessary,” Luna replied firmly. “Reading someone’s thoughts is one thing, but trying to alter them is something else entirely, and it can be dangerous even when you know what you’re doing. We’re not going to subject Setsuna to any more mental trauma if we can help it. Besides, there were a number of restrictions on procedures like that during the Silver Millennium; I’m still bound by those principles because of my oath of service to Serenity, and Ami and Calypso would both feel obligated to honor them as well. One of the key requirements was the permission of the patient—which we aren’t likely to get—and that could only be waived under certain circumstances, none of which apply to Setsuna at the moment.”

“Should I go over, then?” Hotaru asked.

“It might be better if we gave Setsuna a little space right now, Firefly,” Michiru said gently. “None of us want to see her hurt, but to be bluntly honest, we don’t have the slightest idea what she’s going through right now. None of us has ever had to deal with amnesia, rediscovering how to be a Senshi, *and* learning about a lost baby. If we don’t know what that’s like, if we can’t _understand_ the pain Setsuna’s feeling, how can we try to talk her out of it? Could we even be sure that anything we said wasn’t just making things worse?”

The others looked at her, but none of them said anything, and so Michiru continued, speaking mostly to Hotaru. “I think that, for right now, the best thing we can do for Setsuna is to give her some time to try and figure this out for herself, without all of us poking our noses into it. ChibiUsa, Usagi, and Luna are all right there to keep an eye on her and call us if she gets worse.”

Michiru and Hotaru looked at each other for a while, and finally the younger girl nodded. “Okay, Michiru-mama. But how long do we wait?”

“I’m inclined to give her a day at the most,” Michiru admitted with a tight smile, “but I think she’ll need longer than that. Luna?”

“Ami’s mother suggested a few days, but I’m not sure how accurate her assessment was; it was pretty obvious that she was beating herself up for just telling Setsuna out of the blue like that.”

“I’d have to see that to believe it,” Haruka muttered. “That woman has all the warmth of a blizzard.”

“It’s called ‘reserve,’ Haruka,” Michiru chided. “Not everyone shows their feelings openly, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them—and besides, you’re hardly in a position to talk. You barely even spoke to her at Mako-chan’s.”

“Yeah, well... mothers just make me nervous, all right?” Michiru rolled her eyes in a sort of exasperated amusement, as did Hotaru; Luna glanced curiously at Haruka, but didn’t comment.

“In the meantime,” she said instead, “I think that we should give Setsuna about a week and see where things stand. She made astonishingly good progress after New Year’s, and it’s possible she’ll be able to do the same again.” Luna tried to sound cheerful when she said that, but her voice fell short of the mark.

It might be possible, but at the moment, it didn’t appear very likely—and from the way Haruka, Hotaru, and Michiru looked at her, Luna could see that they all knew it.

# 

Makoto gently brushed a piece of lint away from one of the leaves of the newest, strangest member of her indoor garden. She couldn’t help but notice that the infant tree had grown itself a few more buds, to replace the ones which had developed into new leaves while she had been out for lunch. It had done the same thing yesterday, gaining a dozen or so leaves, as many buds, and three or four centimeters of height in the course of twenty-four hours. Although some of the implications of this accelerated development bothered Makoto, she *had* enjoyed seeing Ami have to eat her words about how trees grew slowly.

“Caly,” Makoto asked, not looking away from the tree, “can you think of any way that I could get this thing to slow down?”

“Not really, no,” Calypso admitted. She was sitting atop the back of the couch, watching Makoto work. “Plants aren’t really my area of expertise to begin with, and this one’s quite unique. Offhand, though, I’d suspect that not giving it any more of those energy-baths will keep its development slowed to a minimum.” The Nereid paused and looked at the small tree closely. “Considering the dose of energy it absorbed from you the other night, though, this probably *is* its minimum now.”

“Probably,” Makoto agreed with a sigh, getting up off her knees. “I’ll have to remember to look around for a larger pot; at this rate, it’ll grow out of that one in another week or so.”

“I’d start looking for some out-of-the-way place to plant it, if I were you,” Calypso countered with a small shake of her head. “Either that or manifest the heretofore unknown power of controlling the physical development of plants.”

“That’d be a handy trick to have,” Makoto said, heading for the kitchen and catching herself on the back of the chair when she tripped again. Muttering halfhearted complaints, Makoto picked herself up and started for the kitchen again, but then she sighed and sat down in the chair instead.

“Change of heart?” Calypso asked.

“I’m just too tired,” Makoto replied, leaning back and closing her eyes. “Why am I so worn out all of a sudden, Caly? Does it have something to do with Setsuna?”

“I couldn’t say for certain. Did you feel anything from her while we were at Usagi-chan’s?”

Makoto nodded. “A little. Coming down from upstairs, through the floor and the walls. It was faint, but it was... uncomfortable.” She shifted, hugging herself.

“What sort of uncomfortable?” Calypso asked, drifting over and sitting on the empty space between the chair and the coffee table. “Uncomfortable-nervous? Uncomfortable-agitated?”

“Try uncomfortable-empty,” Makoto said. “I’ve gotten used to how people *feel*, Caly. No matter what sort of mood a person is in, there’s always something about them that’s the same, on the inside. With Usagi-chan, it’s a sort of warmth, with something unbreakable underneath, and with Mina-chan, it’s like... it’s like...” Makoto smiled softly, rolling her eyes. “To be honest, when I’m around Mina-chan, I feel like I’m standing next to something that’s about to fly apart—but it’s a *fun* something.”

“Ishtar always did know how to have a good time,” Calypso agreed. “What about Setsuna? What do you usually feel around her?”

“Usually... she feels happy. I know, I know,” Makoto added quickly, nodding in response to Calypso’s startled blink. “It’s hard to imagine, considering everything that she’s got to worry about, and I admit that I always get a sense of sadness from her, but most of the time she’s calm and peaceful, and more often than not, there’s a smile in there as well.”

“And now?” Makoto didn’t reply to that right away.

“I couldn’t tell right away,” she said at last. “The more people there are around, the harder it is for me to be sure from a distance what any one of them is feeling, but once I was inside and got used to everyone else... it was bad, Caly. I could tell that on some level, Setsuna was feeling sad, angry, frustrated, hurt, and all the other things she *should* have felt after being told something as terrible as that, but they were all getting pushed down by this horrible *empty* feeling...” Makoto scrunched up her face and shook her head, trying not to think about what it had felt like, sensing that awful emotional void. Unfortunately, Calypso wasn’t much help in that regard.

“When you say ‘empty,’ do you mean...”

“I mean empty, Caly. Hollow. Nothing. Just knowing it was there made me feel afraid and sick to my stomach, and can we please talk about something else?! Because I don’t want to think about it any more!” Much too late, Makoto bit her tongue and squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Caly” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

A cool, slightly tingly hand patted hers. “It’s okay, Mako-chan. You’ll have to try harder than that to hurt my feelings—and I’m sorry, too. I won’t ask you about that again.”

“Thank you.”

“And to answer your original question, I don’t think Setsuna would be what’s making you tired. Empaths can get *emotionally* worn out by exposure to intense feelings, but you’re physically tired, too, or you wouldn’t be stumbling into things like you’ve been. I really can’t say for certain why that’s happening, although I’d guess that the Aegis are responsible.”

Makoto sighed and tugged absently at her necklace. “Somehow, I knew you’d say that.”

“Oh?” Calypso gave her a curious look. “What *do* you feel from me, anyway?”

“From you?” Makoto asked, looking up. “Well... the sense I get from you is a lot like the one I get from Ami-chan. You’re both sort of cool and gentle, and there’s always the sense that you just know things. I don’t sense that you’re smart so much as I sense that you *know* that you’re smart, and like being that way.”

“Very true,” Calypso agreed, smiling. “Now tell me something you sense about me that’s just me. Not that I don’t like being similar to my sister, you understand, but I do have my vanity.”

“Er... well... you’ve got a sort of a tingly feeling that Ami-chan doesn’t. Sort of like Mina-chan, only not so crazy. Fun, but not nuts. And... uh...” Makoto hesitated. There *was* one other thing she tended to notice from Calypso, something which made her just a little bit nervous. She’d been meaning to talk to Ami about it for some time now, but things always seemed to keep coming up to prevent it—like Ami going back to the hospital with her mother this afternoon—and now that feeling was coming off of Calypso in spades.

“Caly,” Makoto began.

“Yes?”

“Um... you know I like you, right? As a friend?” she added belatedly.

“I like you, too, Mako-chan. As a friend.” From the way Calypso said that, it sounded as though she was leaving something off at the end—something important. That unsettling feeling intensified, and Makoto gulped involuntarily.

*You just HAD to go off and leave me alone with her, didn’t you, Ami?* she thought in mounting desperation, casting about for what to say next. “Well, the reason I ask is... um... you see, sometimes I get the impression that you’re... er...”

“That I’m what?” Calypso asked ingenuously, floating forward with her chin resting on the backs of her folded hands, her blue eyes proclaiming innocence above a small smile which declared something else entirely. At the sight of that smile, Makoto unconsciously backed up in her chair and put one hand on the Aegis again, tugging nervously at the string of pearly spheres.

“That you’re... uh... well, for example, when you were testing that electrical socket at Michiru’s, you were acting sort of... odd.”

“I was?” Calypso asked, floating a little closer and not losing a drop of sweetness from her smile. Makoto tried backing up again, but one can only go so far back while sitting in a chair, and Makoto had just reached the limit of her retreat.

“And then there was the night with the daimons,” Makoto added quickly, trying to ignore the fact that she was beginning to blush. “By the time I stopped firing electricity at everything, you sounded like you were...”

“Like I was... what?” Calypso asked, reaching out and toying with a strand of Makoto’s hair. “Intoxicated?” Floating closer still, she lowered her voice and added, “Excited?”

Makoto could feel her eyes trying to grow to the size of saucers. “Stop that,” she demanded lamely.

“Stop what?”

“You know exactly what. I don’t like girls, Calypso.” Makoto tried to make her words sound authoritative and final, but they came out quick, squeaky, and not at all like the end of the matter—and it only made things worse, because Calypso just smiled and turned into a boy.

“Better?” the Nereid asked, in what was definitely a male voice. Makoto couldn’t help but think that if Ami had ever had a twin brother, he’d have looked like this. The blue eyes were the same, as was the shade of hair, although it was now in a different style, shorter and less neatly-arranged, than it had been a moment ago. Despite being wider in the shoulders, the body had the same overall slimness that Ami and her mother both possessed, and Calypso’s pale blue dress had changed into dark blue pants and a plain white t-shirt that would not have looked out of place in Ami’s wardrobe. If not exactly the proverbial tall, dark, and handsome, ‘he’ was still pretty cute...

When that thought popped into her head, Makoto scrambled backwards over the top of the chair and as far away from Calypso as she could get, which ended up literally putting her back to the wall. Breathing heavily and feeling pretty much like any cornered animal, Makoto stared at the Nereid, who looked back with startled eyes—and then began to laugh, first slowly, and then with rising intensity. As Calypso fell back and rolled around on empty air, overcome with hilarity, Makoto blinked and felt her blush grow anew, this time from the recognition of the new emotion pouring out of the giggling Nereid, and the accompanying realization that she’d just been played for a sucker.

“You did that on purpose!” Makoto blurted accusingly. Calypso’s response was to revert back to female form and then grin enormously and nod until she burst out laughing again. Makoto moved over to the couch, seized a pillow, and whipped it at the Nereid’s head, scoring a clean hit simply because Calypso was too caught up in laughing to shift into mist and avoid the padded projectile. It only made her laugh more, and Makoto pitched another pillow at her out of frustration before she righted the toppled chair.

Finally, Calypso calmed down enough to explain. “I noticed the look you gave Ami right before you went to Jupiter, and when I asked her what it meant, she explained to me that you’d been wanting to talk to her about me for a while. When I thought it over, I realized that some of the things I’ve said or done might have made you wonder if I was attracted to you, and from what Ami said, I guessed that you might be a little uncomfortable about that. We were going to talk to you when you came back from Jupiter, but”—Calypso took in the Aegis and the young tree over by the balcony with the same glance—“the last couple of days have been busy ones. Once we started talking about your empathic reception of people... well, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“So you were joking the whole time?”

Calypso smiled gently and shook her head. “Not completely, no. I *do* find you attractive, Mako-chan.”

Staring again, Makoto sat back down in the chair. “It’s Jupiter, right?” she asked faintly. “The electricity?”

“In part,” Calypso admitted, “but only in part. Even if I don’t read your mind, the pattern of it is familiar and comfortable for me to be around, because it’s similar to Amalthea’s. But I had to adjust to the differences, too, and that helped me to begin coping with everything that’s changed. You’re a kind, generous person, easy to be around or talk to—and as you may have noticed, I do like to talk.” Calypso rolled her eyes self-depreciatingly. “Your empathic abilities are similar to my telepathic powers, but at the same time, there’s a world of difference, which makes you seem a little mysterious to me, and we Nereids were infamous for not being able to pass up puzzles of any kind.”

“You’re saying that... you like me... for my mind?” Makoto tried not to sound startled or bitter, but too many of her past experiences had gone the other way, and her tone was evident, because Calypso blinked at it.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“No... not wrong. It’s just not what I’m used to.” Makoto sighed. “For one reason or another, this”—she gestured at her body—“is what most people notice first about me. Particularly the boys, but it was even like that with the other girls: I got into a fight the first time I met Usagi-chan, and I knew she was surprised by how strong I was; and Ami-chan and Rei-chan were both startled by my height when Usagi-chan introduced us. They’ve all gotten over it, but a lot of people don’t bother to. It’s... different... to meet somebody who isn’t physically intimidated by my body, or attracted to it.”

“I didn’t say that.” Makoto looked up, startled anew, and Calypso shrugged. “My main reproductive process may not be like yours, Mako-chan, but don’t forget that I *am* partly human. That gives me plenty of grounds to appreciate your body along with everything else about you. And you *do* have a very nice body.” Her smile made Makoto blush again, and Calypso’s expression became curious. “Does all of this *really* bother you that much?”

“Yes,” Makoto reluctantly admitted. “I’ve gotten used to dealing with people who are attracted to me, even a few girls, but this... no offense, Calypso, but this is just... *weirder* than anything I’ve ever had to worry about before. I mean, you look, sound, and act like one of my best friends; you *are* her sister; you’re a member of a completely different species; you’re about a thousand years older than I am; you change your shape at the drop of a hat; and I’m not entirely sure whether you’re really a girl, a boy, or something else altogether.”

“That is quite a list of concerns,” Calypso agreed, “and the last is the only one I can really do anything about.” She settled to the table before continuing. “I know from Ami that Luna told you about the origin of the Nereids, the birth of the first Senshi of Mercury, and how that eventually led to all the Nereids being partly human. Before that time, we had no real genders as you know them; afterwards, we were all genetically female, even if we took a male shape.”

“What do you mean by that?” Makoto asked, frowning.

“I’ll start at the beginning,” Calypso said. “My Nereid ancestors reproduced by gathering in groups and combining small portions of their individual energy and water-mass. One member of the group served as the focus of the whole thing, taking in and shaping the energy and water, and then breaking off small parts of its own body to form baby Nereids. Technically, you could say that one Nereid was the mother, and the rest were the fathers, but any Nereid could perform either function. Okay?”

She waited for Makoto’s slow, wide-eyed nod. “Now, humans and Nereids have always *thought* enough alike that a member of one species can fall in love with the other, but my early ancestors weren’t genetically compatible with humans, simply because they didn’t *have* genes, only energy. If you break matter down far enough, though, you get back to energy, and one Nereid—the ‘father’ of the original Mercury—realized that and honed his sense of his wife’s energy to the point where he was able to shape a very small part of himself to mimic it. He implanted that copy into his wife, and their daughter—Seelee—was born in due course. Since she had her mother’s genetics, Seelee grew up to be physically identical to her, except that her entire body had Nereid-like energy in all of its cells. She gained telepathic abilities and affinity for water and cold from her Nereid father, and from her mother, she received whatever it is about humans that allows some of you to be Senshi; Mercury was the result.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” Makoto said, frowning. “Biology isn’t really my strong point.”

“It’s not really mine, either; I’m just repeating what I was taught when I was little.” Calypso paused, then nodded and continued. “Seelee was an only child, at and the time, there were no other Nereids married to human women, so she was unique throughout her childhood. Since she was half-Nereid and had many of our traits, it wasn’t much of a surprise that she fell in love with a Nereid. Their children, conceived in the same way that Seelee had been, were all daughters, and so was any other child born in that fashion. Can you guess why?”

“Um... I think so,” Makoto replied, her forehead furrowed in concentration. “Anything female has two... two...”—she snapped her fingers, trying to remember her biology class—“whatsits... ‘X’ chromosomes, that’s it. And anything male has one ‘X’ and one ‘Y.’ So if the Nereids were copying the genetics of their human wives to have children...”

“...then the children would have *had* to be female, because their mothers didn’t have that one specifically-male component of human DNA.” Calypso smiled. “See what you can learn when you pay attention in class?”

“Very funny.” Makoto sighed. “So, is that why you said you’re ‘genetically female?’”

“Yes. Any child with a human mother and a Nereid parent will always be female, and have stronger Nereid traits than her mother. Most of Seelee’s daughters chose to marry Nereids, and *their* daughters were able to reproduce in the Nereid fashion, which accelerated the assimilation of human DNA—or its pure-energy form—into our species. Other Nereids mated with human women to produce daughters like Seelee, and many of those came back to us as well, adding more genetic diversity, which was increased even further by the nature of Nereid reproduction. Still, regardless of how many times our inherited human energy was mixed and recombined, it was still entirely female—and so were we.”

“I see.” Makoto lapsed into an awkward silence, and then said, “Caly... if there aren’t... I mean, if you...” She made a face. “There’s no polite way to say this. Can you... have children?”

“I can have children,” Calypso replied softly. “It’s draining, but one of the things we inherited from Seelee and the rest was the ability to assume a true human form, even more realistic than the one I’m in now. I could turn into a woman and have children, daughters OR sons, or I could assume the form of a male—or use the old process which created Mercury—and be the genetic father of daughters. But they wouldn’t be Nereids. It takes at least...” Calypso stopped and closed her eyes. “It took,” she corrected, with a small quaver in her voice, “at least three of us to reproduce in the old fashion. The only way I know of that would allow me to have a Nereid child now would be with the energy of the Blue Hall—but that only works once, and my daughter would be Mercury *and* be in the same situation I am now. I... I couldn’t do that.”

“Caly?” Makoto asked, leaning forward in her chair and touching her friend’s arm.

“I’m okay, Mako-chan.” It was a shameless lie, of course; Calypso was the last of her kind, and right now, she was definitely *not* okay with it. Then, oddly, she smiled again. “I could use a hug, though, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“No groping,” Makoto replied dryly, causing Calypso to bunch up her features and snap her fingers in disappointment. Makoto had to smile and shake her head at that as she opened her arms and let the Nereid float in. As usual, the slightest contact with Calypso’s virtually weightless body caused a faint, electric tingle in Makoto’s skin, something she doubted that anybody else would notice. She ignored it, and after a time, asked, “Feel better now?”

“Yes, thank you.” There was a thoughtful-sounding silence. “I suppose you won’t let me kiss you, either.” The next silence had several volumes’ worth of answer to it. “Just making sure.”

# 

There was a knock at the door. “Go away,” Rei groaned into her pillow. Although she had not been involved in the fight at the mall, she’d had plenty to deal with in Himeko, the super-hyper-ultra Sailor V fangirl. It was frightening how much like Minako that girl was when it came down to her obsessions—which was probably why she was such a Sailor V fanatic—and the combination of holding her back during the fight and then enduring her ‘missed autograph’ mood afterwards had drained Rei’s energy and patience to the bare limit. She had endured Himeko on the way to the cafe—the food court at the mall being out of the question—ignored her as much as possible through lunch, and then taken her leave of the other girls as quickly as politely possible, before she resorted to strangling Himeko in public.

“She’ll calm down in a day or two,” Keiko had said when Rei got up to leave, while Himeko and Karima were in the washroom. “And you have to admit, Rei-san, she has a right to be upset; setting aside the entire threat to life and limb, she *did* miss a chance to meet one of her personal idols because of you. When’s she going to get an opportunity like that again?”

Rei had chosen not to answer that, and resolved on the spot not to mention the episode to Minako. She might just get it into her head to make sure that Himeko met Sailor V *and* got her autograph, as she’d done with those kids they’d met while returning home from the time-trip.

Thinking about that now as she lay face-down on her bed, it occurred to Rei to wonder what had become of those two girls, the boy, and that weird flying bear, but her train of thought was derailed by another knock at the door.

“I said go away,” Rei said, raising her head and glancing at the door, where two figures were silhouetted against the light.

“Are you decent?” Minako’s voice called back. Rei groaned a second time— name the devil, and she shall appear—and then with a weary sigh, got up to open the door.

“This had better be important,” she said bluntly, “or else... you...” Words failed her; Rei had *never* seen either Minako or Artemis wearing a look like that, and it sent a chill down her spine. “Is Usagi...”

“She’s okay,” Minako replied. “It’s Setsuna. There was... she’s... you see...” She closed her mouth, took a deep breath through her nose, and settled for, “It’s complicated.”

“Ami’s mother thinks Setsuna had a baby,” Artemis said simply. While Rei was blinking, Minako slowly turned and looked up at her partner; he returned the look with wide, innocent eyes. Puppy-dog eyes, one might almost say, except that such a phrase would be completely inaccurate when applied to a feline. Even one in human form.

“Anyway,” Minako said, drawing the word out with all sorts of hidden meanings for Artemis to worry over, “we need you to add Setsuna to your list of things to look for in the Book. Anything you can find about her life that would have the slightest bearing on this phantom baby, because she’s...”

“Wait, wait, WAIT!” Rei barked, signaling with her hands. “Time out! Stop!” Both Minako and Artemis blinked at her. “Come inside.” They did that, and Rei slid the door shut. “Sit down,” she said, turning around and kneeling next to the table. They did likewise, taking places across from her. “Now, start from the beginning. *Why* would Mizuno-san think this, and *how* did you two hear about it?”

“Setsuna got a little banged up by those two creatures before she had a chance to transform,” Minako began carefully. “She wanted to make sure nobody commented on it, so she had Haruka take her back inside after the fight, where the paramedics could find her.” Minako waited for Rei to nod, then went into detail about what Ami’s mother had found in the x-rays, and what had happened when the girls had reached Usagi’s house and been told all of this.

By the time Minako had finished, Rei was looking down at the table, and the heavy, leather-bound tome sitting atop it, closed and inoffensive.

“I’ll try to find something in here,” she said, placing a hand on the Book, “but I can’t make any promises.”

“We know,” Minako said. “Maybe you’ll find something, and maybe you won’t, but at least now you’ll know to look for this kid, and what to ask for the next time the Book starts volunteering information.” She paused. “It hasn’t done anything else like that, has it? No fits of independent page-turning or displays of self-stacking?”

“No, nothing like that. Yours?”

Minako shook her head. “The sword hasn’t moved, glowed, or burst into song.” She smiled. “Care to trade your Book for my sword? You could get a few nights’ worth of uninterrupted, worry-free sleep and let me have a go at it.”

By way of an answer, Rei opened the Book to a random page and turned it about for Minako to read; the blonde squinted at the glowing, shifting scrawl, slowly turning her head until she was watching the page from out of the corners of her eyes. Then she blinked several times and rubbed her eyes with one hand, turning the Book back around to Rei’s side of the table.

“Forget I said anything.”

Rei nodded and, out of habit, took a moment to examine the contents of the open pages. “Hmmm.”

“Something interesting?” Artemis asked.

“It’s talking about the weather on Saturn,” Rei replied, following the path of the letters as it meandered all over the page. “Something called the Chaos Wind is apparently going to hit full strength there this year.”

Artemis made a face, sucking air through his teeth. “That could be a problem. Does it say when the Wind will peak?” Rei had involuntarily looked up at the noise, but quickly returned her attention to the Book.

“Late March... through to early May, according to this.” She looked up again. “How can weather on Saturn be a problem?”

“The Chaos Wind isn’t precisely weather; it’s a planet-wide disturbance caused by the dimensional warp at the center of Saturn. Here, I’ll show you.” Rei had a small stack of paper and a couple of pens and pencils laid out on the table for when she was translating; Artemis took the top sheet and drew a fairly large circle, then added a much smaller circle at the center of the first. “Let’s say that this is Saturn. Everything in this area here”—he indicated the region between the two circles—“is organized more or less like the other gas giants. Various layers of atmosphere, with winds and electrical storms. *This*”—he tapped the small circle—“is the region of the dimensional warp. Get to here, and each of your component molecules will probably wind up in a separate dimension from the rest.”

“Yeah...” Minako said slowly. “We’re with you so far.”

“The warp sends out distortions,” Artemis continued, sketching some arrows leading out of the center, “anywhere from the size of an atom to the size of a small moon. They go out, up, and eventually get pulled back into the warp, and even the largest ones don’t do very much by themselves. If they collide with each other, though, there’s a reaction.” He’d drawn two loops that went from the center up to the edge of the ‘planet,’ and where they crossed, he put in a simple, dark ‘X.’ “With the right kind of reaction, you get a temporary interdimensional portal that’s actually stable enough for something to pass through; with the wrong kind, you get a nasty explosion.”

“So... that’s the Chaos Wind?” Rei guessed.

“In a nutshell,” Artemis agreed, setting the pencil down. “It got the name because the mini-portals and explosions affect Saturn’s atmosphere, which allows you to track the frequency and intensity of the interdimensional activity by watching for changes the planet’s weather. Most of the time, it’s not too much to worry about, as long as you keep a safe distance—say, beyond the rings—but every once in a while, the warp speeds up, and the Chaos Wind increases. The result is bigger and more numerous portals and explosions, and a lot of increased traffic through the warp, most of it unfriendly.”

“Swell,” Minako noted dryly. “Do you suppose this is what our friends from the Court were worried about when they stopped by to talk with Hotaru-chan?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was,” Artemis replied. “If anything could affect the Chaos Wind, it’d be the Senshi of Saturn. Is there anything else in this entry, Rei? Anything we might be able to tell Hotaru about?”

“Let me see... Wind... March to May...” The words were beginning to fade even as Rei studied them; she frowned and read faster, but a quick glance told her she wasn’t going to be able to read the entire thing. Sure enough, it was gone about three seconds later, with a sizable section still unread. Rei made a face.

“Didn’t get it, did you?” Minako asked.

“Only that *something* is going to come through when the Wind peaks. I couldn’t see what.”

“That’s what I figured,” Minako sighed. Her chin propped on one hand, she looked up at the ceiling. “Do you have any more bad news for us? I’d sort of like to get it out of the way all at once, if you don’t mind.”

The Book did not react, but then, she hadn’t been addressing it. As for the ceiling: its response could only be described as wooden.

# 

Wednesday afternoon was a bad one for the Tsukino family.

In turn, all three ladies had tried and failed to get Setsuna to say something. Older and wiser than the other two, Ikuko accepted the first defeat with a sigh and the shaping of a firm conviction not to give up that easily, and then spent a great amount of time comforting ChibiUsa, who was in a state bordering on the hysterical.

With the exception of Hotaru, Setsuna was and always had been ChibiUsa’s best friend—her parents didn’t count—and the dark-eyed, secretive Senshi of Time had on occasion opened up to her rabbit-haired confidante, sometimes to tell her things about her mission, and at other times—very rare, very private times—to reveal things about herself. The future princess had always known that there were things Pluto did not tell her, for all the little pieces that she knew—the things she had repeated to Setsuna after finding her in this era—did not come near to equaling the span of a normal life, let alone the unique life the Guardian of Time had lived. But never, *never* for an instant had ChibiUsa ever suspected that Setsuna had a child.

So now, on top of feeling shocked and worried by the discovery that Setsuna *did* have a child—somewhere—ChibiUsa felt like she’d failed somehow, that if she’d just paid more attention or asked some obvious question, maybe she would have had an answer that could have spared her friend from having to go through this now. Even more than that, ChibiUsa felt a little betrayed, since it now appeared that Setsuna hadn’t trusted her enough to broach this subject—and *then* she was disgusted with herself for feeling that way.

With Ikuko remaining calm and ChibiUsa breaking down, it made a kind of sense that Usagi’s reaction was somewhere between her mother’s and her future daughter’s. She worried openly, but quietly. She lent a hand in settling ChibiUsa, and then sat staring down at her folded hands, tracing small patterns over her belly with her thumb, and twisting her engagement ring anxiously. She also did phone duty for the afternoon, answering every call before it had a chance to ring more than once, then inevitably returning to her pensive mood.

Shingo made himself scarce for the entire afternoon, ducking out of the house and staying out until almost supper time. After that, he spent the evening in his room, either reading or playing video games with the sound turned off, but making no noise at all in any case. Shingo was a brat on occasion, but he wasn’t completely insensitive. Most of the time.

As for Kenji, he was very late getting home from work, and only half-informed about what had gone on at the mall during the day, so Usagi took him aside and explained the situation to her father, adding in passing that he had better be very quiet when he went upstairs. The last time they had looked in on Setsuna, she was in bed; likewise, ChibiUsa had been completely exhausted by the stress of the day, and tucked into Ikuko’s bed for the night. For a wonder, it didn’t seem to bother Kenji; he just asked Usagi if she’d prefer to sleep near her mother tonight, too.

“She’s made me sleep on the couch a time or two before,” he said, faking a grin and lying through his teeth as he added, “It’s not as bad as it’s cracked up to be.”

“I remember the last time,” Usagi replied. “You couldn’t walk straight for the next three days.” She smiled and gave her dad a hug. “I’ll be okay.”

That was another lie, unfortunately. *Nobody* slept well that night. Usagi woke up three times from unpleasant dreams, while ChibiUsa remained asleep, but suffered through repeated bouts of tossing and turning until Ikuko woke up and gathered her granddaughter close, holding her until the bad dreams passed and they both fell into unbroken sleep. Luna, who didn’t sleep at all, counted five separate instances during the night when somebody woke up and visited the bathroom or the kitchen; Usagi and Shingo were two of those times each, and Luna guessed Kenji was the last one. Setsuna, who normally slept with a peaceful expression, now looked as though she were wrestling with daimons, and losing.

It was the same in other homes. When Grandpa Hino and Yuuichirou sought their beds at Hikawa that night, they did so troubled by the dark cloud that had settled over Rei during the afternoon. The four crows, their perches removed now that the weather had improved, gathered together on a branch so that they could all look in through Rei’s bedroom window, and not once did they make a sound. Rei had no dreams at all that night, which in some ways was just as unpleasant as bad dreams. Either very late or very early, long after even the crows had dispersed to different branches to sleep, the Book of Ages seemed to shudder with pale light, as if it too was somehow being disturbed by all of this negative energy that was drifting about.

Elsewhere, Minako spent the night sleeping on a makeshift mattress of pillows on the floor, her arms wrapped around the softest trooper in her plushie army while a larger-than-life-sized jungle cat slept at her back. Artemis woke up a few times with great, fang-filled yawns, to look around at the room and reassure himself that Gladius wasn’t taking a page from the Book and ‘doing things.’ Each time, with no signs of the passage of a glowing, self-wielding sword apparent to his senses, the big cat yawned again, lowered his shaggy head, and resumed his interrupted sleep.

After the afternoon at the hospital, Ami had hoped to bring her mother back to the apartment for supper, but as always, Mrs. Mizuno’s work schedule had a life of its own, pushing away all other concerns. On a certain level, Ami was glad of that, as steady work would keep her mother from worrying too much—it was one of many traits they had in common—but she was also once again frustrated at how her mother’s job made it so difficult for them to spend time together. Such concerns troubled her sleep, as did her conversations with Calypso and Makoto about what had transpired while she was out; being reminded of Calypso’s problems on top of her mother’s and Setsuna’s kept Ami’s rest fitful, as her mind tried to work out answers, and returned blanks. Every time Ami stirred, across town, Ryo shifted as well, and the reverse was also true. Makoto fared little better, as her dreams were endlessly invaded by disappearing, reappearing, shape-and-gender-changing children. Calypso spent a large part of the night out in the living room, hovering near the growing tree, from time to time looking back at either bedroom with a sigh.

When the waning sliver of the moon broke through the clouds that night, its light found Hotaru and Michiru sleeping in the same familial embrace as ChibiUsa and Ikuko. Haruka, however, was absent from the waterbed, and indeed the entire house; instead, Uranus lay atop the roof of the Tsukino home, unbothered by the cold wind and the hard tiles as, hands locked behind her head, she watched the moonrise and contemplated the sickly feeling that had been lurking in her heart since Luna’s visit. There was a dreadful familiarity to Setsuna’s behavior, but the source of that recognition eluded the Senshi of the Sky. On some level, Uranus acknowledged that she was happier not knowing why she felt this way, but she also realized that, if the rate at which the other girls were regaining their memories of their past lives was any indication, it probably wouldn’t be long before she *did* understand the source of this unease.

She wasn’t looking forward to it.

Eventually, when the night wore on to the point where her internal sense of time estimated it to be about one in the morning, Uranus judged the nightly vigil ended, closed her eyes, and teleported away, landing soundlessly in the bedroom at home. On her feet and already turned back to normal, Haruka moved into the bathroom so she could undress and put on her nightshirt without waking the two sleepers, and then did her best to climb into bed without disturbing them. No such luck; not with a waterbed. Hotaru slept on, but Michiru’s eyes opened at the first shift in the mattress, and she smiled—just a bit triumphantly, Haruka thought, unable to suppress a weary sigh even as she lay down and halfheartedly returned the smile. Michiru’s expression changed at that sound, becoming sympathetic. Keeping her right arm at rest around Hotaru’s purple pajama-clad shoulders, she reached out to Haruka, caressing the side of her face.

“It’ll be okay, ‘Ruka,” Michiru said gently.

“I hope you’re right,” Haruka replied, taking Michiru’s hand and kissing the back of it before sighing a second time and closing her eyes, still holding Michiru’s hand close. The next look she got was a bit less understanding.

“If you drool on my hand,” Michiru began warningly. Haruka opened one quizzical eye, then nipped playfully at the fingers of said hand. Michiru drew back immediately, making as if to reach out with a far less gentle touch, but she stopped when Hotaru murmured, shifted, and looked up and around.

“Mmmm... Michiru? S’Haruka...”

“Right here, Firefly,” Haruka said, patting the little Senshi on the shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

“’Kay...” Not really awake, Hotaru snuggled a little closer to Michiru and then was asleep again in the space of two short breaths. Michiru brushed an errant fall of dark hair away from the girl’s face, then returned her hand to its place on Hotaru’s shoulder, resting atop Haruka’s in the process. They looked at each other, smiled briefly, and then closed their eyes as well.

# 

Setsuna did not get up at sunrise on Thursday. She did not get up at all that morning, but simply stayed in bed, huddled up on her side, staring at the wall and not really seeing it.

As Makoto had said to Calypso, all the normal, understandable emotions that Setsuna should have been feeling were there. Shock and confusion, pain and anger, horror and denial; all the components for a massive, screaming fit of hysteria were in place, and Setsuna’s self-control had wavered and cracked to the point where such a display was not only likely, but probably necessary—and it wasn’t happening. All of those feelings were there, but pushed down to the point where they barely registered, swallowed up in a sea of emptiness. Something inside Setsuna’s mind had woken up and taken over, the size and intensity of it pushing everything else away.

It was despair. Bleak, hollow despair, directed at the other void in her mind, the grey place where her memories should have been, but weren’t. Despair that the certain knowledge of her past was denied to her, that even something as terribly important as finding her own child couldn’t give her the strength to break down whatever barriers had walled away her life.

Her child. Setsuna didn’t even want to consider the implications of that phrase. She wanted to believe that, even if she couldn’t have stayed to raise the child herself, she would have used every power in Pluto’s arsenal to find or—if necessary—make a safe home. Setsuna wanted to think that her child had grown up happy and normally, whatever time he or she might be in; she wanted to believe that she had used one of those peculiar images of herself to watch over the child, perhaps to even be a mother without abandoning her duty as Pluto. She wanted to believe that Ami’s mother had made an error in her diagnosis and jumped to the wrong conclusion, that this was all just a mistake.

She couldn’t convince herself of any of those. A proclivity for hasty judgments did not strike Setsuna as being part of Mrs. Mizuno’s character, and the woman had said that she’d checked those x-rays several times, so she had to accept that there had not been a mistake. As for the rest, everything Setsuna had learned from the girls hinted at a certain ruthless quality in Pluto’s behavior. It might not be entirely by choice, but her lost self sounded as though she could and would have done whatever was required to maintain the orderly flow of Time. If that included abandoning her own baby somewhere in Time, completely severing all ties, forever... it was a horrible thought, but it didn’t seem to be an act beyond her former capabilities.

Almost as bad was the thought of what that child’s future might have held. Setsuna couldn’t get the vision she had shared with Lydia out of her mind, the progression of her ancestors in which the power of Pluto had descended from mother to eldest daughter for generation after generation. Setsuna could dare to hope that, if she’d had a son, he would have grown up to be fairly normal, but if this mysterious baby had been a daughter, she would have eventually grown up to be Pluto...

Setsuna could handle being a Senshi herself. Yes, it was a job that was often dangerous and frightening, but it was something that had to be done, and it wasn’t as if the deal was an entirely bad one: being able to wield an array of superhuman to outright magical abilities had its appeal; knowing that what you were doing made a difference for the entire world was very reassuring; and the simple sense of *belonging* to something had been tremendously helpful for Setsuna as she continued to adjust to her new life. Even so, this was still not something any sensible parent would want *their* daughter to have to do, given a choice. They wouldn’t really have had a choice, given the apparently random manner in which each new Senshi was chosen, but this was more of a blessing for those parents.

Only Pluto—or the Nereid mother of Mercury—would have had to someday face her Senshi daughter and be asked: “Why did you do this to me?”

Setsuna couldn’t see the wall because something else was getting in the way. It was the silhouette, blurred and faceless, of a woman in the same uniform, bearing the same staff, and for some reason with the same eyes that she had. That awful question seemed to emanate from the specter, and try as she might, Setsuna could not think of an answer to make it go away.

It was a combination of hunger pangs and developing bed sores which finally forced Setsuna to get up. If she had been in any frame of mind to be suspicious, she would have questioned Ikuko’s decision to fry up some appetizingly aromatic fish for lunch, but as it was, she simply pulled on her housecoat and made her way down to the kitchen.

The house gave the impression of emptiness, although it never occurred to Setsuna to look for anyone as she walked downstairs. She merely walked into the kitchen, sat down at the prepared place, and ate until the plate was clean. For all her reaction, she might as well have been eating pureed cardboard, or something laced with poison; when it was gone, Setsuna simply returned to her bed again, this time sitting against the wall with her knees drawn up and her head bowed.

She wasn’t sure what caused her to raise her head at just that moment, but when Setsuna looked up, a beam of sunlight had just hit the Phoenix Egg, causing it to glow like fire, as it always seemed to.

A muscle in Setsuna’s jaw twitched.

# 

“That *was* a good sign, wasn’t it?” ChibiUsa asked, as she stood against the counter by the sink, absentmindedly wringing a dishtowel in her hands.

“The eating? I’d say so, yes.” Ikuko lifted the plate in her hands, studied it critically, then scrubbed it one more time, rinsed it, and handed it over for ChibiUsa to dry off.

Usagi found that sight amusing. While she didn’t really know that much about Crystal Tokyo, she couldn’t imagine that a princess there would get any more practice at scrubbing plates than princesses from any other place or time—but ChibiUsa was a pretty good dishwasher.

*It must run in the family,* she thought. Usagi wasn’t allowed to wash the dishes any more than she was allowed to cook—in general, the only business she had being in the kitchen was to eat; anything else was an open invitation to disaster—but Shingo, after years of being punished with dish-duty for his assorted pranks, had the task down to a science, and Ikuko was an absolute master.

*None of which is particularly important right now,* Usagi scolded herself. “So, what do we do now?”

“Why don’t you go upstairs and fill up the bathtub?” The blinks were audible, and Ikuko smiled as she explained. “We know Setsuna will eat if we give her a little nudge, so let’s give her another—and if we can get her into the tub, I’ll go lay out a set of her clothes for the next nudge.”

“What if she just stays in her room?” Usagi asked.

“Then ChibiUsa and I will finish the dishes and think of something else while you go have a bath,” Ikuko said calmly.

“Why me?”

“Because it’ll relax your back, dear.”

“Oh.” Actually, that sounded like a good idea. Usagi was halfway up the stairs, debating with herself which outcome she would have preferred, when she felt a little jolt from the ginzuishou and saw a flash of red light from under the door of the room with three beds.

It took Usagi all of two seconds to ascend the rest of the stairs and have that door open, but by then, neither the red light nor the woman who had to have been responsible for it were in the room anymore.

A fiery gleam caught Usagi’s eye, and when she looked up at the Phoenix Egg, glowing in the sunlight, her heart sank. She had a pretty good idea where Setsuna had just gone.

# 

Pluto wasn’t completely certain how she had brought herself back to the misty realm of the Time Gate, but at the moment, she was quite beyond caring. Getting her bearings from the muted, almost musical sound she had heard on her last visit—the sound, within the Gate, of Time’s endless march—she advanced through the fog, passing by the decayed shapes of the empty seats of the Court without a glance, and coming to a halt in front of the Gate.

“Open!” she commanded, raising her staff. Again, Pluto was not certain if this was the prescribed manner for opening the Gate, but the Garnet Orb flashed to life anyway, sending a spiraling, prismatic stream of light-motes towards the simply-shaped lock. There was a profound ‘CLICK,’ the sound of which seemed to shake the entire place, and then the massive doors began to part, swinging open smoothly and silently.

Three female figures in gowns of an ancient style were standing on the other side. The one on the left was a girl in her teens; the one in the center was an adult woman of indeterminate age; and the last was an elderly matron, easily seventy or more. Though it was touched with grey on the central woman and almost totally white on the left figure, all three of them had black hair, and their eyes were the same clear grey. None of them spoke, but the Gate immediately stopped opening and instead began to swing shut.

For some reason, the old woman’s expression became one of wry amusement, and that angered Pluto enough that she thrust her staff towards the half-open Gate. The Orb flashed anew, releasing another burst of multicolored lights, and the entire Time Gate shook to a halt, its doors about three-fifths of the way to being completely open.

“She knew you’d do that,” the young one sighed, pointing at her aged counterpart.

“Shut up and get out of my way,” Pluto snapped.

“We can only do that after you have explained where and when you intend to go,” the woman in the middle replied.

In spite of everything, that brought Pluto up short. “Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know?”

“In a sense, that is correct. Our domain is Time, not the mind; we know all the possible outcomes of your being here, but we do not know which you will choose.”

“If we had known,” the girl added, “we wouldn’t have had to appear in the first place. These forms were just a precaution in case we had to stop you.”

“There are some possible futures which must not be,” the old woman warned.

“I’m not here about the future,” Pluto said.

“There are some possible...” the avatar of the Past began.

“SHUT UP!” Pluto shouted, causing the girl to flinch. “I didn’t come here for a philosophical debate with a bunch of supposedly omnipotent beings who play on monkey bars and can’t even finish their own sentences!”

The girl looked a bit hurt at that. “You used to understand...” She clapped a hand over her mouth and stared with widening eyes as Pluto shuddered violently all over and glared pure murder at her.

“You... you took away my memories... you robbed me of everything that made me who I was and then threw me aside... and now you expect me to UNDERSTAND?!”

“There is a reason for what was done to you,” the middle figure said evenly.

“I don’t CARE about reasons!” Pluto screamed, her eyes filling with tears. “I WANT MY LIFE BACK!!!”

“You already have it,” a new voice said gently, from somewhere behind her. Pluto automatically turned to confront the owner of the voice and saw a golden-eyed woman of about her own height, whose hair was so incredibly long that it cloaked her body from head to toe. Those radiant green tresses, decorated with tiny white flowers, made it impossible to tell whether or not the woman was wearing a robe to match those worn by the three aspects of Time, but her arms, folded at the level of her waist, were covered by an exceedingly fine coat of fur. With the same hue as lightly tanned skin, that ‘coat’ could have been a natural one or an artificial one; there was really no way to be sure.

The new arrival stood before the fifth of the abandoned seats, and the withered vines and decayed woods of the podium had been restored to life by her appearance. Rich mosses now clung to the solid, treetrunk-like mass, and the vines were thick with leaves and flowers. Pluto didn’t need that clue to identify the figure, for she recognized the avatar of Life—if only vaguely— from the last time she had seen it. The figure’s remark had stricken the Senshi of Time dumb, however, and the only reaction she could muster to its arrival was a blank stare.

“It may not be any comfort to you, Meiou Setsuna, but you have been more alive over the past two months than you were in your entire vigil over the Time Gate. Time may not pass here, but you spent thousands of years’ worth of it in your guardianship, interacting with the world through your projected form. For all of that time, for all the things you saw and did, you did not truly live; you merely existed. That was a necessity which I accepted because it allowed the creation of new lives, and greatly improved many more, but it had to end, and the only way to do that was to remove your memory of your duty.”

“Then why did you take away everything else?” Pluto demanded, finding her voice again.

“There was no choice,” the avatar said, her golden eyes sad. “Your duty was a part of your life since the day you were born. As a baby, you lived in the shadow of your mother’s devotion to that same duty; as a child, you were taught to understand it; and when you became Pluto, you lived it—only for it to take your life away. I was forced to conclude that, to take your duty away and give some part of you a chance to live again, I had to allow Athena Nelara to die.”

Pluto stared at Life and, in a terrible whisper, said, “This... this was your idea?”

The golden eyes blinked once, slowly. “It was.”

Behind Pluto, Future’s aged face suddenly became worried. “No! You must not...!”

“DEAD SCREAM!” Pluto shrieked. Amplified by her fury, the negative energy of the attack erupted from the Garnet Orb with a wail that would have shattered every bit of glass over the length of a city block in all directions. The avatar just closed her eyes and let it come.

When the Dead Scream struck, the strange forces within the open Time Gate accelerated into a roar of their own.

# 

In a pastoral field somewhere in the English countryside and the latter half of the seventeenth century, the stem of a ripened apple was suddenly disintegrated by a burst of dark force. This had the effect of sending the otherwise undamaged fruit into a fall, which was interrupted by the presence of a head beneath the tree. The gentleman who claimed ownership of that head had been looking at an apple in his hand with an expression of absolute amazement, as if it somehow held the secrets of the universe, but when the second apple clocked him, it got an annoyed glare—and so did the tree.

“I must remember to bring an umbrella with me if I do this in the future,” he muttered to himself, getting to his feet and walking away, an apple in each hand. Halfway down the hill, he paused to throw the original apple up into the air and then catch it on its return, a simple act which—for whatever reason—caused him to break into a broad smile.

You’d think the man had just discovered gravity or something.

# 

In a thick jungle somewhere in the late Cretaceous period, a towering tyrannosaur in the prime of its life suddenly dropped dead, crashing down through a tree on its way to the mud. Although the predator’s mysterious and untimely demise was an event of some note, it was understandably overshadowed by the mass of flaming rock that was blazing its way down from above—and by the cataclysmic force that was unleashed when the thing impacted a few minutes later, pulverizing and incinerating anything and everything for hundreds of kilometers.

This part of the Cretaceous had become late in just about every sense of the word.

# 

Outside a small hut on a mountainside somewhere in Japan and its long feudal era, a short man with the powerful build of a smith stepped from his forge, holding a shining, new-made sword in one hand. It was a beautiful weapon, sleek and graceful, with the finest edge and balance its maker’s skill could provide. There just remained a few small tests to measure its strength.

Raising the weapon with the casual familiarity of a master, the smith slashed it sidelong at a nearby swathe of reeds, and the upper ends of the stalks fell away in a straight line, not even bending as the blade cut through them. The smith nodded in satisfaction, turned, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the ancient tree standing a short distance beyond the reeds let out a loud, creaking moan and toppled over.

A much younger man appeared from the forge, his face startled and concerned beneath the streakings of soot. “Masamune-sama?” he inquired. “Are you all right?”

“Hai,” the older man replied absently, studying the blade in his hands, the bloody streak along its shining flat, and the glancing blow he’d accidentally given himself in the arm when the tree fell. He suddenly had a bad feeling about this wonderful sword, this seemingly perfect weapon that drew its own master’s blood, and for a moment, the master swordmaker was tempted to melt the blade down in his forge, and then dispose of the metal.

*But,* he reminded himself, *the warrior said he would return today, and I have nothing else which will satisfy him. This one must do.* His mouth twisted in a grimace. *And I must admit, such a bloodthirsty weapon is likely to appeal to the man all the more.*

Shaking his head and favoring his wounded arm, the smith went to clean the sword before Kotetsu arrived to claim it.

# 

To far away places and far away times, and to those nearer; to cities, forests, caverns, and plains; to plants and to animals; to the lesser forms of life, and to the forms that considered themselves greater. The powers of Time worked frantically to scatter and channel the fatal power of the Dead Scream into situations where the sudden losses of life would not threaten the integrity of the timeline.

When the noise within the Time Gate returned to its normal levels, Life reopened her eyes. A long, narrow streak of stark white had appeared in her hair, and the petals of a flower set at the base of that lock had turned as black as pitch, but she was otherwise unaffected.

“If you feel that you must attack me,” she said with impossible calm, “please limit yourself to the staff. Anything more...”

The avatar’s head snapped sharply to the right as Pluto took the suggestion and struck her across the face with the staff. The Garnet Orb seemed to flash at the moment of impact, and then again when Pluto swung the weapon back and smashed Life’s shoulder. And then the knees. And the hip. And the other arm, at the elbow. Pluto attacked again and again, striking with every swing and screaming with every blow.

The avatar merely stood, taking the terrible beating and showing no sign of injury. She did not bleed; her bones did not crack; she didn’t even bruise. Somehow, that only made Pluto want to try harder. She threw her staff away into the mists and attacked Life in a whirlwind of fists and feet. There was no grace or style in it; Pluto was lashing out in blind rage, desperately trying to hurt something as badly as she had been hurt. There was a grain of satisfaction in every punch, in striking back at the source of her pain, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing could ever be enough.

But she just couldn’t stop.

“Now,” the old woman’s voice said, the words not meaning a thing to Pluto. “It will end now.”

Bringing her hands together, Pluto unleashed a hammer-blow at the avatar’s shoulder, a strike that, coming from a Senshi, would have shattered every bone in that area of a normal human body—and the avatar took a step backwards, dodging the attack. Unable to see through the tears in her eyes and the haze of fury flooding her mind, Pluto couldn’t react to the move, and her own massive swing yanked her off balance. She tried to take a step to correct for it, stumbled, and fell to whatever surface hung within the mists, letting out a choked gasp as the wind was knocked out of her.

With that fall, a barrier in Pluto’s mind finally broke. The rage bled away; the pain rushed in; and the tears began to fall. Curled up on the nothingness that was everything, one outstretched hand clawing at the insubstantial mists while the other arm hid her face, Pluto cried out her pain into the cold, uncaring infinity.

Or perhaps not so cold and uncaring. Something soft and warm was suddenly *there,* lifting her with great strength, holding her with great tenderness. Pluto caught a vague glimpse of a slender, smooth-furred shoulder surrounded by green and raised one hand, fingers curled, to clutch at that shoulder and try to push away, to sink her fingers into the fur and the flesh beneath and *make* it let her go, but she couldn’t find enough of the rage to give herself the necessary strength. She was crying like a baby, and she wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. All the loss, all the fear and uncertainty, all the fury that had been hidden in the dark corners of her mind for the last two months had risen up and taken hold of her, demanding to be acknowledged, refusing to stay in the shadows of her subconscious any longer.

All her strength, all her strange and wonderful powers, all the legendary self-control Pluto was supposed to possess—and she just couldn’t stop crying.

“It... hurts...”

“I know,” Life said soothingly. “Pain is an inescapable part of my nature. Even the strongest of my children know it, because there is no other way. If you were invulnerable to the physical powers of the universe, you would be as hard as stone, and as cold as ice. Without pain, you could not know pleasure; without fear, you could not be brave; without grief and hatred, you could not love. You are all so fragile, so easy to lose...” The avatar let out a shivering sigh, and her arms seemed to briefly tighten about Pluto. “I know that each and every one of you will slip away from me, in Time, but while you live, while you are a part of me, when you laugh and marvel and love... I do not resent the choice. Regret, but not resent.”

“I...”

“Shhh,” the avatar said, cradling Pluto in her arms, surrounding her with a blanket of warm, living hair. “You have carried this pain long enough, my little daughter. Let it out; let it all go.”

Helpless in the grip of her own sorrow, Pluto obeyed, and cried. She did not notice when the other figures of the Court appeared in their places, all of them looking down at her. Order’s face remained as blank as ever, and Death remained as silent, but there was no censure in the first avatar’s rigid gaze, and the shadowed specter gave no sign of taking pleasure in the scene of a living creature’s pain. Balance’s too-ordinary human face was openly sad, though something in his eyes showed relief, perhaps even satisfaction; in the open Gate, the youngest face of Time had covered her eyes with one hand, shielding herself from these painful moments as they became forever a part of her domain, and neither of her counterparts was without some degree of that same pain. Chaos’ insane shifting of form and mind continued unchecked, but muted, as if in respect, or sympathy.

And from the red-eyed shadow that was the face of Evil, instead of the usual cold, seductive hunger, there came something else. It was not sympathy—for that is never the way of true Evil—but something of the satisfaction that was absent in Death’s manner. But it was even more than that, for with that open cruelty, Evil almost managed to hide the deeper emotions within itself, feelings of pain, loss, and loneliness that Pluto’s own suffering reflected.

Even the darkest, basest Evil can desire to be loved—only to suffer horribly and lash out in rage when it is denied.

“It is time,” Life said, her voice not touching Pluto. “I exercise my right.”

“Agreed,” Order pronounced.

“PoINt-gamE-SET-match CONcedED,” Chaos said.

Death nodded once.

“Agreed,” the avatar of the Present said.

Balance looked at Evil. For a long moment, there was silence, and then the dark form’s eyes closed.—Agreed—the hissing voice whispered.

“Then it is so ruled,” Balance stated, nodding at Life and then disappearing. The four seated powers also vanished, while the avatar of the Present extended a hand to the mists, calling the Time Staff and the Garnet Orb back from where Pluto had thrown them. Then the three aspects of Time waited.

Eventually, Pluto fell silent and tried to raise her head. Life let her sit up, and they faced at each other, clear golden eyes looking into deep, tear-ravaged red. Pluto looked up, at the white streak in Life’s otherwise green hair, and the dark flower.

“H-how?” she blurted. “How...?”

“In this place where Time and its effects are not visited upon a mortal body, any human becomes tremendously powerful, and one such as you, that already commands such power, becomes far more.” Life touched one hand to her breast. “When we assume these forms, we become limited and vulnerable, and of all the powers, I am already the most fragile. I can endure much, avoid harm, change myself to defend or heal, but like everything that is part of me, in the end I have no defense against the power of my opposite—of Death.”

Pluto stared at her, growing pale. “You mean... I could have...”

Life laughed then, a warm, wonderful laugh. “You think very highly of yourself, little one,” she said, reaching out and gently cupping Pluto’s face with her hands. “I like that. Spirit always helps you to survive. But no; even freed of fatigue by this timelessness, nothing mortal has the power to kill me. Only my opposite could truly do that, and that will not happen. Without Life, Death would also cease to exist, as would the Court, for it is the consciousness of my children which gives us our own awareness. Without you, we cease. That is why I am being permitted to help you now; you are one of the crucial pieces in this part of the game, and the emptiness in your mind and the pain in your heart could destroy you if left unchecked.”

At the sound of the word ‘destroy,’ Pluto glanced at the avatar’s hands, and flinched in spite of herself; those soft, gentle hands did not end in fingers, but deadly talons. Life looked at her hands as well, deliberately raising the left to brush away the traces of Pluto’s tears with her thumb. The claw would have done any predator proud, but its touch against Pluto’s face was feather-light, and this time, she managed to hold steady. Life smiled again, and then helped Pluto to her feet.

“I cannot give you back your memories,” the avatar said, “but you may yet be able to reclaim them. Our choice of New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 for your return to the world was no accident; between the few times that you physically entered the world during your vigil over the Time Gate, and the few other instances of time-travel that you have undergone, October 29th of this year will truly be the end of the twenty-fourth year of your physical life. Beginning at nine twenty-seven on that morning, the exact time of your birth, you will have a chance to regain your memory. I am not permitted to tell you how or when.”

“The... twenty-ninth?” Pluto repeated. Life nodded gravely.

“There is a danger, though. The leaders of Atlantis have been aware of this chance since their return. Your recovery of those memories would be a terrible threat to their plans, and some of them will go to any extreme to insure that you do not remember yourself, so be wary. Atlantis is by no means the worst enemy you will face, but they may well prove to be the most dangerous for you personally, and they will attack in ways you might not expect or recognize. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Pluto admitted with a weak smile, “but I’ll be careful.”

“That is about all you can do right now,” Life agreed. “Now... as for what brought you here...”

“My... my b-baby?”

“Your son,” the avatar corrected.

Pluto’s stomach unclenched a little. “You’re sure?”

“I generally know what I’m talking about in this matter,” Life said, a growling hint of lion-like annoyance in her voice before she smiled again. “Yes, a son. Not the daughter of Pluto that you were so afraid of—and not a child abandoned to the whims of fate, either. I cannot tell you much about him, but there is a little you may know.”

“Please,” Pluto whispered. “When... how...?”

“The end of your life in Atlantis is where it began. The Empire was far from perfect, but you grew up loving and believing in it, and then you learned the terrible mistakes its leaders were making and were forced to bring them and their power down. In that same night, you lost many good friends, and set in motion things that would destroy others you cared for—and you saw your mother die. That is a bad thing for any child to see, but for a Senshi, it can be much worse.”

“I... don’t understand.”

“The maternal instinct is very strong in all Senshi. It may appear in different ways, but it is part of what gives you your desire to protect, and it creates a bond between all of you that many other humans never realize. For any two Senshi who are related, the ties of family make that bond even stronger, and for a mother and daughter—especially two who share the same element—it is profound.” The golden eyes looked directly at her. “Look at Usagi and ChibiUsa, and you will be able to see how much you and your mother loved each other. Then picture ChibiUsa if Usagi were to die, and you will begin to understand what you felt like after your mother died.”

Pluto’s mind balked at the notion, but she looked down at the patch of mists where she had fallen.

“Yes,” Life agreed, “it was much like that. Merlin told you that you visited Serenity one last time and then disappeared; this is where you came, to let out your grief and rage where no one could be harmed by it. Then you tried to walk away from this.” The avatar touched Pluto’s forehead, beneath the tiara, and for a moment, the symbol that was sometimes there shone brightly. Pluto could not see it, but she felt it clearly. “Believing that there was nothing left to do, you turned your back on this place and returned to the world, in a place and time far distant from Atlantis. It was your intention to leave Pluto behind and live out the rest of your life as a normal woman, in an era that had nothing to remind you of your past, in a society with no magic, no monsters, and no Senshi. For a time, you had your wish: a normal woman, with a normal life... and in time, a family to share it with. First a man you loved, and then his family, of which you became a part, and then your son.”

“And you can’t tell me who they were,” Pluto said miserably, lowering her eyes.

“No, I cannot. And I am sorry.” Life reached out and put a hand under Pluto’s chin, gently raising her face. “But I can tell you that you loved them, and that you were happy. They healed your heart—and that is why you left them. You see, you had chosen an era where there were no Senshi, but there have been Senshi among humans for nearly twenty-five thousand years. Only once in all of that time has it been otherwise, and your return to the world in that era was what signaled the return of the Senshi as well.”

Now Pluto REALLY stared at the avatar. “You don’t mean... you can’t... Usagi and the others? I was THERE?!”

“You arrived in Tokyo one year before Tennou Haruka was born,” Life said. “It was your presence and the power of the Garnet Orb which drew the last Serenity’s attention as she searched through the future for a place to send her daughter and the others, and it was the rebirth of the Moon Princess—and the arrival of the power of the ginzuishou—which made you realize that your duty was not complete. You see, you did not specifically destroy Atlantis; you buried it, and sealed its leaders away in a prison beyond Time. When you felt the ginzuishou, you recognized only the magnitude of its power and the levels of temporal energy surrounding it, so you returned here to discover what it was, and whether or not it had somehow involved the Atlanteans. That is when you learned of the realm that your old friend and teacher had founded, and of the crystal she made. You also learned of the darkness which had sought to possess that crystal, and which would return to seek it again. That is when you chose to leave your family.”

“No. No,” Pluto said, shaking her head in denial. “I wouldn’t... I couldn’t have just left. If they were in danger, I... oh. Oh.” She looked at Life with a stricken expression, and then softly asked, “They were already in danger, weren’t they?”

“From you,” Life agreed, finishing the thought. “The Dark Kingdom needed years to break free, but when they finally did, you would have been drawn to fight them as surely as the young Senshi—and your loved ones would have inevitably become casualties of that war. To protect them, you made the hard choice, and returned here. That was when you encountered us. We had been watching your family very closely for many years, waiting for one of the many generations of Plutos to show those qualities required for the Guardian of Time: the understanding of the nature of her powers; the willingness to protect the necessary past, regardless of how terrible it might be; the wisdom to make sacrifices when required for the betterment of the future; and the courage to forsake one’s own present, no matter how precious, in order to uphold the duty of the Guardian.”

“Why? Why did you need a Guardian at all? You can look after Time yourselves, can’t you?”

“We cannot,” the voice of the Present answered from within the Gate, causing Pluto to turn. “The dangers to Time exist in the physical world, where our powers are dispersed throughout all that is. We”—she indicated herself and her two companions—“may freely enter Time, but our power is by its nature divided, and not well-suited to the kind of direct confrontation that is often necessary. We are not strong enough to be our own Guardian. Neither may the other powers fulfill the task for us. They cannot act without being prejudiced by their own interests, and their avatars may only manifest in certain places and times without doing still more harm. Balance has the capacity to exist in the mortal realm, but he does so as a mortal, with no power beyond his knowledge, and even that is sometimes not enough. That is why we needed a mortal; to go where we could not, with the power, knowledge, and will to do what was necessary.” All three women smiled. “You worked out even better than we had anticipated.”

Pluto spent several very long moments looking back and forth between the four immortal entities. “So,” she said slowly, “what happens now?”

“Much of that depends on you,” Life said simply. “Do you still wish to go in search of your son?”

“Yes... but I can’t, can I?”

“No. Your first family is long dead, and to your second, *you* are dead. Your husband and his kin believe that you died in a train wreck, and while they have not forgotten you, they mourned you long ago, and moved on with their lives. Your son was then only a few months old; he could not know you today any more than you could know him.”

“I can believe that,” Pluto said evenly, her eyes closed. A faked death sounded like such a cold, calculated move, but when given the alternative— simply stepping out and vanishing, leaving people she was supposed to have cared about to wonder forever what had become of her—she could understand and even approve of such a direct, clean break. It was certainly something her old self could have done. “Is that why you won’t tell me their names? To keep them from being hurt again?”

“Yes,” Life admitted. “It is also to protect you and the other Senshi, for you are physically within Time for the first time since you became the Guardian, and your body did not age during the interval. You are not appreciably older than you were the last time your husband saw you, seventeen years ago, and he or any of his relatives would recognize you if they saw you.”

Pluto frowned and turned to Future. “Is that likely to happen?”

“It is not impossible,” the old woman admitted reluctantly. “We will do what we can, but we cannot keep them away from every place that you WILL be, only those areas you are most likely to be.”

“You might want to give some thought to colored contact lenses,” Present added. “You have a number of distinguishing features, but your eyes are among the most obvious.”

“You’d know,” Pluto muttered. She looked at all three Times as curiosity briefly pushed away some of her depression. “That reminds me; *WHAT* is with the three Fates costumes?”

“These forms were comfortable for us long before we chose to adopt yours,” Past said, touching her gown with a hint of self-depreciation. “And besides, if we *had* appeared as reflections of you, you wouldn’t have liked it.”

“You’re right.” Pluto sighed. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“What’s done is done,” Past replied fatalistically, shrugging. Then she smiled. “But we forgive you. You’ve been having a very bad day.”

Present extended her arm, and the staff floated away from her, into Pluto’s waiting hand. Then the Time Gate swung shut with a barely-audible *click,* locking away the great tunnel and the three strange beings who were one with it. That left Pluto alone with Life.

“Please don’t take this badly,” she said, “but in one day, I’ve learned about a son, a husband, and two separate families that I’ve lost. You may have called me your daughter, but I’m not about to call you my mother.”

The avatar smiled. “I did not expect you to. It is an analogy I have found useful for making those mortals who encounter this form”—she indicated herself— “feel a little more comfortable. In truth, you are the ones who created me, when nonliving matter first became something *other* than what it had always been before, but I struggle on behalf of all that is a part of me—all that is precious to me. When you feel joy, I feel joy; when you hurt, I also experience pain; and when you die, I know loss. Is that so different from what a mother does?”

“I suppose not.” Pluto couldn’t keep a note of bitterness out of her voice, and she closed her eyes as Life blinked at her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just... I just want to know what I lost, but it seems like the more I learn, the more questions I’m left with, and the harder everything gets.”

“Life is not easy,” the animalistic woman replied. “It is not meant to be. The times of struggle and pain are what make the good times truly precious.”

“In that case, I ought to be about due for some very good times.” The joke was a little feeble, but it helped; the avatar smiled as well, and that also made Pluto feel better. She nodded to Life and walked towards the back of the Court, but halfway across, she paused. “Is he happy? Are they?”

“They are. Even if you never regain your original memories, you may take comfort from knowing that your son and his family will do well. Not perfectly, and not especially extraordinarily, but they will be as happy as most can be.” Pluto nodded and started forward again, only to stop once more as Life called after her. “Setsuna.”

She turned. “Yes?”

“Earlier,” Life said, walking towards her, “I said that there is little you can do now except be careful. That is not entirely accurate. There is one other thing you can do.”

“And that is?” Life reached out and took Pluto’s shoulders in a gentle grip.

“You can LIVE.” Although spoken softly, the word echoed like thunder through the mists. “I know you will never forget the pain of your lost past, but you must not let it keep you from finding what happiness you can with your new family. Work and fight for what you want or believe in, and find some measure of enjoyment in everything that the world hands to you, even if it hurts at the time. Laugh when you can, and cry when you must. Hate if you have to, and love if it is at all possible—but LIVE.”

Again, the quiet word rang immensely in the fog; shaken, Pluto could only nod mutely in response. She did not resist as Life embraced her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Without another word, the avatar vanished into the mists, and the last part of her to fade away were the golden eyes, which watched Pluto with sympathy, fondness, and approval until they were swallowed by the swirling fog.

Left alone with the Time Gate, the seemingly abandoned facade of the Court, and the endless mists, Pluto raised a hand to her cheek, where she could still feel the touch of Life’s kiss. Maybe it was nothing, but she felt... almost good. Ten thousand things had suddenly entered her mind: people she wanted to see and talk to; places she wanted to go; things she wanted to do; and though she knew that it would be impossible to ever get around to them all, she wasn’t discouraged. There were so many possibilities staring her right in the face every second of every day that not even she or the incarnate aspect of the Future could tell which would be and which would not be; between Now and Then, anything might happen—anything *could* happen—and Pluto realized that she wanted very much to see what tomorrow held.

For want of a better term, she felt alive.

# 

When Usagi opened the door, Setsuna was standing by her bed, in her nightdress and housecoat, but with her staff in her hands. She appeared to gaze into the Garnet Orb for a moment before opening her hands and releasing the staff, which vanished, Orb and all.

“Setsuna?” Usagi asked slowly, causing her friend’s head to turn towards her. “What just happened?” She frowned and looked around at the room, trying to figure out why she was so certain that it should have been empty when she opened the door. Serenity’s memories advised her of something called a temporal ripple, an overlapping of the same moment in two or more separate timelines. In one timeline, the room *had* been empty when she opened the door; in this one, Setsuna had departed and then returned in the same instant that she left, causing the double-up effect.

“I went to the Time Gate,” Setsuna was saying. “I had to let some things out, and have a few others told to me.” She smiled then, a dazzling smile that combined sadness and joy into something astonishing. “Have I ever told you that I love you, Usagi-chan?”

“Uh... not in so many words,” Usagi replied cautiously, giving Setsuna a sidelong look.

“Well, I do.” Setsuna caught Usagi in a hug before the girl had time to do more than blurt out a startled syllable. “I just wanted you to hear it, and to hear myself say it out loud.”

“Um... I... love you, too?” Usagi replied, too dazed from trying to figure out what was going on here to even hug back. “Are you feeling all right, Setsuna?”

“I’d be lying if I said I was as happy right now as I was at this time yesterday,” Setsuna admitted, releasing Usagi and stepping back. As she did so, the younger girl could once again see the pain reflected in her friend’s strange eyes, but once again, there was that added glimmer of happiness as well. “But I’ll be okay.”

“So... you found your baby?” Usagi ventured, getting a slow headshake in response.

“No. Not exactly. I know when he was born, and why I had to leave him, and I know that he’s okay...” Setsuna’s stunning smile became wry as she rolled her eyes. “As usual, it’s complicated.”

“When is it *not*?” Usagi sighed. “All right, come on.” She tugged at Setsuna’s sleeve. “Mom suggested that I fill the tub and then try to lure you into it, so let’s go do that, and once you’ve bathed, you can explain this mess to me.”

“A bath sounds good right about now,” Setsuna agreed, “but I have a better idea. I want a nice, long soak, Usagi-chan, so I’ll explain this to you while I bathe, and you can help me with my hair.”

“What? Why... hey!” Usagi protested, suddenly finding herself being the one tugged along. “What is this about your hair? Setsuna? Hey! Leggo! Setsuna!”

“Do you have any bubble bath?” Setsuna asked as they entered the washroom.

Ikuko came upstairs a few moments later, a puzzled expression on her face as she considered the empty bedroom, the closed bathroom door, and the sound of running water coming from beyond it. She knocked.

“Usagi? Is everything okay in there?”

“Mom?” Usagi’s voice came back with a frantic note. “Help! She’s lost her mind!”

“Oh, don’t be such a goose.” The door opened, and Setsuna looked out, still smiling. “Everything’s fine, Ikuko-chan. I just need to borrow your daughter for a little while.” She closed the door, then reopened it. “And just so you know, it was very sneaky of you to trick me into breakfast like that. Thank you for caring enough to try.”

It wasn’t often that anybody got to see a startled look on Ikuko’s face, but she had one now, and it stayed there even after Setsuna had closed the door again. ChibiUsa’s head popped up from the stairs.

“Ikuko-mama?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Ikuko replied. She almost knocked on the door again, but something made her hold back. Ikuko knew people were not supposed to recover from shock and grief that fast, and that when they seemed to, it was almost always a sign that they were getting worse instead of better—but she genuinely believed that Setsuna was okay now. She couldn’t say exactly why, unless it was that curiously mingled look in the young woman’s eyes. Setsuna wasn’t wallowing in her misery anymore, but she wasn’t hiding from it, either.

“Something strange is going on here,” Ikuko said to herself, looking suspiciously at the door. “Well, come on, ChibiUsa. I don’t think Setsuna needs us to pick out her clothes for her now.”

“Huh?” ChibiUsa said as Ikuko motioned her back down the stairs. “Wait,” she said, stopping and turning, “is she better? How can she be better so fast?!”

“I don’t know,” Ikuko admitted, “but I’m definitely going to ask her about it when she gets out of the tub. In fact,” she added, looking back over her shoulder for a moment, “I think that it might be a good idea if we made a phonecall, dear.”

# 

“I appreciate you coming on such short notice,” Ikuko said, pouring the tea.

“And we appreciate you calling us,” Michiru replied, glancing briefly at Haruka, who—standing over against the kitchen door rather than sitting at the table—clearly didn’t relish being back in this house, regardless of the pretext. Hotaru and ChibiUsa were sitting together at the other end of the table, each holding the other’s hand for support while they waited, worried, and were more or less confused.

“It was the least I could do.” ChibiUsa had been the one who actually dialed, and Haruka had been the one who answered, but it was Michiru and Ikuko who had done most of the talking for the brief phonecall that had brought the three Outer Senshi here. “I’ve been told that you’re the closest Setsuna has to a family, so I knew you’d want to be kept informed. And there’s a chance that you might see something in her now that I’ve missed.”

“It’s entirely possible,” Michiru agreed, sipping at her tea. “When you live with someone, you tend to pick up a few things about their behavior. It’s hard to say how much of what we knew about the old Setsuna will still apply to the new one, but we can hope.” She paused and looked at her cup. “This is very good tea, by the way. Is it a home recipe?”

“No, but if you like, I’ll be glad to give you the address of the store.” Michiru nodded, and Ikuko gave her a smile. “And now that we’ve gotten through with the pleasantries, what do you say we get down to cases?”

“By all means,” Michiru replied, setting aside the tea. Suddenly, the two of them were all business. “What was your impression of her mood, exactly?”

“Almost cheerful,” Ikuko said. “It wasn’t as though she was trying to hide something, but it still seems awfully quick to have been a genuine recovery.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you; Setsuna was many things while she lived with us, but ‘cheerful’ never struck me as being one of them. That’s not to suggest that she was depressed,” Michiru added, “but she wasn’t overflowing with good humor, either.”

“She’s been working at it for the last couple of months, but I know what you mean. There always seemed to be an effort involved when she smiled before, although Heaven knows that she had reason enough to not feel like smiling.”

“But you think that’s changed now?” Michiru guessed.

“From what I could tell, yes. Her smile looked very natural. She was even making fun of me and Usagi.”

“That *definitely* doesn’t sound like Setsuna,” Haruka put in, getting interested despite herself.

“Yes,” Michiru agreed absently, frowning. “Mocking humor has always been your department before, and I’d hate to think that Setsuna had slipped that far.” Haruka gave Michiru an injured look while Hotaru and ChibiUsa giggled, but Michiru’s attention stayed on Ikuko. “Was there anything else unusual?”

“There was something else very strange about the way she was smiling,” Ikuko admitted. “As I said, she seemed to be nearly happy, but she also looked sad at the same time. It wasn’t anything like her mood before, but it was still a sort of depression.”

“Now that *does* sound like Setsuna,” Michiru said thoughtfully. “At least a little. She has a history of mysterious smiles that always made it seem as though she knew something you didn’t—and sometimes it looked like something bad.”

“Talking about me when I’m not in the room? I’m hurt.” Haruka glanced towards the stairs in a double take, and then bit her lower lip to keep from laughing.

“What’s so... funny.” ChibiUsa asked, her voice falling flat right as Setsuna came into the room, bathed, dressed in a casual stay-at-home style, and all-in-all looking completely unlike the morosely silent young woman that had gone upstairs a little under a half hour earlier. She was back to normal—with one major difference.

Setsuna had her hair up in odangos. The style was closer to Usagi’s than to ChibiUsa’s true ‘rabbit-ears’ look, and given that Setsuna’s hair wasn’t quite as long or as full as either of the younger girls’ was—at least when it was down—the ends of her new style stopped at just about the level of her waist, rather than hanging down past her knees.

“Well?” she asked, tilting her head slightly and smiling a small, Pluto- mysterious smile. “What do you think?” For a moment, no one said anything, and then Ikuko leaned back in her chair to look past Setsuna and Haruka.

“Usagi.” Usagi slowly stepped into the kitchen, standing before Setsuna with her eyes on the floor. “Was this YOUR idea?”

“Nuh-UH,” Usagi replied firmly, shaking her head.

“I made her do it,” Setsuna said, putting her hands on Usagi’s shoulders. “I was curious to see what it felt like—and to find out what people’s reactions might be.” Her smile remained for a moment before her face grew solemn. “I want to apologize to all of you. I know I must have given you an awful scare by acting like that, and I know you’re probably nearly as worried by the way I’m acting now.”

“Setsuna,” Michiru began. “If you...”

“Please, Michiru,” Setsuna interrupted calmly, holding up one hand. “Let me finish.” Michiru fell silent, and Setsuna smiled at her. “I’m not slipping into denial or anything like that, and I’m not about to go chasing around doing insane things to prove that I’m feeling better. That’s because I’m *not* feeling better—not about my baby, or anything else to do with my past. I don’t like what I see when I look back and find these empty places in my memory, and I never will, but I *do* like what I can remember right now. And that’s all of you.”

She hugged Usagi and looked at each of the others in turn, sharing that smile with its mix of accepted sorrow and joy before continuing.

“I’ve come to think of you—all of you, and the others—as my family now, and I don’t want you to be unhappy on my account anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever get my memory back, and even if I do, I don’t know for certain how easy or how hard it would be to go back to the way things were; so much has happened in the last few weeks, and every second adds something new that I don’t want to lose. Maybe I’ll remember in a month, or a year, or never; I don’t know. I do know that every second I spend worrying about my old life is a second I’ve lost from my new life, forever, and I’m not going to waste any more time by sitting around feeling sorry for myself.”

Once again, everyone was left rather speechless until Ikuko broke the silence.

“What brought this on, Setsuna? Did you see something happen to yourself in the future?” Michiru, Haruka, and Hotaru all looked at her in surprise, and Usagi and ChibiUsa cringed, realizing that they’d forgotten to inform their friends about Ikuko knowing at least that much about Setsuna. For her part, Setsuna merely shook her head.

“I can’t see my own past or future, Ikuko-chan, and I didn’t have a vision about anyone or anything else, either. I’m just tired of crying myself sick about things that might as well never have happened to me, and that I don’t have any control over. I can worry without making such a production out of it. At least, I think I can,” she added.

“And your baby?” Ikuko asked bluntly.

“I’m sure Mizuno-san can help me to get in touch with the right people to find him.”

“Or her,” Hotaru piped up.

“Or her,” Setsuna agreed, smiling at the little Senshi. “But in the meantime, I have to go on living my life. Otherwise, I won’t be any good to myself, let alone my baby.”

Ikuko did not appear convinced, and she studied Setsuna for a very long time. Finally, she sighed and nodded. “All right, Setsuna. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do. But I hope you understand that I’m going to be keeping an eye on you.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“And Ami’s mother left a number yesterday,” Ikuko added, “for a woman who works in the psychiatric department at the hospital. I think you should call her at some point and schedule a meeting.”

“If it’ll make you feel better,” Setsuna said.

“I think that it would.”

Setsuna nodded, then looked at ChibiUsa and Hotaru. “And what about you two?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips. “What would make you feel better?”

“A promise,” Hotaru said immediately. “That you’ll never shut us out like that again, ever.”

“And that goes double for me,” ChibiUsa agreed.

As a response, Setsuna held out her right hand, pinky extended. The two girls blinked and then hurried around the table, each holding out her hand in the same fashion and linking fingers with Setsuna.

“Do you promise to always come talk to us if you feel bad?” Hotaru asked, looking up with a very mature expression.

“Only if you do the same,” Setsuna replied, looking at both of them. Hotaru and ChibiUsa exchanged glances and nodded.

“I promise,” all three said together. Then the two younger girls surged forwards to gave Setsuna a hug, forcing Usagi to scramble quickly to one side to avoid getting sandwiched in the middle.

“But you have to change your hair back to normal before I’ll forgive you completely,” ChibiUsa added a moment later.

“I think it looks good on her,” Hotaru countered.

“It’s not your hairstyle.”

“It could be,” Setsuna suggested.

“Don’t. Even. Think. About it.” ChibiUsa said flatly, glaring at both of her friends.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Hotaru retorted impudently, “and I can think about it if I want to.”

ChibiUsa turned around and glared at Usagi. “See what you’ve started?”

“It was her idea,” Usagi replied. “What was I supposed to say?”

“Did the word ‘no’ slip out of your vocabulary, by any chance?”

“Don’t you get snippy with me!”

“Don’t you shout at me!” ChibiUsa shot back.

“I am *not* shouting!” Usagi shouted.

Things were back to normal in the Tsukino household.

 

# 

 

(The scene is Makoto’s apartment, but no one appears to be home. The camera moves over to investigate the mysterious, fast-growing tree. At first, nothing happens, but then the plant shivers and begins to grow faster.)

Calypso: Oh no you don’t. (She floats over, looking at the tree with her arms crossed, and the growth spurt immediately reverses.) That’s better. You know you’re not scheduled to show up...

Offstage: Psst!

Calypso: What? Oh. (She blushes.) Oops. I almost forgot. Sorry. Um... the moral of this episode is that life can hurt sometimes, but the bad moments are what give you a perspective on the other moments, particularly the good ones which may not have seemed quite so good at the time. Setsuna has been suffering continuously because of everything that’s happened to her, and there’s no telling how many moments of possible happiness she may have lost in the process. And just look at me; I’m the last of my kind, but even I can still find the time and the heart for a good joke.

(The tree creaks, and Calypso gives it a suspicious, sidelong glance. The tree appears to sweatdrop; the creak is not repeated.)

07/10/01 (Revised, 22/08/02)

Okay, first off, a big apology from Yours Truly to everyone reading this who was annoyed or disappointed by the long delay. For one thing, parts of this episode were not at all easy for me to write—in the sense that I wasn’t really sure what to put down. For another, I got seriously distracted from my writing schedule by real-world events.

That brings me to a formal, albeit somewhat belated expression of my sympathies, condolences, and best wishes for anybody who lost friends and/or family in the events of September 11th. I’m happy to say that I am not on that list, but I know that many people were not so fortunate.

And on that note, I’ll close this episode.

Next time:  
-the Senshi vs the Daimons of the Doll Festival


	27. The Diamon Who Would Be Queen, and Pretty Soldiers All In A Row

# 

Perhaps it was just that the events of the last few days had been so dark and depressing, but Hotaru thought that this morning’s sunrise looked particularly pretty.

The little Senshi was sitting in what she half-humorously referred to as her ‘tanning chair,’ a plush, comfortable seat placed in front of her bedroom window. She set her alarm so she could get up every morning, pull back the dark violet drapes, and then sit and watch for half an hour or so as the sun came up. She even did it on cloudy days, letting her vision slip into the life-detecting sight Saturn afforded her; the sun might not be a living thing in the flesh and blood sense of the word, but Hotaru could pick out its energy no matter how overcast the sky. Maybe it had something to do with how the sun was creative and destructive at the same time, an endless series of devastating thermonuclear explosions that, incidentally, was also the ultimate source of energy for the life dwelling on the third planet.

Such thoughts were not unusual for Hotaru during these morning vigils.

After a time, when the dawning star had risen high enough over the horizon to start stinging her eyes, Hotaru reached out and closed the drapes. That was the only window in her room, and the curtains were thick enough and dark enough that they completely cut off the sunlight, causing the room to revert to its customary level of almost-darkness. It was a near-recreation of her room at her father’s house, with the same dark blue and violet colors dominating, except where her treasured lamps sat atop dressers and tables or hung from the walls, glowing softly and steadily. The main difference was to be found in the flecks of glitter in the otherwise dark paint on the walls and ceiling, which caught the light of those lamps and flickered like tiny, distant stars.

Despite the small size of its occupant and the presence of the stuffed animals on some of the furniture, it was clear that this strange and beautiful chamber was not a little girl’s bedroom. It was too eerie for that—too otherworldly.

Back when Hotaru had first grown into her child’s body and asked to redecorate her room like this, Michiru and Haruka had objected strongly to the whole idea. Hotaru understood why, because it was nearly impossible to describe this room without using the word ‘dark’, and darkness, in any form, was something her foster parents were determined to keep her away from. Setsuna had helped her convince them, by the simple expedient of waiting until Haruka and Michiru had gone out for an afternoon and then having the furniture moved and canvassed and one wall partly painted by the time they returned for supper. Hotaru had lain awake in Haruka’s bed that night and listened to the muted argument going on between her three foster-parents in the kitchen, then fallen asleep and woken the next day to find Haruka, in a pair of overalls stained by ancient grease and more recent spots of violet-blue paint, grumbling as she worked a roller across the ceiling in the other room.

Hotaru had been and still was uncertain what Setsuna must have said or done to get Haruka and Michiru to agree, but she’d been much too busy being happy with the results to think about asking—and then, as the work neared completion, she’d been too worried about the question of the lamps. She wanted her old ones, but they were long gone, lost when her father had abandoned their old house to go into hiding. Or so she had believed, until Setsuna came to the rescue once again, and took her to a storage locker a few blocks from what had been the site of Mugen Gauken. Inside, padded with foam chips in neatly stacked plastic crates, Hotaru had found not only her beloved lamps, but many other items from her father’s house. Going through them with help from Setsuna, Hotaru had decided what she wanted to bring to her new home, and what could stay where it was, safe, and wait for another day.

As with the lamps, most of her choices for what was to go into her room had been bright and cheerful, almost startlingly so until one considered that the intention of this room was not to display darkness; it was to reflect twilight, those in-between times where light and darkness were even in the sky, and strange and wonderful things could happen in the shadows. Hotaru had always been most comfortable during periods of twilight, and her room had been remade to match her tastes long before Mistress Nine entered her life and made her afraid of the dark. Her bedroom had been a testament to twilight for as far back as she had been able to remember—and then in later years, it had become a memorial to the person who had created it.

As she always did at this time of the day, Hotaru touched the picture sitting on her bedside table, under the glow of the oldest of her lamps. This was one of the items that, like the lamps, had been put into storage. She was in it, younger—much younger—than she was now, just a tiny toddler, held between two people while they all smiled for the camera. On the right was her father, pale from a lifetime of working indoors, but healthy regardless of that, and with both his eyes bright and alert behind his glasses; on the left was her mother, Keiko, as dark-haired and dark-eyed as the little girl she and her husband were holding between them.

Hotaru had trouble remembering her mother. Although this picture allowed her to see what Keiko had looked like, in her mind’s eye, Hotaru could never quite form a complete image. She recalled soft and gentle hands that were neither Michiru’s nor Setsuna’s, and she could remember the sound of a quiet voice, but not the words it had spoken. There was also a particular scent, something that was unlike any flower, soap, or perfume that Hotaru knew, but which had always made her feel safe and happy. Clearest of all, she remembered being out in a field on a summer night, watching as what looked like thousands of fireflies rose from the grass to dance beneath the stars and the crescent moon, listening as that soft voice explained how her parents had first met in this place, long ago—how in years to come, they had chosen to name their precious daughter after the little creatures that still dwelt there.

As always, Hotaru took just a few minutes at the start of her day to think about her mother, to miss her and love her. And, as always, she felt a pang of shame and regret as she thought about the moment when she had lifted the picture out of the closely-packed foam protecting it.

Hotaru had known from the start that her father could not have been the one to pack the crates. He had been immaculate in his lab, but his skill at any kind of housekeeping was rudimentary at best, and even if his mind had been completely his own at the time, he would never have been able to get all of these items put away so neatly. As it was, Hotaru had resigned herself to the certainty that the thing that had been controlling her poor papa had destroyed all of her lamps, savoring the act itself as much as the knowledge that she would be hurt by their loss—by the loss of all the little treasures that someone had so carefully put away. Even as she opened the first crate, the neatness of it, the precision, and the stubborn refusal of the thing to open had given Hotaru all the clues as to who had packed it.

She had never liked Kaolinite. Not once, not even when the woman had first come to work as their housekeeper, when she had been young, sweet, and eager to please, as different from the cold and hateful witch the Senshi had fought as it was possible to get. Even then, Hotaru had disliked her, simply because Kaolinite came when Keiko had been sick. This strange woman had come into the house and started doing everything Hotaru’s mother normally did, cooking and cleaning and on occasion reminding Souichi to leave his experiments long enough to at least eat something. Even worse, even after all the doctors had said that Keiko needed to rest, this *intruder* had gone up to the master bedroom with tea and then stayed there for long periods. Hiding in the hall, Hotaru had heard the two women talking and frequently quietly laughing together, and resented that while she wasn’t allowed to spend much time with her mother, this *person* could apparently go in whenever she wished.

Hotaru had hated how easily Kaolinite seemed to get along with her parents, and how easy it would have been for the two of them to get along as well, how insidiously simple it would have been for her to give in to the smiles and gentle words and actually *like* this awful woman. Refusing to surrender, Hotaru had stubbornly maintained her outward dislike and waited for her mother to get better, so that Kaolinite would finally have to leave.

And then, so painfully slowly and yet all too quickly, Keiko was gone, and Hotaru and her father were both broken apart—and Kaolinite never went away. Worse, she kept trying to be Hotaru’s friend, only to be rejected again and again. Certainly, however much she must have understood how and why Hotaru disliked her, Kaolinite must have been hurt by the little girl’s resentment, perhaps even embittered by it. Then Kaolinite had been caught up in the nightmare that hid in that house, twisted by it like everyone else, all her dark qualities brought out and enhanced until she was the witch Hotaru had hated so much. Unlike Hotaru and her father, Kaolinite had not made it out of the nightmare, and Hotaru had never questioned that it was what the woman had deserved—and then she found all the crates, all the things from the house put so neatly away.

It could have just been Kaolinite’s obsession with neatness that made her put everything into storage rather than simply getting rid of it all. Certainly, the thing she had become would have had no trouble doing so, and probably would have enjoyed destroying Hotaru’s things as much as any daimon. But as she held the picture in her hand a year and a lifetime later, Hotaru knew it was more than that. She thought about all the things she had most disliked about Kaolinite. She thought about the woman’s long-lost friendliness, and the laughs shared with Keiko before she died. Hotaru thought about the looks Kaolinite so often gave to Souichi, the looks a child could resent but not make sense of, and that a teenager resented all the more as she began to understand their meaning. She thought about those accursedly watchful eyes and that disgustingly silky voice telling her what she must or must not do, about those unnaturally strong arms and cold, hard hands picking her up when her illness overpowered her, carrying her to bed and frequently changing her clothes as though she were an utter invalid. She even remembered the day of her mother’s funeral, when she had cried herself to exhaustion and been put to bed in much the same fashion as in the years to come, but with a soft hand wiping away the teary mess on her face, and something that might have even been a kiss following her into sleep.

All the things that Hotaru had disliked the most, all of them done out of care, perhaps even affection. Kaolinite had cared for a dying woman, grown to love a man she would never have, and felt sorry for the little daughter who was left behind—the girl who she herself would help to raise. The influence of the daimons could not take those feelings away, only corrupt or bury them; Hotaru knew that, just as Mistress Nine had briefly taken over her body and pushed her consciousness down into a tiny corner of her mind, so too must the real Kaolinite have been trapped within the dark shell built out of her own worst traits. Putting all of these precious possessions into storage might have been that trapped and doomed woman’s one last attempt to do something right, to be a friend to a girl who had mistrusted her, despised her, and never really understood her until it was too late for either of them.

Hotaru’s room was therefore doubly a memorial, dedicated to the mother she had lost, and then to the friend that could have been. Just as she thought about her mother every morning, Hotaru also thought about Kaolinite, about her own childish stupidity, and how she must never let herself treat someone like that again.

Sighing, Hotaru kissed her fingertips and touched them to the picture. Right then, a curious thought struck her. Picking up the photo, Hotaru walked over to her dresser, looked briefly at her image in the mirror, and then willed herself to change. It took only a moment for the power of Saturn to sweep through her tiny body and make it grow up again. Watching her reflection, Hotaru saw herself age five years... ten years... fifteen...

When the transformation stopped, a woman who appeared to be about Setsuna’s age was standing in front of the mirror, wearing pale purple pajamas which had increased in size right along with her body. She didn’t look quite the same as the woman in the photo; they had the same hair and were of roughly the same height and build, but the woman standing in the room had finer features, and her eyes were much darker. Hotaru studied her reflection closely, and was forced to conclude with another regretful sigh that she did not really look all that much like her mother. On the other hand, aside from being dark-haired, dark-eyed, and beautiful, she didn’t resemble Mistress Nine’s chosen form either. That was something, at least. This wasn’t anybody else’s face but her own; it was the familiar face she wore as Saturn, made just a few years older than it usually was.

*Maybe a few years too many,* she thought a moment later, glancing at the lock of white that had appeared in her hair. Since she hadn’t tried to put it there, Hotaru suspected that she could look forward to seeing that begin to appear naturally as she got older. It was rather striking, actually, but it also added about ten years to the appearance of this body, and she wasn’t ready to grow up *that* far just yet. Hotaru caught the white lock with one hand and pulled her fingers along from the base to the tip, changing white hair back to black with a simple gesture. *There. Much better.* She struck a vaguely glamorous pose, blew a kiss at the mirror, and then giggled at herself before resuming her child form.

Living with a teenager’s mind inside a child’s body definitely had its problems, but there were plenty of good things about it as well, not the least of which was that Hotaru got to participate in the holidays and festivals as a kid again. Japan had quite a list of holidays and festivals, and one of Hotaru’s favorites was today: Hinamatsuri, the Doll’s Festival. Even if it wasn’t a full-fledged holiday, there was still a lot to be said for a celebration in honor of girls, particularly when you were one.

The tradition was for a family with a young daughter to put up a small set of dolls representing the old imperial court; emperor and empress, ministers, servants, and musicians, all arranged in rows on a tiered stage. Hotaru had no idea why that was, exactly, but the dolls were very lovely, particularly the set that Michiru had brought out the year before. Each figurine was made from china, and their little kimonos looked like real silk, although Hotaru hadn’t dared to touch them to find out for certain. Simply from the way Michiru had handled them as she set them up, Hotaru had guessed that the dolls were old, precious in a way that had nothing to do with age or money.

This was only Hotaru’s second year celebrating the Festival with Haruka and Michiru, and she hoped that it was as much fun as the last. She smiled and rolled her eyes at that, recalling how Haruka had joked about using the dolls to keep score of the number of kisses she could charm out of pretty girls, and how Michiru had decked her with a pillow. It would be hard to top that act, but there was a fair being held in the park this year that promised to be interesting—and of course, she still had to go wake her foster parents up.

Smiling mischievously, Hotaru crept down the hall, leaving the picture and all her sombre reflections in the shadows of her bedroom.

# 

Hotaru was far from the only person thinking about the fair that morning, but there was one girl whose interest in it took a decidedly different turn from everyone else’s.

Sitting in her room, Archon’s apprentice watched through a scrying spell as workers finished setting up the stands and booths. At times, she would look away from the image and study the open pages of one of her grandmother’s translated books, and the glowing words of the memory crystal that floated in the air above it. Both described the same spell, a fairly complicated magic that she had been working on for the last few days. If cast successfully, the spell empowered an object—any object—with the capacity to absorb energy from its environment, in some respects making it into a minor mana nexus. The difference was that once the mini-nexus had fully charged itself, it spent all of its energy in a single task, which was usually a large magical explosion.

That part was no problem; the young apprentice had already cast a few low-power versions of the spell at home and found it to work quite well. What she was trying to do now was work out how to fix additional spells in place to take advantage of the power produced by the first. The technique was calling slaving or splicing, and if she could just get a spell of summoning and a spell of control fixed to the power-spell, she might have a way to safely summon the sort of daimonic force that was needed to hold off the Senshi.

She could summon individual daimons powerful enough to fight one Senshi— maybe two or three, depending on the Senshi and the daimon—but to handle the whole group of sailor-suited warriors at once might end up requiring close to an equal number of daimons. There was simply no way the apprentice could call and control that many of the evil entities at one time, and if a daimon with that level of brains and brawn got free, there’d literally be hell to pay. A free daimon could call up others, quickly creating a self-perpetuating nightmare, but this spell splicing might just be the solution.

The girl knew that she could cast the spells involved. She knew that they’d work. And the fair was the ideal place for the test; after all the speeches about love and justice and all the rest of it, a fair during the Doll’s Festival looked like just the sort of juvenile silliness that the Senshi would go for, insuring both a battle-testing of the magic and that the daimon wouldn’t have a chance to get too far.

Even so, the apprentice was reluctant to turn loose a monster with this level of power in the middle of a crowd of uninvolved innocents. The massive army had been a different story; those things had been so weak that even with their sheer numbers, ordinary people could have—and had—beaten the extradimensional stuffings out of them. This daimon could very well be more powerful on its own than half of the horde combined, and any ordinary person that got near it would be lucky to survive, even if she kept as tight a rein on it as...

The girl made a noise of disgust and mentally smacked herself. Idiot! She could MAKE the daimon NOT try to kill anybody other than the Senshi simply by altering the command spell a little.

That problem solved, the apprentice gathered up her things and summoned her magic. Moments later, masked and cloaked and hidden beneath a spell of invisibility for good measure, she materialized in the back of a booth at the fair. Taking a moment to confirm her unseeable status by waving her hands in the faces of a couple of workers who were putting the finishing touches on the front of the stall, the apprentice then turned to business. There were human-sized versions of the emperor and empress dolls standing at opposite ends of the booth as part of its decor, and since these weren’t as likely to go somewhere as one of the smaller dolls scattered all over, she began casting the series of spells over the empress, keeping her voice low to avoid notice.

One by one, the spells seeped into the material of the doll-statue, the lines of magical energy curving into new shapes and patterns. With a final twist, the young wizardess sealed the splicing spell and then touched the empress with one hand and her sense of magic, trying to determine if it had worked.

There. The spells were intact, and the power was already beginning to build. It would take several hours to reach its peak and trigger the summoning, but that was just fine. This was one time when she wanted the Senshi to show up quickly, and a monster in a large crowd would draw plenty of attention even if it didn’t seriously hurt anyone.

Her conscience soothed and her plan set in motion, the apprentice departed from the fairgrounds. One of the workers glanced at the back of the booth with a frown, fairly certain that he’d heard a whisper of a sound, but then shook his head and got back to work.

# 

Setsuna was sitting up in the bedroom again today, although this time she was dressed, alert, and reading a fairly hefty book rather than staring blankly off into space.

Her retreat into the quiet isolation of the bedroom was not a relapse into depression, but a necessity in light of the way that everybody kept looking at her out of the corners of their concerned eyes. Setsuna knew that they were just trying to look out for her, and she was genuinely touched by it, but a girl could only stand being looked at like a volcano about to explode for so long, and she’d had to deal with the strain since Ikuko got downstairs that morning. After four hours, Setsuna felt that she’d hit her limit.

She could have asked them to stop; she could have insisted on it. But that would have resulted in hurt feelings, probably the suspicion that she would go and do something the second they stopped watching her, and therefore a redoubled vigil. Much better for everyone if she took a little alone time. Leaving the door open had been a sort of compromise, so that they could look in on her without disturbing her.

Setsuna had counted ten separate look-ins by various members of the family in the last hour alone.

*Make that eleven,* she thought, glancing down at a small shadow that had appeared outside the door. “Et tu, Luna?” There was a pause before Luna entered the room and hopped up onto the corner of the bed.

“Am I *that* obvious?” she asked with a crestfallen look.

“Only to my supremely-honed senses,” Setsuna replied, turning a page. “I wouldn’t be too worried about it if I were you.”

Luna gave her an odd look. “Aren’t you going to ask me to go away?”

“Would you like me to?”

“Not really.” Luna frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay, Setsuna?”

Setsuna sighed and put her book down. “Luna, let me ask you something. I understand that you aren’t from this star system. Am I correct in assuming that you had family at home before you were put into cold sleep by Serenity?”

“Yes...”

“And are *you* okay with having lost them to a thousand years of waiting around in stasis, just for the chance to wake up and risk your life against a succession of monsters?”

“What sort of a question is that?” Luna snapped.

“The same kind you all keep asking me,” Setsuna replied. “Of *course* I’m not okay, Luna. I’ve lost two separate families in two different times, I have no way of getting back to either of them, and I don’t even have the comfort of being able to remember anything about them. I’m no more okay with any of that than you are with losing *your* family—but I’m dealing with it. I’m also getting just the slightest bit annoyed at having to repeat this to everyone who asks that question, so please, don’t do it again.”

Luna opened her mouth, but no sound came out for a moment. Then she sighed. “You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to ask again.”

“Thank you. Now tell me, what’s the mood like downstairs?”

“Hushed conversation, quite a lot of concerned glances in the direction of this room, and some emotional wrestling on ChibiUsa’s part.”

The last detail made Setsuna frown. “Oh yes. She was planning to go to a fair with Hotaru today, only now she’s worried that going out to have a good time might send me off the deep end again.” She looked down at Luna and got a nod of confirmation. “Well, we can’t have that. I’ll just... mmmm...” In the middle of pushing herself up from the bed, Setsuna stopped, winced, and sat back down with one hand against her ribs. “They didn’t do that yesterday,” she noted with a pained breath.

“I think it’s a built-in precaution,” Luna said, the mattress shifting and settling as she went human and helped Setsuna lean back. “Injuries hurt when they happen, and then when the business of healing gets underway, they *really* hurt to keep you from doing anything to interfere with the process.”

“Could be,” Setsuna agreed, letting out a sigh as the sharp throbbing lessened to a dull ache. “Out of curiosity,” she said, “if I were to transform right now, would I be all healed up when I turned back to normal? I’m quite sure I can fake being injured.”

“Sorry,” Luna replied, “but it doesn’t work like that. Any injuries you sustain as a Senshi are reduced when you turn back, but when you’re hurt as yourself, it remains until you’ve healed normally. And in your case...”

“Yes?”

“You’re much further along as a Senshi than the others are,” Luna said. “Leaving aside the eons of non-time you spent as Pluto, you’re quite close to the point where you won’t need to transform anymore. One of the downsides of that advancement is that you lose the ability to heal just by transforming back to normal; the closer you are to the permanent change, the less you recover each time you revert.”

“Wonderful,” Setsuna groaned. “Help me up?” Luna did that, and then shrank back into a cat to accompany Setsuna downstairs. Ikuko and the girls were in the kitchen; Kenji was at work; and it seemed that Shingo was also out somewhere.

“...starts next week,” Usagi was saying. “She said it was for two weeks, which means she’ll be finished in plenty of time for our usual spring trip.”

“Ami never ceases to surprise me these days,” Ikuko said. From the sound of things, she was shaking her head and smiling. “If someone had told me two years ago that she’d have a steady boyfriend or take a part-time job rather than spend her spring break with her nose in the books, I don’t think I would have believed it.”

“She probably would have had trouble believing it herself,” ChibiUsa said.

“So what about the other girls?” Ikuko asked. “I know that Rei will be as busy as ever with her chores at the shrine, but are Makoto or Minako looking into anything?”

“They haven’t mentioned anything,” Usagi replied. “Of course, Mina-chan’s going to be busy showing Arthur-kun around town and all, and I’m fairly certain she’ll put in some time practicing at the track so she can beat Hime-chan, but... oh. Hi, Setsuna.”

“Usagi-chan,” Setsuna returned, nodding. “Don’t let me interrupt. You were saying?”

“Huh? Oh, uh... I was saying that... aside from playing tour guide and getting in top shape for the track and field season, I don’t think Mina-chan’s going to be up to much this month. And I think Mako-chan’s going to give the rest of us a break and relax, like we’ve been telling her to.”

“She *has* seemed a bit listless the last few times I’ve seen her,” Ikuko admitted, biting her lower lip. “Did she catch whatever it was that Ami had last month? Or is it something else?”

“It’s something else,” ChibiUsa said.

“Not another bad break-up, I hope.”

“No, it’s not like that.” Usagi privately wished that it could be that simple. “Mostly, she’s just tired, but that’s nothing that a couple of weeks of kicking back and doing nothing won’t fix.” She made a face. “Of course, knowing Mako-chan, she’s probably already made reservations at that mountain retreat again without telling the rest of us.”

“She’d have to get by Ami first,” Setsuna said. “And even if the opportunity presented itself, I somehow doubt that Mako-chan would run off and leave Ami in the apartment by herself for a week.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Usagi admitted.

“I expected as much. No offense, Usagi-chan, but I think being pregnant is making you paranoid, too.”

“Hey! Who asked you...” Usagi stopped and turned around to glare at ChibiUsa, who was trying without success to smother her laughter. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” she asked in acidic tones.

Instantly, ChibiUsa stopped laughing. “Oh... no... not really...”

“You can stop looking at me like that,” Setsuna said bluntly. “You and Hotaru have been planning to attend this fair for the past week, and I won’t fall apart just because you go out and have fun for a few hours.”

“Well, I... I just... I mean...” ChibiUsa fumbled with it for a minute and then just asked, “You’re sure?” with a hopeful expression.

“*Yes.*” Setsuna made the word as emphatic as she could. “I’m sure. Go. Have fun. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

“Promise?”

“Do I have to read your palm to convince you?”

ChibiUsa seemed to consider that option, but she shook her head and bounded forward to give Setsuna a hug. Setsuna straightened right up and backed away with her hands raised to defend her injured ribs; ChibiUsa paused in mid-bound and blushed. Moving more slowly, she walked up and gave Setsuna a very light hug about the shoulders, then grinned and raced upstairs, the words, “I have to go get ready!” hanging in the air behind her.

After ChibiUsa was gone, Setsuna and Usagi looked at each other. “I’m not going anywhere any more than you are,” Usagi said defiantly.

“The thought never entered my mind,” Setsuna replied smoothly. “I was actually wondering if you’d give me a hand with my hair again.”

# 

“Aren’t we getting just a bit old for this?” Ami asked.

“You’re never too old for a party, Ami-chan,” Makoto replied sagely. “And you’re seldom too old to lend a hand at one.”

“I can remember something close to forty years of life, now,” Ami returned, “and besides, this isn’t a party.”

“Same difference.”

Makoto was in her room, going over her best—and only—kimono for signs of wear and tear. Ami was out in the living room, and they were arguing back and forth about the festival in the park. The woman running one of the booths was the mother of a friend of a girl they both knew from school; it was a simple, complicated little story that involved cooking, and so naturally, Makoto had volunteered to help out. Ami was going to assist as well, which had come as news to her when Makoto mentioned it in passing earlier in the morning.

It must be said that Calypso was finding no end of entertainment value in watching them debate.

“Mako-chan,” Ami tried again, ignoring the open smile on her hovering sister’s face, “you’re in no shape to go out and help someone cook. You can’t even walk across the apartment without tripping over your own feet.”

“There’s not going to be that much walking involved.”

“You’ll ruin your kimono if you spill anything on it.”

“I haven’t spilled a thing since this balance problem started, and you know it.” Ami had to concede that for the truth, which meant that she was quickly running out of options. Finally, she sighed and played her trump card:

“I don’t have a kimono.”

Makoto appeared in the bedroom door, frowning. “What do you mean? What about that blue one you’ve always worn before?”

“I didn’t think I’d need it, so I put it with everything else that mother placed in storage after New Year's.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem,” Calypso said. “If you need a kimono, just turn into Mercury and give yourself one.”

Ami and Makoto both blinked at the Nereid. “Can you actually do that?” Makoto asked, turning back to Ami.

“I... *used* to be able to,” Ami replied slowly. “But... I was a Nereid then, and...”

“You don’t know any more than I do just what the limits of a human Mercury’s powers really are,” Calypso said relentlessly, “and you’ll never find out for certain what you can and cannot do unless you try. Now go on. Transform, and give it a shot.”

Looking back and forth between her sister and her roommate, Ami finally sighed and transformed. Then Mercury stood there for several long moments, concentrating on changing.

“Nothing’s happening,” she said at last.

“We can see that, silly,” Calypso replied. “You’re trying to do it the Nereid way, Mercury, and that just isn’t going to work. You’re human, and if you’re able to do this at all, it’ll be in the human way.”

Mercury stared at her sister. “I suppose you want me to say something, then?”

“That *does* seem to be the standard procedure for activating most of your powers,” Calypso agreed calmly.

“Any helpful suggestions?”

“None whatsoever,” the Nereid replied cheerfully, “except that you should probably have an image like *this* in your mind.” With no more than a thought and a shimmer, Calypso gave herself a pale blue kimono with white snowflake patterns. Mercury glared at her this time, then closed her eyes and held her arms out to her sides.

“Mercury...” she began. “Mercury...” She made a disgusted sound and opened her eyes. “This is ridiculous. I don’t even want to go!”

“Just do it,” Calypso insisted. She got another glare, but Mercury went back into a ready stance.

“I feel like an idiot,” she complained. Then she raised her arms again, concentrated on the energy that was waiting inside her, and forced out the first words that came to mind: “Mercury... Mist Metamorphosis!”

They waited for three whole seconds, but nothing happened, and the triumphant look that Mercury gave Calypso could only be described as a smirk. “There. It didn’t work. Are you happy?”

“Try harder.” Calypso’s voice was perfectly calm and reasonable. “You have to give a firm command, not a suggestion—and try not to stammer this time.”

THAT was going a little too far—she had not stammered, and just who did Calypso think she was, ordering her around like this?—and when Mercury called out, “MERCURY MIST METAMORPHOSIS!” the second time, she sounded seriously annoyed.

*WHOOSH*

Sparkling blue vapor erupted from the folds of Mercury’s uniform and the backs of her gloves, racing along her arms in both directions to create a wide plume that appeared to rest across her shoulders. The mist began to rise about her neck and head, and at the same time it fell below the level of her arms, descending to join the pale white tendrils of fog billowing out of the tops of her boots. Mercury’s startled eyes were the last things to disappear as the flowing fog enveloped her entire body, and then a soft blue light shone forth from the stone in her tiara. The entire miniature cloud glowed the same shade of blue and collapsed in on itself.

Calypso and Makoto blinked. Mercury looked at the pair of them. “What? What happened? Did it work? Did something go wrong? Something went wrong, didn’t it?”

Calypso was already turning into a mirror as tall as Makoto. The glass remained cloudy for an instant after the rest of the body had formed, and then it cleared up all at once.

Mercury could hardly believe her appearance. Unless one counted the single pair of earring studs, her Senshi fuku—even the tiara—was completely gone, and in its place was a pale blue kimono so fresh and clean that it shone. As with Calypso’s version, this one had a pattern of white snowflakes, but there were dark blue wavelets along the hem and the ends of the sleeve. A blue ribbon every bit as complex and graceful as the one on the back of her battle costume floated at the back of the belt, and a smaller matching bow had appeared in her hair, the ends hanging down just past her shoulders. Where the gold tiara had been, there was instead a length of small silver-colored stones holding the familiar blue sapphire over her forehead. The ends of the string disappeared seamlessly into her hair, apparently meeting up with the ribbon.

“Oh... my,” she managed to say, raising one hand towards the soft touches of makeup that had appeared on her face, only to stop and look at the pale blue fingernail polish that she hadn’t been wearing a minute before.

“I’d say it works,” Makoto announced after a critical examination. “It might be a bit much for the Doll’s Festival, but then again, it might not. What do you think, Caly?”

*I suppose it’ll do,* the mirror replied. Mercury’s head shot up, her expression indignant at the indifference in her sister’s tone. *Oh, be still, Mercury; I’m only teasing. You look wonderful. See?* The single mirror expanded into three.

Mercury gave Calypso another hard look, but surrendered to a moment of vanity and mischievous speculation over what Ryo’s reaction to this outfit would be. If seeing her in that turtleneck had rendered him nearly speechless, well...

“Caly,” she asked, frowning as something occurred to her. “Why did you just call me Mercury?”

*Well you are, aren’t you?* Mercury started to reply that since she wasn’t wearing the fuku, she couldn’t be in Senshi form right now, but something made her bite her tongue. She didn’t feel exactly like she normally did as Mercury, but she didn’t feel like everyday Ami, either.

“Mako-chan, give me your hand for a minute. I want to test something.” Eying her friend cautiously, Makoto reached out and took her hand. “Okay, now pull. As hard as you can.”

“Are you sure about that?” Makoto asked. “I can pull awfully hard...”

“I know. Just try it.”

“All right...” Without any warning, Makoto’s shoulders shifted, and Mercury lurched forward for all of two inches. Then she set her feet—or rather, the sandals that her boots had turned into—and didn’t move any further. Makoto blinked in astonishment and got dragged forward a short distance when Mercury started pulling back, and then they looked at each other, slowly relaxing and letting go.

“I guess that proves it,” Makoto said, flexing her fingers. “Not to sound conceited or anything, but you wouldn’t have been able to stay on your feet against that if you were still Ami.”

“I’d have to agree,” Mercury said, shaking her own hand with a bit of a wince. Makoto had a very strong grip when she cared to use it, whether she was Jupiter or not. Looking at her hand, Mercury reached out and plucked the Caduceus from its other-dimensional space. It didn’t quite match the rest of her appearance, but everything about it still worked; her visor even materialized at the press of an earring, and when she called for the Frost Lancet, the Caduceus transformed without a hitch. Holding the slightly glowing weapon, Mercury looked up at Makoto, who sighed and nodded.

The Shabon Spray worked as well, filling up the entire apartment until Mercury made her way over to the balcony and opened the door, allowing the vapor to flow out. When it had thinned enough to allow them to see, they discovered that Mercury had switched back to her normal Senshi guise.

“I take it that means that you can’t use your regular attacks while you’re disguised,” Makoto guessed, waving a hand in front of her face to sweep away the last of the mist. “Not without losing the disguise, anyway—but then why did the Frost Lancet work?”

“The Caduceus regulates its own powers,” Mercury replied as she turned into Ami again. “I don’t have to maintain anything it does, just command it to start or stop.” She looked at her regular clothes and then nodded. “Well, that could be a useful trick.”

“You’re welcome,” Calypso said, smiling from where she stood next to Makoto. Ami gave her sister a dry look, but the Nereid had already turned to Makoto. “What time are you supposed to be there?”

“Ten o’clock.” Makoto glanced at the VCR clock. “Which gives us about twenty minutes to get to the park.” She disappeared back into her room, returning a moment later with her kimono tucked safely away inside a large sleeve of white cloth, which she carried folded over her arm. Calypso immediately turned into something similar and floated herself over to Ami, who made no move to pick her up.

*Come on, Ami,* Calypso chided her. *It’s not like you to back out of helping someone, and you might even have fun. Besides, you’ve run out of reasonable excuses.*

*Makoto’s going to get in trouble, Caly. I don’t know how, but I know it’s the truth. She shouldn’t be going out in public until she’s improved her control of the Aegis.*

*Should or shouldn’t, she’s going, and there’s nothing either of us can do to stop her, short of knocking her out until this evening.* Calypso gauged Ami’s reaction to that alternative. *That’s what I thought you’d say. So the best thing you can do is to go and keep an eye on her, right? Help cover for any mistakes she makes?*

*It’s a little hard to hide a smoking crater large enough to swallow a city block, Calypso.*

*_Now_ you’re overreacting.*

# 

“You know,” Artemis said as he reluctantly followed Minako around the second corner in as many minutes, “the last time I checked, the park was in the other direction.”

“Yep,” Minako agreed cheerfully. “It still is.”

“And you *did* say that you were going to the fair, right?”

“Right again,” Minako said, turning left and steering ‘Arthur’ with her. “We just have to make one little stop to pick up a friend.”

“None of the girls live around here,” Artemis said. “In fact”—he stopped and looked around at the houses—“unless it was on a monster chase, I can’t think of the last time I went this way.”

“Well, that’s not why we’re here. Although it is kind of a Senshi-related deal.” Minako led him up to a modest, relatively unremarkable home that Artemis was immediately certain he’d never been inside. Even as Minako knocked on the door, Artemis racked his brain, but came up with nothing.

“Okay, Minako, I give up. Why have you brought...”

The door opened, and a young girl of about seven or eight jumped out with a happy cry of, “Oneechan!” There was a similar sound of delight from Minako as she released Artemis’s arm to catch the little girl. Stepping clear as he watched the pair spin each other around in the doorway, Artemis dimly recognized the girl as Mie, the onetime kindergartner and Sailor Moon fan that Minako had befriended.

*Minako’s talked about her once or twice, but I don’t remember that they got along quite this well... better act like I’ve never seen the kid bef-* Artemis’s train of thought got derailed by a suddenly renewed grip and tug on his arm, which dragged him inside.

“And this,” Minako said, as the door closed softly behind them, “is Arthur. Arthur-kun, say hello to Mie-chan.”

“Hello to Mie-chan,” Artemis replied automatically, unable to think of anything more clever. Minako gave him a shove in the ribs, but Mie giggled.

“I like him, Mina-chan. He’s silly.” A cunning sort of look entered the young girl’s eyes as she asked, in that drawn-out, teasing manner that only a child can master, “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Him?” Minako asked, raising one eyebrow and indicating Artemis with a stuck-out thumb. “Oh, no. He’s just a friend. But don’t tell anybody that I said so,” she said slyly, laying a finger beside her nose and winking conspiratorially. “Wondering about it drives the other girls I know absolutely *nuts.*”

Mie returned the wink.

“So,” Minako said, straightening up. “Is your mother home?”

“She’s sleeping,” Mie said with a nod, which was followed by a glance towards the back of the house. “But I talked to her, and she said I could go to the festival with you as long as I’m home by supper. She even made lunch for us, although”—Mie paused and looked up at Artemis—“I don’t think there’s enough for three...”

“Don’t worry about him,” Minako said with a dismissive wave. “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of food at the fair. Why don’t you go get your things, so we can get going?”

“Okay!” Mie darted off.

“’Oneechan?’” Artemis repeated quietly. “Did I miss something?”

“There are days when I’m surprised that you don’t miss the sun, Artemis.” Minako’s attention was fixed in the direction Mie had gone as she explained. “Mie’s mother has a heart condition. It’s not too serious as long as she takes her medication, but she tires out really easily, and that makes it almost impossible for her to keep up with Mie. Since we’re practically neighbors, I started stopping by to see how they were getting along, and lending a hand every now and then—mostly by taking Mie out when her mother couldn’t and her father was at work. Trips to the park or the mall, that sort of thing. And birthday parties, of course. And once or twice as a sitter.”

Artemis couldn’t help it; he winced. Minako noticed, but she just grinned ruefully.

“I know. Under different circumstances, even *I’d* think twice about leaving a kid with me, but Mie and I get along, so it’s never any trouble for either of us.” Minako’s smile was wistful. “She’s a sweet kid; almost makes me wish I actually had a little sister. Almost,” she added.

“And the fact that she all but worships the ground that the Senshi walk upon doesn’t hurt, right?”

“Okay,” Minako admitted, “so my ego gets a little attention in the bargain. Is that so wrong?” Mie returned with a backpack before Artemis could answer that.

“Ready to go?” Minako asked her young friend.

“All set,” Mie confirmed, plucking a light jacket from the closet. “The food’s in here”—she indicated the backpack—“I left a note for Mama, and I’ve got some money for games and snacks.” She tugged on her coat and the backpack, which between them made her look a bit more like the kindergartner Artemis remembered. The biggest difference was that there was no longer a cutesy superdeformed Sailor Moon gracing the lapel with her victory pose. She had migrated to the backpack instead, and she wasn’t alone.

A tiny Tuxedo Kamen holding a rose nearly as large as his head and top hat combined stood next to Sailor Moon in a pose that would have been dramatic had it not been so shrunken, and the four Inner Senshi formed a half-circle beneath the pair. SD Uranus and SD Neptune had been fixed to the right side of the pack, standing back to back, complete with tiny Space Sword and Aqua Mirror; Uranus was depicted with the back of the Sword resting cockily over one shoulder—with a wry, confident smile that Artemis had to admit was pretty typical of Haruka— while Neptune held the Mirror before herself with one hand balanced atop the glass as though she were calling on its power. On the opposite side of the pack, Artemis was startled to see tiny, disproportionate replicas of all three Sailor Starlights in their own battle-ready poses, but there were no images of Saturn, Pluto, or ChibiMoon, and no cats at all. Artemis wasn’t sure whether to take the latter as a testament to his and Luna’s ability to stay unnoticed, or just as a sign that they weren’t popular enough to rate their own decals.

“Nice backpack,” he said, speaking to Minako at least as much as to Mie. Minako just smiled, shrugged, and rolled her eyes, but Mie turned around and beamed up at Artemis.

“Thanks. I put a lot of work into it. Although it’s not quite finished,” she admitted, walking slowly backwards. “I’m still trying to find three more images.”

“Are there actually that many of them?” Artemis asked, playing dumb. Mie nodded seriously and reached back to the bag.

“All of these, plus Saturn, Pluto, and Sailor ChibiMoon—the little one with the pink hair. And I think there was another one who was really tiny, although almost nobody else seems to even know about her.” Artemis shot a quick glance at Minako, who shook her head ever so faintly to deny mentioning ChibiChibi. “My favorite’s still Sailor Moon, though,” Mie continued. “How about you?”

“Ah... I don’t really know that much about them,” Artemis began. “I’m more of a Sailor V fan.”

“Really?!” Mie exclaimed. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“No, honest. She’s pretty popular back home in England.” At that, Mie stopped in her tracks and stared at him.

“You didn’t tell me he was from England!” she protested to Minako.

“You didn’t ask.”

“Minaaaaa!” Mie gave her friend a hurt look and then moved around to walk beside Artemis instead. “So if you’re a Sailor V fan,” she said immediately, “you must have heard the news by now. That she’s in town, and working with Sailor Moon and the others?”

“I did hear about that,” Artemis agreed. “You seem to be an expert on the subject, Mie-chan, so tell me: what do you think’s going on?”

“Well...” The little girl suddenly began to talk a mile a minute. “Sailor V showed up a long time ago, all by herself, and then she disappeared and Sailor Moon and all the other Senshi came along. Now, a girl I know named Ryoko thinks that Sailor V *is* Sailor Moon”—Minako’s eyes bugged out—“but I don’t think that’s right at all, because Sailor V was a good fighter, and anybody you ask will agree that Sailor Moon *wasn’t* when she first started out. She’s gotten better, of course, but if she really were Sailor V and had all that experience, she wouldn’t have had so much trouble in the beginning, would she?”

“Probably not,” Artemis said. “So, assuming for the moment that Sailor V *is* one of the Senshi, who do you think she’d be?”

“Sailor Venus,” Mie replied promptly, “and *not* just because Venus starts with a ‘V’ and they’re both blonde. Sailor Moon and Sailor Uranus both have blonde hair too, but Sailor Moon’s is in the wrong style, and Uranus’ is much, much too short, while Venus’ is almost the same as Sailor V’s. And if you look at how all the Senshi act, Sailor V and Venus are really similar; some of the others are serious all the time or get angry really easily, but Sailor V and Sailor Venus are both usually happy and tough, unless of course a fight starts going bad.”

“And you figured all this out on your own?” Artemis asked.

“Oh, Mina-chan helped,” Mie said. “She knows a lot more about Sailor V than I do.”

*That goes without saying,* Artemis thought, glancing at Minako again. Even the most rabid fan could only hope to match what Minako knew about Sailor V, at best; she had all the facts, and still kept up on all the fiction surrounding her original superheroic alterego. Even so, Artemis still had to admit that he was impressed by Mie’s deductive reasoning—impressed, and amused. At this very minute, half the news agencies in Japan were probably trying to puzzle out the connection between Sailor V and the Senshi, and this schoolgirl had found the answer almost single-handedly.

His humor was muted by the fact that Mie had gotten virtually all of her information secondhand—if not even more distantly removed from the source—and still managed to sift out the facts. If she could do that, others could as well, and the enchantments which prevented people who saw the Senshi from recognizing their real identities would do nothing to stop someone from puzzling out the truth, even from secondhand facts and rumors.

# 

“Where *ARE* those people?” the Security Director demanded.

“So far as I can tell,” Information replied, “they’re out.”

“I can SEE that,” came the acid reply. It was followed by a grim silence as Security realized the bad joke the darkness of the meeting room made of his words.

“Are you always this disagreeable during holidays, or is it just this one that offends you?”

“I have nothing against festivals,” the militaristic Director growled, his tone saying otherwise. “I just don’t like the idea of having most of our section leaders out in the open at a time when there are higher than average odds of there being an incident. I can name at least a dozen major gatherings that have been hit by these things over the last two years, and that’s only from memory.”

“You *do* have people out there to handle things if a situation develops,” Information said, his words half question and half statement.

“Three teams deployed around the park, plus the normal patrols,” Security replied automatically, “but that’s not the point. This kind of frivolous indulgence is a major security risk, to say nothing of the time it wastes.”

“It’s not like we have a contractual obligation to spend every waking and sleeping moment in this place,” Information said. “We’re all entitled to a little time off every now and then, and if the others decided to take a break, there’s really nothing either of us can do about it. Particularly since Personnel reviewed and approved all the applications for leave. I have them all on file, in case you wanted to check them over for yourself.”

Security muttered something, then left the room. After the other man had departed, Information said aloud, “I don’t suppose there’s a loophole in the charter which would allow Personnel to force him to take a vacation? Even a short one?”

“She’s only permitted to relieve him if his behavior starts to impair his ability to do the job,” Sciences said from the corner behind Information’s place at the table. “He may be a cranky, disagreeable paranoid, but if anything, it’s only made him more effective. You’ve seen the tapes of how quickly his people brought down that creature in the tunnels.”

“Yes, about that... I noticed in your preliminary report that you’re discouraging the use of flamers in any future encounters with similar beings.”

“I am.”

“You have to know that Security isn’t going to like that.”

“Whether he likes it or not is beside the point,” Sciences said flatly as she took her usual seat. “That was the first creature we have on record that left behind genuine *organic* remains when it was killed, and the flamers all but turned it into charcoal. If my people are going to puzzle out the strengths and weaknesses of these creatures, they need something to work on.”

“What about those little beasts you have in the labs?”

“I’m afraid that we’re not going to get anything useful from them anytime soon,” Sciences predicted. “Their bodies give off a form of radiation that completely blocks every kind of scanning technique we’ve tried, and it’s quite impossible to dissect a body that disintegrates in the same instant that it dies. We considered vivisection, but their physiology doesn’t seem affected by any known sedative, and we’ll never be able to work on one if it’s conscious; they’re simply too vicious to handle with anything short of lethal force.”

“They have to sleep sometime, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Sciences disagreed with a faint shake of her head. “Not one of them has shown any signs of fatigue since they were put into containment. In fact, nothing about them corresponds to anything we know about biology, or most of the other sciences, for that matter. Did you know that they don’t smell?”

The look the seated man gave her was audible.

“I’m serious,” Sciences said. “We’ve seen a number of them producing acids, vapors, and assorted other substances, and all of those have a recognizable odor—usually a very foul one—but the creatures themselves normally don’t give off any scent. We haven’t observed any of them eating or drinking, and the atmospheric balance in their cells is remaining perfectly constant, which seems to suggest that they aren’t breathing, either. We managed to get one of them into a pressure chamber and expose it to everything from a vacuum up to twenty-five atmospheres, and it didn’t seem in the least bit uncomfortable.”

“And they’re *all* like that?”

“All the ones that we’ve tested thus far, yes—and as you’re aware, there’s little if any visible similarity between them all.” She sat back and folded her arms. “We don’t have enough data to say anything for certain, but I find it unlikely that nature could produce a group of species that could have such drastically different physiologies and still exhibit precisely the same resistance to external forces. It’s also rather surprising to think that these highly adaptable, physically resilient creatures are the same ones that Security’s teams were rounding up or wiping out so easily the other night.”

“’A paradox wrapped in an enigma’,” Information quoted. The sound of a smile entered his voice as he added, “You must be enjoying yourself immensely, trying to figure them out.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

“Do you mean to say you’re not?”

“There’s something... disturbing about those creatures,” Sciences said with a weary sigh and a small, unseen shiver. “It may be a side-effect of their natural radiation or just the fact that they’re hideous little monsters, but in either case, it’s difficult to keep a positive thought in your head around them. The scientific challenge of studying them is the only thing that’s kept me from borrowing one of Security’s rifles and dispensing with the lot of the little mutants.”

“Not a very scientific approach,” Information murmured.

“Maybe not—but it would certainly make me feel better.”

# 

*You’re having a good time,* Calypso teased.

*I am not,* Mercury replied.

*Oh no? Then why are you keeping track of all the little girls who stop to tell you that they want to be as beautiful as you are when they grow up? Hmmm?*

*Be quiet, Caly,* Mercury ordered, blushing faintly.

*And how about all the older brothers and younger uncles who’ve been drafted into taking their little relations to the fair, and who keep walking past looking as though you’ve made their day?*

*Quit it, Calypso.*

“Are you two arguing again?” Makoto murmured as she passed behind the transformed Mercury and the telepathic arrangement of silver hairpins and low-hanging blue ribbons that was Calypso.

“No,” Mercury said immediately.

*Yes,* Calypso said at the same time. *My stubborn sister refuses to admit that she’s enjoying herself, let alone that she’s been checking out the cute guys who pass...*

*I AM DOING NO SUCH THING!* It was an effort for Mercury to think her indignation at Calypso rather than shout it out loud, but she managed. The blush, on the other hand, could not be held back, which was exactly Calypso’s plan, because it inevitably made someone come up to Mercury and tell her how wonderful she looked.

They had been at the fair for about two hours now. Upon arriving, Makoto had very carefully set her kimono aside and plunged into helping with the cooking, mentioning to the lady in charge that Ami would be *much* more helpful by drawing customers out front than by lending a hand in the outdoor kitchen that was supplying most of the food stalls in this part of the park. Herded along by her friend and her unseen sister, Ami had reluctantly gone into the back, quietly changed form, and reemerged. She’d opted to tone down her assumed form a little bit when she transformed again, but Mercury was aware that even with a simpler kimono, she still looked very, very good. It had been an ongoing stream of ‘how lovely’ and ‘so wonderful’ ever since she stepped outside, and double that when, after the first half hour or so, Makoto cleaned up, changed, and came out front to join her.

Whatever the Aegis had done to Makoto’s sense of balance, they didn’t detract from her appearance in the least, and she was always stunning in green to begin with. Mercury didn’t begrudge Makoto some admiration of her own, and she certainly had no complaint with being complimented herself, but Calypso’s insistence on keeping score and then playing tricks to get her sister extra points was driving Mercury crazy. Fortunately, their lunch break was coming up, which would give her a chance to talk to Caly about...

Someone’s hands closed on Mercury’s shoulders, and a quiet voice breathed, “You look good enough to eat,” right in her ear.

Mercury’s recognition of that voice as Haruka’s helped her to override her immediate instinct to transform to full battle mode, but it did not stop her from jumping and yelling—loudly—in surprise.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Haruka said quickly, backing up and pulling her hands away as heads began to turn towards them on all sides. “Take it easy, Ami! It’s just me!” She waited until Mercury had visibly calmed down before breaking into a grin and adding, “Jeez, girl; I’m almost afraid to ask what you would have done if I’d pinched you...”

“You just never mind!” Mercury snapped, another blush rising in her cheeks. “And don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Haruka gave her an odd look. “You *really* didn’t know I was there, did you? Not even...” She tapped her own forehead, and Mercury blinked. She hadn’t sensed Haruka’s approach at all, which could only mean... that... Mercury sighed and rubbed at her eyes as Michiru, Hotaru, and ChibiUsa came up to join them.

“How many points, Caly?”

*I think that was worth at least five.*

“Fine. Five. Now stop blocking me, all right?”

*Spoilsport.*

“We’re missing a large part of this conversation, aren’t we?” ChibiUsa guessed. The older girls were dressed fairly normally, but ChibiUsa and Hotaru had gone to some pains to look a bit better than usual in honor of the Festival. Hotaru had on a pale violet dress, ChibiUsa wore a soft rosy one, and even combined, they weren’t more than half of the way to being as dressed-up as Mercury.

“We’re having a little contest,” Makoto said as she moved over to join them. “To see which of the two of us can get more compliments. Caly’s keeping score, and cheating outrageously to make sure that I lose. Anyone for a rice ball?” she offered, holding up a half-wrapped example. ChibiUsa and Hotaru both raised their hands, and Michiru smiled.

“Well, regardless of who Calypso says wins, you both look beautiful. And if it’s a question of points,” she added, looking at Makoto, “I think *you* ought to get extra for going to the effort to look as good as a Nereid can make herself—or her sister—look with just a thought.”

“Actually, Mercury did that herself. Except for the hair, anyway.”

“You said what?” Haruka asked with a blink.

“It *is* Mercury, isn’t it?” Michiru asked in a tone of mild surprise as she studied the young lady in blue. “I knew there was something different about your face, but... the kimono. Did you put it on over your fuku, or...?”

“Calypso... encouraged me... to develop a new power,” Mercury admitted. “Or maybe to recreate an old one. As far as I can tell, it’s still the fuku, only transformed into another shape.”

“May I?” Michiru asked, waiting for Ami’s—for *Mercury’s* nod before lightly taking a fold of the kimono between her fingers. It felt like silk, but there was something else that Michiru could feel, something like flowing water, but in a solid shape. Just like a Nereid disguise. She let go of the fabric, looked up at Mercury, and asked, “How far?”

“How far *what*?” Haruka asked.

“We haven’t had a chance to test it yet,” Mercury replied, intuitively understanding Michiru’s unspoken question, “but the human body simply can’t be as flexible as the Nereid form, so Caly and I both expect that a change of appearance will be about the limit of what I can do.”

“Does this mean that you’re a shapeshifter again?” Hotaru asked, looking up with flecks of rice sticking around her mouth.

*Yes,* Calypso replied.

“No,” Mercury said firmly, overriding her sister. “I can change my *appearance* in the same manner that the Disguise Pen would allow, but my *body* won’t change.”

*Actually...* Mercury sent Calypso a short, sharp telepathic signal to be quiet, and there was a sudden mental hush as the Nereid complied. Makoto looked over at them and frowned at the slightly harsh sensation that had buzzed out from Mercury just then—and the matching sense of hurt and surprise coming from Calypso—but she didn’t get an opportunity to inquire about it, because some other familiar presences were just coming into focus.

“Heads up,” Makoto warned the others, a moment before Minako, Artemis, and a younger girl she didn’t recognize walked up and joined the group in front of the stand.

“Good morning, all!” Minako said cheerfully. Across the way, a fatherly-looking man looked down as his watch beeped that it was now twelve o’clock; there were a few similar declarations from other watches in the area, and Minako glanced around suspiciously.

“Everybody,” Artemis said, “this is Mie-chan. Mie-chan, this is everybody. Well, almost everybody.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Mie replied with a small bow for Makoto, Mercury, ChibiUsa, and Hotaru. “Mina-chan’s told me all about you.” Then she looked up at Michiru and Haruka, smiling. “Michiru-san, Haruka-san, it’s nice to see you again.” Haruka nodded in return, and Michiru smiled warmly at the little girl.

“Hello again, Mie-chan. Are you still trying to capture all the Senshi on paper?”

“Of course.”

“Eh?” Minako asked, turning back. “You three... know each other?”

“Michiru-san was a guest teacher at the art course I took two years ago, oneechan,” Mie informed Minako. “And Haruka-san showed us some magic tricks a few times when he was there.”

“Oh *really*?” Minako said, looking suspiciously at Haruka. “What *sort* of magic, exactly?”

“Nothing fancy,” Haruka replied modestly, as she reached out and snatched a coin from the vicinity of Minako’s left ear. Minako blinked and tried to take the coin, only to feel her fingers close on a small, smooth grey stone—and while she was looking at the rock in confusion, Haruka held out her other arm and handed a fresh rice ball to Mie. At that point, Makoto and Mercury looked down at the counter in front of them, to find the coin sitting where one of the rice balls had been a second ago.

“How did...” Minako blurted, as Mie thanked Haruka and accepted the snack.

“Haruka has many talents,” Michiru noted, “and very smooth hands.” Her voice and smile were both totally innocent, which of course didn’t stop Haruka from blushing. She muttered something inaudible, then hid her embarrassment by taking the stone back from Minako and making it disappear with a flick of her wrist.

“Interesting backpack you’ve got there, kiddo,” Haruka said aloud to Mie.

“Thanks,” Mie said, smiling. “Do you like it?” She turned around so that everybody could see her handiwork, and Artemis flinched inwardly, dreading what the girls’ assorted responses might turn out to be. Michiru, Makoto, and Mercury all smiled with various degrees of tolerant amusement for their warped images, and Haruka had something of that in her expression as well, but coupled with a twitch at the sight of SD Starfighter. Hotaru and ChibiUsa both started out with very suitable expressions of admiration and envy, then suddenly switched into incomprehension, and from there sank into righteous indignation as they realized that their representations were missing.

“Well,” Haruka said casually, “it’s not something *I* could wear, but it seems to suit you. And anything with Uranus on it just rocks, on general principle.”

*Here we go,* Artemis thought, rolling his eyes towards the few, far-flung clouds drifting high overhead.

“Are you a Uranus fan, Haruka-san?” Mie asked curiously.

“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, she kicks butt in a major way; what’s not to like about that? But I’d have to say that Neptune’s my favorite,” Haruka added.

“Mine too,” Michiru murmured, at which point Haruka gave her a hurt look; clearly, that was not what Michiru had been supposed to say.

“What about you, Hotaru-san?”

“I’m definitely a Saturn fan,” Hotaru replied, “but I couldn’t help but notice...”

“Uh-huh.” Mie made a disappointed face. “Like I was telling Mina-chan earlier, it is *really* hard to find anything to do with Saturn, Pluto, or ChibiMoon.”

“I can’t understand why that would be,” ChibiUsa said. “They’re the best three members of the team.” She received the evil eye in spades for that one, but the girls managed to keep from getting into one of those interminable arguments over who was the better Senshi. Artemis had just barely survived the last time that the five Inner Senshi had debated that point, and he had no desire at all to see what brand of disaster might bubble to the surface if ChibiUsa and most of the Outer Senshi were added into the mix.

*Haruka and Makoto would probably end up armwrestling or something,* Artemis thought, smiling as the image of that particular contest popped into his mind. A familiar scent reached his nose then, and after a quick sniff at the air confirmed both the trace and the sheer inferiority of the human olfactory sense, Artemis began turning his head in a slow arc.

“Looking for something in particular, Arthur-kun?” Makoto asked, glancing up.

“I know I can smell fish around here somewhere,” he said, a decidedly catlike twitch going off in his ears.

“Three places to your left.” Artemis followed the line of Mercury’s finger, saw the steam rising from the booth in question, and smiled as he set his shoulders and marched forward—only to be jerked to a halt by Minako’s grip on his arm.

“Going somewhere?” she asked.

“I was just... you know, lunch.” His stomach made a sound not unlike a mildly annoyed tiger. “See?”

“I suppose it *is* about time to stop and have a bite,” Minako admitted reluctantly, after giving both Artemis and his stomach dubious looks. “And we really should all get out of Ami-chan’s and Mako-chan’s way, and let them get back to business.”

“Actually, we’re about due for a break ourselves,” Mercury said. “Mako-chan, why don’t you go ask Mikomi-san to take over here for a while?”

“That’s a good idea,” Makoto agreed. “I was beginning to get hungry myself.” She slipped around the side of the stall, sparing a sympathetic glance for Minako. “And don’t worry, Mina-chan; there’s plenty to eat besides just fish.”

“Good. I can accept fish breath in a cat, but I refuse to tolerate it from anyone else.” She dragged Artemis away.

“Hotaru-chan,” Michiru said then, “why don’t you, ChibiUsa, and Mie-chan go with them? You should have something besides a rice ball for lunch. And speaking of which...” She took out a simple blue handkerchief and wiped the spots of rice off of Hotaru’s face.

“Ack! Hey!” Hotaru protested, as she wriggled away. “Michiru! I was going to take care of that...”

“And now you don’t have to,” Michiru said calmly, making the cloth disappear in much the same manner that Haruka had gotten rid of the stone. Hotaru gave her a face-scrunched look of insult, then took ChibiUsa and Mie by the elbows.

“Come on,” she said, steering them both away. “Before she tries to get you two, as well.” ChibiUsa murmured something around the hand that was hastily scrubbing rice away from around her own mouth.

“And before we go, did either of you want a rice ball?” Mercury asked the two remaining Senshi with a faint smile.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Haruka said, reaching for one and flipping another coin towards Mercury, who caught it easily.

“Have either of you noticed it, then?” Michiru asked, suddenly looking intently at Mercury. Mercury blinked, and Calypso gave off a brief feeling of surprise as she realized that she’d been included in the question as well.

*Noticed what?*

“There’s something up,” Haruka said, taking a bite from the rice ball. “We’ve both been feeling it since early this morning.”

“When I realized you were transformed,” Michiru continued, “I thought you or Calypso might have sensed it as well.”

*We haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary,* the Nereid said, sounding abashed. *But then again, just because either of you feels something doesn’t automatically mean that we should as well; telepathy doesn’t work the same way that your psychic sensitivities do. There’d have to be something here for us to notice it, and the same goes for Mako-chan.*

“But you have other senses that we don’t, Caly,” Michiru pressed. “Are any of *them* picking up anything?”

There was a pause, and then Mercury became aware of her sister’s mind, expanding outwards. Almost instinctively, she pushed out with her own awareness, and their thoughts brushed against each other, blurring together slightly at the edges as Mercury took over certain tasks to allow Calypso to redirect her energy more fully into the search.

*There _is_ something here,* Calypso reported a moment later. *It feels like a distortion in the local energy fields, but the source is... hard to find... I...*

Mercury shuddered as Calypso’s mind suddenly became awash with raw pain, and Haruka and Michiru both backed up with wide eyes as the two sisters shone blue.

# 

At Hikawa, Rei’s head rose sharply away from the pages of the Book, a clear sense of danger flashing through her mind.

# 

Away from the fair, Archon’s apprentice was monitoring the progress of her experiment with eager anticipation.

The energy within her web of spells had increased slowly at first, adding just a little bit of power at a time, but it seemed as though the energy-collecting magic had reached some form of critical mass within the past few minutes, because the levels were increasing exponentially. Forget minutes; it was not just a matter of seconds before the spells were triggered.

Although she hadn’t noticed it earlier, the booth where the apprentice had cast her spells was an information kiosk, and at the moment, since no one appeared to be in need of information, the young lady staffing the place was reading, pausing only now and then to dig into a lunch bag stashed beneath the counter. Like most of the other workers at the fair, the woman was dressed in traditional fashion, and so between her reading, snacking, and the large, heavy braids hanging down beside her face and blocking her peripheral vision, she didn’t notice when the hollow figure of the empress behind her began to emanate a darkish glow.

She definitely noticed the weird flash when the spell peaked a moment later, as everything in the area was suddenly the opposite color of what it had been before. The photo-negative effect lasted just an instant, but there was no question that it was an attention-getter, and the information woman wasn’t the only person in the area who started looking around in surprise. She was, however, the first person—at least at the fair—to see the cause of the flash, and her eyes went wide with shock. Even the apprentice, watching from her room through a scrying spell, was startled by the creature now standing in the back of the booth.

In form, she—and there could be no question that it was female, at least in appearance—resembled the image of the empress upon which the apprentice had cast the spells, right down to the kimono, hairstyle, and crown. But the crown was a crest of seven slender horns, ringed with gold and silver and jewels, some of which hung down to frame the creature’s face, and her garment was a venomous shade of green, open so that most of her rather impressive front was exposed, except for where the links of a heavy, low-hanging gold necklace intruded. The creature’s shining black hair hung from the back of her crest in eight long tails, kept separate by the horns and reaching to her waist, and her fingers ended in long, sharp-looking nails of a blood-red hue. The face was coldly beautiful, with bright green eyes shaded at the edges by curved streaks of red, and dark red lips that parted in a smile to reveal rows of fangs as the daimon reached out and seized the startled woman in front of her, one long-taloned hand closing around her throat in a strangling grip.

The figurine had completely vanished. In fact, the apprentice realized that this *was* the figurine, taken over and transformed by the spirit of the summoned daimon into some twisted version of what it had been. That much was obvious, but what she couldn’t figure out was *how* it had happened. That was one of the joys of experimenting with magic; it tended to do things you didn’t expect and could never fully explain.

The young wizardess watched as the daimon’s hand unleashed a crackling surge of black energy into her victim, causing the woman’s body to spasm violently before she lapsed into unconsciousness. In that choking, electrified grip, the woman’s skin took on an unhealthy greyish cast; and while her victim grew weak, the daimon grew stronger, her skin becoming less pale, her eyes clearer and more focused than before. The flow of energy ceased, and the daimon dropped the drained woman with utter indifference, a vicious, hungry smile on her face as she turned to the small crowd of shocked onlookers that had come to investigate the strange lights. Wood splintered and flew apart as the creature burst out of its birthplace and charged, capturing a second victim before he or most of the other people even had time to turn. Draining the man, the daimon began to laugh; as if that was a cue, everyone in the area turned and ran off, twenty people fleeing in as many directions.

So far, the experiment had been successful.

# 

“Don’t tell me,” Security said, his voice half-triumphant and half-disgusted, “let me guess. It’s in the park.” In spite of his use of the word ‘guess’, that wasn’t a question.

“Yes sir,” the technician on the other end of the intercom replied, while the alarms droned on in the background. “Sensors show one hostile, energy reading... class six, maybe class seven.”

Class seven. The little beasts Sciences was working on rated class three, at best—and the scale increased exponentially, not additively.

“Naturally,” the Director muttered, switching over to the channel for his people in the field. “All teams, all units, we have confirmation of a class seven hostile. Coordinates are in transit. Team one, assist with civilian evacuation; teams two and three, contain the target. Use of lethal force is both authorized and strongly advised.”

# 

Haruka and Michiru both looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed the sudden appearance of Mercury’s blue aura, and they breathed a shared sigh of relief when they found no sign of anyone staring at their friend. The light wasn’t as large or as intense as it had been on other occasions; mostly, it was just a narrow outline around Mercury’s body, and a brilliance in her eyes, and it only lasted for a moment. Still, that had been too close for comfort.

“Mercury?” Michiru asked urgently, as the light faded. “What...?” Mercury held up a hand, the look in her eyes indicating that a conversation was already in progress.

*That’s the second time now,* Calypso was saying in weary tones. *I really wish that whoever’s out there would stop doing this.*

*You and I both,* Mercury replied. *But we’ll work on that. Now, are you sure you’re okay?* The Nereid gave the psychic equivalent of a tired smile and nod.

*How could I be anything other than fine with my big strong sister here to protect me?*

*You’re okay,* Mercury concluded, smiling and embracing her sister’s mind before turning her attention to Michiru and Haruka. “It’s another daimon,” she said.

“I think we sort of guessed that,” Haruka said. “Never mind. I’ll go make sure that Hotaru doesn’t fly apart at the seams, and I’ll see if I can get Minako to take Mie for a walk in the other direction.”

“Do what you can to keep Makoto with them,” Mercury said. “Her control over the Aegis still has a long way to go before we can let her use them in a fight.” Haruka nodded and walked off, and Michiru and Mercury headed the other way.

“Are you sure it’s just the one?” Michiru asked, taking out her transformation pen. Their pace was an odd, slow-seeming one which actually ate up distance very quickly; all of the Senshi had mastered this fast walk, since it allowed them to go somewhere in a hurry without attracting attention by appearing to be in a rush.

“Caly only picked up a sense of one mind,” Mercury replied. “And the energy wave was much smaller than the one that was produced when they unleashed that army.”

“Makoto told us what happened to Caly when that other wave hit her,” Michiru noted, glancing at the two of them with concern. “Is she all right? And what was the flash about?”

“We linked while she was scanning. I... it’s faster if I explain the other way.” So saying, Mercury reached out and lightly touched Michiru’s shoulder as if to direct her attention to something or someone in the bright crowd around them. The quick gesture allowed her to telepathically impart a large mass of information, the sudden appearance of which in her mind made Michiru blink and momentarily slow her pace.

In order to scan an area as large as the park as quickly as she had, Calypso needed to lower certain mental defenses, opening her mind to the world around her and leaving herself vulnerable to a variety of energies. So, just as if she’d still been a Nereid, Mercury had linked her mind to her sister’s and taken over the task of shielding her thoughts for the duration of the scan. There wasn’t anything either of their mental abilities could do about the pulse of otherworldly energy the daimon’s appearance had sent out, but because that energy was opposed to Mercury’s, and because Mercury was aware of the energy through Calypso, her powers had reacted to block the worst of the relatively minor exposure. The small, short-lived shield had extended around Calypso as well, in part because of the mental link and her inclusion as part of Mercury’s costume, but also due to her natural affinity for the energy.

And Mercury had explained all of that with one touch, one burst of thought. Michiru turned to her and again asked, “How far?”

“Far enough.” It was neither an enlightening response nor an especially happy one, but Michiru didn’t have a chance to pursue it, since that was when they started encountering people running in the other direction. Using another long-practiced Senshi tactic, Michiru and Mercury both stepped to one side to avoid the rush, hiding as best they could behind one of the festively-decorated booths and then wincing as, from up ahead, they heard the all-too familiar sound of some unfortunate person screaming in pain.

“Far enough,” Mercury repeated, this time in a note of grim anger. She stood up as the last of the fleeing crowd passed. “Come on.”

# 

The appearance of a large number of frightened people running in one direction tends to inspire certain collective responses in any others who see them. Most people first look to see what is inspiring the rapid flight, spot it, and then join the retreat to safety. A few run without bothering to look first, while others fall back more slowly. And then of course, there are those who go in the other direction, drawn by some perverse if not fatal instinct to get closer to whatever has everyone else fleeing from it. Even if it was not entirely by choice, the Senshi tended to fall into this last group, but at least they had the excuse of saving the world to explain away their dangerous behavior; most of the others were just being reckless, if not stupid, putting themselves in needless danger for no good reason at all.

Haruka was not particularly surprised to learn that Mie suffered from this condition. Initially startled by the rush, the small girl’s eyes had lit up at the first positive mention of the word ‘monster’, because in her mind it meant that the Senshi were about to arrive, and she would have raced off if Minako hadn’t taken and maintained a very firm grip on her hand. Haruka wasn’t sure whether Minako was just operating on a hunch or if she had past experience dealing with Mie over this matter, but she was grateful for the assist, because she had her own hands busy reining in Hotaru and Makoto.

“But we have to...” Makoto said.

“I’m not going to just...” Hotaru said, right on top of that.

“Hsst!” Haruka made a quick slashing motion across her throat, nodding sharply in Mie’s direction. “You can stop panicking, Hotaru; Mercury and Neptune can deal with it until we get there. And you,” she added to Makoto, “can just sit tight, because you’re not going out there.”

“Excuse me?” Makoto demanded in a whisper.

“You heard me. Mercury told me to keep you away from the fight, and if I have to tie you down and sit on you to manage that, I will.”

“That girl is really starting to annoy me,” Makoto muttered, “and she’s overreacting again anyway. With this many of us against one daimon, I shouldn’t have to use my powers at all.”

“Sounds nice in theory,” Haruka replied, “but you can test it some other time. You’re staying put, and that’s that.”

“So since when do you do whatever Ami says?” Makoto asked, a biting edge in her voice.

“Since I saw that monster thunderstorm raging where we found you on Ganymede,” Haruka snapped back. She regretted having to say that, because it implied that Makoto had made zero progress with the Aegis, which wasn’t true at all. She *had* gotten better with the strange weapon, but not nearly to the point of battle-readiness, and she had to be reminded of that in the most obvious manner available. It seemed to work, because although Makoto’s face became set, she nodded.

“Now,” Haruka said, “you and ChibiUsa are going to go that way with the others”—she pointed off to the right of the direction in which most of the crowd was going—“and Hotaru and I will go help Mercury and Neptune deal with the daimon. If Mie asks, Hotaru ran back to find Michiru and I, and we went another way. Got it?”

“I’ve got it,” Makoto said sourly. Haruka nodded and then led Hotaru—who was nearly dancing with impatience—away. Muttering something under her breath, Makoto joined the others as they fell in with the rest of the crowd.

# 

“That will be quite enough of that!”

Startled by the voice, the daimon looked up from the stand she had just sliced to pieces with a casual slash of her six-inch fingernails. A hasty glance showed no one in sight who could have been the source of the firm, angry words, but a moment later, a spray of bubbles turned the clear afternoon air into an impenetrable bank of cold, damp fog. Despite her state of half-dress, the daimon did not so much as shiver, but her eyes couldn’t penetrate the blue-white murk.

“You’ve threatened innocent lives and destroyed the happiness of a special day,” that same voice said, eerily disembodied by the fog, “but the pain and nightmares you seek to inspire will be swallowed in mist and taken from memory.”

“Your mere presence disturbs and befouls this world,” a different voice added with the same eerie echoes, “but just as the waves carry away the detritus of the world, so too will they sweep you away forever.”

It was impossible to tell if the sources were near to one another or far apart, or even what direction they were in. Teeth bared in a silent, unlovely snarl, the daimon flung out one hand at what she thought was a movement, sending her fingernails shooting forth as projectile spikes. There was a series of wooden thunks after the shots vanished into the mist, an obvious miss, and the daimon turned in another direction, snapping a dull red jewel from the necklace hanging low on her chest. When thrown away, the stone glowed with sudden red energy and became a fireball, hissing through the vapor.

“DEEP SUBMERGE!”

The daimon’s flaming gem was engulfed and extinguished by a rather larger orb of blue energy, which surged forward, expanding visibly with each instant before it slammed into the daimon and threw her to the ground. Stunned for only a moment, the creature pushed herself up and was on her feet in a flash, bruised and singed but fully alert as the fog thinned away and revealed two similar figures standing on opposite ends of the path, one to her right, armed with a winged rod, the other to her left, in the direction from which the counterattack had come.

“You girls should know that it’s impolite to throw things,” the daimon said in a soft, mocking voice as she looked carefully from one to the other.

“You’re in no position to lecture anyone on proper behavior,” Mercury said coldly. “Your own is unforgivable. In the name of Mercury...”

“...and in the name of Neptune...”

“...you will answer for it!” they finished together.

“Not today, ladies,” the daimon replied, smiling first at Mercury and then at Neptune, before her hands came up in a blur and launched fingernail darts at both of them. Neptune dodged the red-lacquered bolts fired in her direction, while Mercury cast a Shine Aqua illusion at the rest, easily executing the move even with the Caduceus hanging heavy in one hand. The attack swept the projectiles out of the air and struck the daimon herself, staggering her and encasing her left arm in a thick crust of ice; the creature just looked down at her arm and flexed it once, shattering the ice with almost contemptuous ease.

The evil creature raised her head to get in a moment of gloating at Mercury’s expense, but had to take a hasty step backwards as the icy edge of the Frost Lancet cut a line through the air at the level of her questionable heart. When the blade came back, it met the claws of the daimon’s upraised left hand with an ear-jarring squeal, a sound cut thankfully short as the creature stabbed at Mercury with the lengthening nails on her other hand, forcing the Senshi to get clear. The daimon lunged after her, swinging both arms forward in wide arcs, fingernails leading, but Mercury escaped by jumping straight up and planting her boots on the monster’s back, using the creature as an awkward springboard. Mercury’s landing staggered the daimon, but she managed to stay standing, and whirled to confront both of her enemies.

And therefore took Neptune’s next Deep Submerge in the chest instead of the back. The daimon was hurled backwards with a howl of rage and pain as the energy blast detonated a number of the explosive jewels in her necklace, but she managed to launch another barrage from her fingers, and this time both Senshi dodged, a move which unfortunately gave the daimon a chance to hit the ground, slide to a halt, and regain her footing.

“This is no way to treat a queen,” the daimon growled. “Servants! Take them!”

A sudden bad feeling made Mercury and Neptune turn and look behind themselves, and sure enough, the people the daimon had attacked and drained a few moments before were getting to their feet and advancing towards the two Senshi, their eyes blank and their faces dull.

“I hate when they do this,” Mercury murmured angrily. Neptune glanced back to give her a commiserating look, then noticed something beyond Mercury and the daimon which made her smile.

“Fortunately, you’re not the only one.” Mercury was about to ask what she meant by that when the light of the noon sun was suddenly dimmed by the appearance of a large hemisphere of dark violet energy, which encompassed the entire battlefield.

# 

The apprentice cursed softly as, without any warning, her scrying spell ceased. It should have been good for at least another ten minutes. After watching the empty space where the globe of images had been, the girl shook her head and turned back to her books. She hadn’t bothered to memorize a second scrying spell this morning, and although she could have cast one directly from the book—or the memory crystal—she was willing to bet that whatever had nullified the first one would just pop the replacement magic out of existence as well.

Besides, the experiment was over. The spell-slaving process worked, better than she’d anticipated, if not in precisely the same fashion, and it had also proved that it would take a lot more than just one daimon to handle the Senshi. Mercury was accounted to be one of the weakest in a direct fight, but she had been doing just fine by everything the apprentice had seen, and not simply because of Neptune’s presence.

*That device she was carrying seems to be a fairly strong weapon,* the girl thought. *I don’t remember ever hearing about it before, though... I’ll have to mention it to Archon and see if he knows what it is.*

# 

The Director swore as snow and hissing static flooded the audio/video channels to the teams in the park. He was about to dial up a repair crew when everything suddenly went back to normal, but that hardly improved his mood, because now several of the monitors had images of young women in miniskirts on them.

“Orders, sir?” the voice of a lieutenant asked quietly.

# 

The daimon was still staring up in shock at the barrier when a World Shaking hit her from behind, hammering her from head to toe and then dropping her to her hands and knees. In that same moment, the huge half-globe shrank down to form a series of elliptical shells around each of the controlled humans, sealing them safely away and halting their advance.

“Sorry about the delay,” Uranus called in apology. “We had a couple of objections to the battle plan.”

“As long as it’s been taken care of,” Mercury said. “Saturn, since Sailor Moon isn’t here, I think you’re up.” The little Senshi looked away from the last of the imprisoning ovals and nodded to Mercury, then turned her full attention to the daimon, who had raised her head at the mention of Saturn and now met her gaze with wide, frightened eyes. It was a very human expression, and it made Saturn set her own in determination. Discounting the people trapped within the Silent Shield and ignoring the dark energy that Saturn could almost smell coming off of the thing, the horns alone were proof that this was *not* a human, but a monster, the very worst kind. Saturn raised the Silence Glaive to get rid of it.

*Hmmm,* Calypso said curiously. *It’s gone.*

“What?” Mercury asked aloud, drawing the startled attention of the other Senshi. “What’s gone?”

*There was something else here,* the Nereid reported, speaking to all four of them. *I couldn’t get a clear sense of it because of the daimon’s presence, but there was definitely another mind in the area. When Saturn raised the Shield, the presence vanished, and it hasn’t come back now that the Shield’s been... hello, what was that?*

“What was what?” Uranus asked, looking around.

*Someone else is here.* Calypso paused. *Several someones, I should say. They... LOOK OUT!*

The warning came too late. Although confused by the sudden strange behavior of her enemies, the daimon had seized on their distraction to grab her necklace, tear it away with one link-splitting wrench, and then hurl the entire mass at the ground near Saturn. The explosion set off by the remaining fire-gems was by no means the largest one the Senshi had ever been subjected to, but it caught Saturn by surprise and blew her into—and through—a stall on the other side of the path.

“Saturn!” Neptune’s outcry and frantic dash to the wreckage were both automatic, as was Uranus’ drawing the Space Sword and turning back towards the daimon, who had already taken the opening to run for her misbegotten life. Uranus was after her in a heartbeat, which was just about the amount of time it took for the two of them to go over a small hill, circle around a few booths, and disappear.

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” Saturn was saying, as she sat up amidst the splinters of her landing and waved Neptune back with one hand. “She only got my pride.”

*Sorry,* Calypso apologized meekly, as Mercury walked over.

“It wasn’t your fault, Calypso,” Saturn said. “I ought to know better than to turn my back on a daimon.”

*But if I hadn’t interrupted you like that...*

“You warned us that someone had been watching the fight,” Mercury said. “It was the right thing to do. Are those other ones you noticed still here?”

*They’re moving off,* Calypso said, following a quick sweep of the area. *There’s too much conflicting energy around here for me to be entirely certain, but I think they’re humans. Five, maybe six in all, but I can’t tell more than that. None of them are projecting very much.*

“Never mind them.” Saturn’s voice was worried, and she was looking around with open concern. “Which way did Uranus and that daimon go?”

“That way.” Mercury pointed, and Saturn’s expression got worse. “What’s wrong?”

# 

The daimon was fast, but Uranus was faster. As Haruka, she could run a sprint or a marathon with equal ease, but transformed, she could have run an entire marathon at sprinting speed, something physically impossible for any normal human—and therefore well within the realm of possibility for the Senshi of the Wind and Sky. Had the situation been different, and her opponent not a life-sucking, otherworldly monster, Uranus would have enjoyed this impromptu race; as it was, though, she just wanted to catch the daimon and pound it into the dust.

Unfortunately, the daimon seemed to have recognized Uranus’ intentions, because she was putting on every ounce of speed she could to get away. It wasn’t enough for the creature to make its escape, but it was keeping her just far enough ahead to give Uranus problems. The daimon was out of physical reach, even if she tried to jump, and there was no way for Uranus to call on any of her attacks without stopping, and thereby losing her target.

*Or is there?* Uranus thought, narrowing her gaze as an idea came to her. *Yeah, that might work... if it doesn’t, she’ll get away from me for sure... but I have to do something before we reach a crowd...*

Between one stride and the next, Uranus made up her mind, drew the Space Sword, and then jumped, going for vertical distance even more than horizontal. Her momentum carried her along through the air, a little less than a meter above the surface, for nearly two full seconds, and near the peak of her jump, she swung her weapon around and unleashed its power at the daimon.

The Space Sword Blaster shot through the air even faster than the two runners, streaking across the back of the daimon’s legs and crashing into the ground in front of her with an explosive report. Between the wound and the blast, the daimon lost her footing and went into a rough, head-over-heels rolling slide. Uranus tucked herself into a more controlled somersault as she landed, and came out of it to see the daimon raising herself once more, dirtied, disheveled, and with the tips of two of her fanciful horns chipped off. Her legs seemed unsteady, and the left one, exposed through the divided skirt, bore a trickle of greenish blood below the knee.

“That’s the last bit of disrespect I’m going to take from you girls,” the daimon hissed, her fingernails extending into six-inch claws.

“Oh, there’s plenty more where that came from.” Uranus grinned and raised her Sword. Snarling, the daimon reached up and ripped away the assortment of jewelry around her head, flinging the mass at Uranus, who leapt backwards and unleashed World Shaking to sweep the following series of explosions back at their creator. The daimon dodged the blast and whipped her right hand in Uranus’ direction, firing off a wild burst from her fingers; the razor-edged nails went wide as Uranus cut left and leapt forward a second time, coming down with her Sword leading, aimed right at the daimon. The harlot queen parried the blade of the Talisman with one handful of nails and tried to drive the other hand into Uranus’ neck, only to be stopped short as the Senshi seized her wrist, halted the blow a breath short of her own skin, and then twisted the arm away so that the telescoping nails couldn’t lengthen again to cut her throat. And there they stopped, straining, each trying to push her attack forward while holding the other’s at bay, and neither gaining nor losing so much as a hair’s breadth.

“No more stones to throw?” Uranus taunted. “No more... helpless victims... to do your dirty work for you?”

“I don’t need them... to deal with the likes... of you,” the daimon said gratingly. Uranus responded to that with a grin that said ‘Oh really?’, which seemed to anger her enemy even more. They both knew that all Uranus had to do to win this was to hold the daimon until the other Senshi caught up, and since they appeared to be evenly matched in terms of physical strength, that outcome was looking more and more likely with each passing second.

Flicker.

Somewhere off to her left, just out of the corner of her eye, Uranus caught a brief glimpse of light reflecting off of metal. The flash was bright enough to make her blink and flinch, and that simple, automatic movement spelled instant disaster. The set of her shoulders changed, and the daimon was suddenly able to push her off-balance, leaning in to smash her horn-rimmed head against Uranus’ more ordinary one. The blow hardly fazed the daimon, but Uranus went down in a heap, seeing only a blur and hearing little more than a rush of white noise. She had the presence of mind to slash a wide arc through the air with the Space Sword, but when the blade failed to connect, she knew that the daimon was running again.

Sure enough, as Uranus shook away the groggy sensation and looked up, she could make out her enemy, standing well out of reach and smiling viciously before she turned away. With the pounding ache in her head, Uranus was in no shape to run after the creature—but as it turned out, she didn’t have to. The daimon had taken all of one step and just begun to pass a sturdy tree when another white-gloved fist shot out from behind the trunk and dug into her exposed stomach.

As the daimon doubled over and toppled sideways to the ground, Uranus wasn’t really surprised to see Jupiter step out from behind the tree. Granted, after telling the girl in no uncertain terms to stay out of this one, Uranus wasn’t overly *happy* to see Jupiter, either, but as long as the daimon wasn’t getting away, Uranus figured they could save the argument for later.

She started having second thoughts about that decision when the winking orbs of the Aegis drifted into view, hovering in a loose, irregular formation around Jupiter as she moved towards the daimon. Had it been one of the other Senshi, Uranus would have shouted a warning about the creature’s dangerous claws and had them keep clear, but Jupiter knew just as much about hand-to-hand fighting as Uranus did, and could more than take care of herself.

Sure enough, when the daimon—recovering from the crippling blow to the stomach much faster than a human could have—swung her right hand around to slash at the newest threat, Jupiter caught her arm at the wrist and stopped the attack easily. Maintaining the hold with both hands, Jupiter stepped in, turned so that she and the daimon were back-to-back, and pulled hard, yanking the creature up off the ground and into an arm-wrenching flip. On her way back to the ground, the daimon passed through the general space that the Aegis occupied and was treated to a sudden, shocking blast of energy, which left her laying dazed and twitching on the stones of the path.

“Get up.” The daimon struggled to raise her head, and when it became obvious that this was the best she could manage, Jupiter reached down, hauled the startled monster up by her insufficient kimono, and shoved her backwards. Still sparking around the edges, the daimon stumbled to the far side of the path before she was able to catch hold of a booth and steady herself. Her eyes fixed on the daimon, Jupiter reached out and closed her fingers around one of the four largest segments of the Aegis; the entire Weapon flashed bright green, and Jupiter’s left arm appeared to twitch for a moment, but her expression didn’t change.

“Run.” The daimon blinked, and she wasn’t the only one.

“Jupiter,” Uranus said, taking a step forward, “what do you think...” There was an electric crackle from the Aegis, not unlike a thunderclap in miniature, and Uranus stopped.

“Run,” Jupiter repeated to the daimon. When the creature hesitated, there was another crackle from the Aegis, and this time the energy discharged in a bolt which left a scorch mark on the stone near the daimon’s feet and made her jump away. “I said run!” Jupiter snapped, to the accompaniment of another small-scale lightning bolt, and then a third. Before the fourth could fire, the daimon was off, not as quickly or as steadily as before, and this time with a backwards glance that turned frightened when she saw that Jupiter was following.

Uranus immediately moved to head the daimon off, but the Aegis left off trailing after Jupiter in favor of spreading themselves out and barricading the path with a wall of low-intensity electricity, which halted a startled Uranus in her tracks. After a moment, the energy turned off and the orbs spiraled away into the distance, but Uranus made no move to follow.

*What the hell is she doing?!*

# 

Even through the glove, it was warm.

Jupiter had been in constant contact with the Aegis since coming home from Ganymede, and the orbs had always been cool to the touch, with just a bit of a tingle. When she had tapped into them and created that strange green radiance while tending her plants the other night, the Aegis had still been cool, and almost soft against her skin. Using them to create that shower of energy had drained her, true, but she hadn’t felt the slightest bit of pain in the process, just the effort of making it happen, and the unthinking pleasure of her plants as the enriching force was absorbed into their leaves.

The orb Jupiter now held in her hand was warm, though, and when she had first grabbed it and the entire extended Weapon had flashed, the shock had been so sudden and unexpectedly painful that she nearly hadn’t been able to keep hold of it. But she had held on, because she had to. Jupiter realized that she didn’t yet understand more than the barest fraction of the truth about the Aegis and what they could do, but she knew that her control of its powers would be greatest if she was in direct contact with at least one section. Without the added ability to precisely project the power of the sixteen spheres, she wouldn’t have been able to drive the daimon into a run, or to block Uranus when she tried to follow.

*I’m sorry about that, Haruka, I really am. But you don’t understand... you can’t feel what I feel...*

Throughout the morning, Makoto had been surrounded by the general feelings of happiness and delight brought on by the fair and its mix of contests, performances, and food. While she could not clearly sense a single person’s emotions from any great distance, the collective mood of the hundreds of people moving in and around the park had come through very nicely, giving Makoto a warm, reassuring feeling that began in her heart and went right down to her fingertips and toes.

That had all been ruined by the daimon. Makoto hadn’t felt the creature’s actual arrival, but the sudden sense of shock and fear it inspired read loud and clear in her mind, as did—at a closer range—the sheer evil presence of the thing itself. She could understand how Hotaru was able to track these things without even seeing them, and why their appearances sent Calypso into fits; the daimon’s psychic presence was cold, dark, and utterly foul, even worse than the twisted, sickening sense Makoto picked up from the bizarre mold-creatures. Those had been mindless things, emotionless in all respects, but the daimon had a soul full of hate and fury, and every other dark emotion Makoto could think of a name for. It enjoyed the fear and pain it caused, feeding on it as surely as any energy it sapped from its unlucky victims.

With that evil, alien presence pressing against her mind in all its hideous darkness, the choice had been clear. Makoto had slipped away from Minako and the others, transformed, and headed straight for the daimon, at the time only half-aware that the Aegis had become active during her metamorphosis into Jupiter. Any hesitation she felt due to the unpredictable nature of the Weapon was outweighed by her conviction that the daimon had to be destroyed—and more importantly, in a certain way.

Right at this moment, Jupiter could still feel the emotions of the scattered crowds. There were small points of real fear, which she guessed to be coming from the relative few who had actually seen the daimon and managed to get away from it. More widespread than fear were the confusion and concern of the masses of people who had run without knowing entirely what was going, and very faintly, from many places at once, Jupiter could detect the frustrated anger of people who knew or could guess what was happening and wanted to do something about it, but who knew also that there was nothing they could do. Over all the other emotions hung a pall of resignation, based largely on the fact that these attacks had happened before, and would no doubt happen again.

Out of it all, the frustration and the defeated acceptance were what Jupiter hated. The fear was unpleasant, but it had almost certainly helped a few people get away unharmed, and it would pass, as would the confusion. But the other two feelings would not pass; they would only get worse with time. People should not have to live with the feeling that bad things would just keep on happening no matter what anyone did. They should not have to feel... powerless...

*They want to see this. They _need_ to see this. They have to know for themselves that these monsters aren’t invincible.*

Up ahead, someone let out a startled shout, and Jupiter snapped out of her deepening litany. She wasn’t the runner Uranus was, and the daimon wasn’t in half the shape she’d been, but they’d covered a pretty respectable distance and caught up with part of the crowd. It was only now, as the daimon laughed and lunged towards a wide-eyed young girl, that Jupiter realized the critical error in her intention: it put people in harm’s way.

Energy surged, and the orb in Jupiter’s hand became hot and electrically alive as the fifteen free sections of the Aegis went shooting past her and the daimon in a sizzling blur. Coming to an instantaneous halt between the monster and her intended target, the orbs flashed, and a wall of sparkling green light was suddenly there, just in time to intercept the daimon’s reaching talons. The noise as the daimon’s claws connected with the barrier was an astonishingly solid-sounding one, as though the sharp nails were scraping across a wall of foot-thick steel instead of a field of energy no wider than a hair. The daimon howled—not in pain, but frustration—and whirled to confront Jupiter, lashing out with her claws one last time, only to meet another wall of flowing energy.

With incredible speed, the sections of the Aegis were spreading out to surround the daimon on all sides, becoming the corners of a large, many-sided shape formed entirely of that soft green energy which was somehow as hard as metal. The daimon shrieked again and unleashed a flurry of strikes, many of which cut across the orbs themselves, but it made no difference; the barrier did not react to the blows at all, regardless of where they landed.

The orb was painfully hot now, burning intensely green as it spat out a steady stream of electrical discharges, and Jupiter couldn’t stop her arm from shaking. *I can’t hold this. I’ve got to... get that thing away from these people... before I can attack it... but how do I get it to move...?*

The energy increased again, and Jupiter gasped as the pain in her hand lanced up her arm almost to her shoulder, muscles tightening of their own accord and joints bending until they creaked. At the same time as the one orb was inflicting this burning pain on Jupiter, the other fifteen went flying skywards, taking their energy-cell and the prisoner within along for the ride. The rapid ascent sent the daimon lurching wildly around within the uneven confines of her temporary cage, and the instantaneous halt which followed slammed her hard into one wall.

There was a good ten meters of empty space between the bottom of the hovering cell and the top of any of the few booths in the area, and the nearest trees were at least that far away in spite of their height.

*Plenty of room,* Jupiter thought, struggling to move her almost paralyzed left arm for the final blow. “SUPREME THUNDER!” The last syllable was nearly a scream; the influx of energy turned the orb’s glow briefly incandescent and sent waves of burning agony up Jupiter’s arm, even as the power of the lone section seemed to be carried away by the attack and hurled up into the matrix formed by the others. Fed by that rush of power, each corner of the cell shone like a tiny sun before fifteen separate bolts of green-white lightning discharged into the common center.

The flash was dazzlingly brilliant, and the accompanying explosion could only be described as thunderous. The daimon, the Aegis, and the faces of the cell all vanished as a sphere of raw force blossomed out from the intersection point of the many arcs of energy, expanding until it was a good five meters across and outshone the midday sun.

# 

Static once again obliterated the signals on the Security Director’s screens, but after the sequence of events he’d pieced together by watching several of those screens, he had sort of been expecting it. Some of the screens quickly cleared up as their signals were restored and the people on the other side checked in after the loss of communications; other monitors, the ones corresponding to the half-dozen or so agents nearest to the epicenter of the blast, remained snowy for quite some time, and two of them did not return to normal at all.

For his part, the Director just sat back in his chair, an unaccustomed expression of bewildered surprise fixed firmly on his face.

# 

The ball of thunder lasted for only a second, during which time the shockwave of its birth spread in all directions, blowing past everyone below with an electric tingle and the stink of hot ozone. Then, its force spent, the brilliant energy began to break up and fade away. Blinking up at the sight, Jupiter hastily stepped back as something about the same size as the daimon plummeted out of the bottom of the sphere, to burst into a thousand splinters when it hit the ground.

*A statue,* Jupiter thought, looking down at the burnt and broken face of the serene wooden empress as the Aegis descended and took up their positions around her again, dimmer but otherwise appearing undamaged by the explosion. *It was a prop from one of these displays, turned into a daimon... it’s just like... but how can that be?*

“It’s not quite the same,” Uranus said, her voice startling Jupiter by its unexpected presence.

“What do you mean?”

“All of the daimons that the Deathbusters used left behind the possessed item and a broken egg when we destroyed them,” the older Senshi said quietly as she walked over to stand a short distance from Jupiter, “but I don’t see any signs of a shell, do you?”

“You’ve got a point there,” Jupiter admitted. “And that empress was quite a bit bigger than most of the things that the other daimons used to leave.” She frowned at the debris, and three of the small spheres hovering near her floated forwards, stopping above the shattered pieces of wood. Each orb began to emit a beam of soft green light, which lifted a finger-sized splinter between them and bore it back over to Jupiter, who took it out of the air. Uranus watched the whole procedure askance.

“Souvenir?”

“For Mercury and Saturn. I think they’ll both want something to examine, after this.”

“Is it over?” a small voice asked from behind them. The two Senshi turned and looked down, at the young girl that had almost been clawed by the daimon. She was a few years younger than ChibiUsa, a few older than Hotaru usually appeared to be, and had very large brown eyes. In the face of the fearful uncertainty filling the girl’s mind, Jupiter thought of what her mistake had almost cost, and could not bring herself to speak.

“It’s okay,” Uranus said, kneeling down in front of the child and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s over. Are you all right, koneko? No scrapes or bruises or anything?”

“No,” came the quiet reply. The girl was clearly overwhelmed, first by being (almost) attacked by a monster, and then by actually speaking to one of the Senshi. “My stomach hurts,” she added, her eyes still startled around the edges. “It’s all tight.”

“That’ll pass,” Uranus said, smiling. “You *do* know that your stomach probably wouldn’t hurt so much if you’d run away, right?”

“I tried to,” the girl said. “I really did, but... I couldn’t... my legs wouldn’t...”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. There’s nothing wrong with being scared.” Uranus chuckled. “You’re at least as brave as Sailor Moon; *she* usually runs around shrieking her head off whenever something like this happens to her. There you go,” she said, nodding in approval as the girl smiled timidly. “You’re a much prettier girl when you smile.”

“Thank you,” the girl murmured, blushing and looking down.

“Just remember,” Uranus added, “that smiling doesn’t always work. Sometimes you have to growl at people to get them to listen.” The girl nodded, and Uranus patted her on the shoulder again.

“We... have to get going,” Jupiter began awkwardly. “Are you going to be okay by yourself?”

“I came here with some friends,” the girl replied. “We got separated when everybody started running, but I think I know which way they went. And I can call my mom at work if I really have to.”

“Maybe you ought to go ahead and call her first,” Uranus suggested. “Word about these little messes tends to spread fast, and she’ll be worried unless she hears from you.”

“You might be right,” the girl admitted. She started to turn away, then stopped and looked up at Jupiter. “You must hear this all the time,” she said, blushing again, “but I just wanted to thank you for stopping that thing.”

“You’re welcome,” Jupiter said, managing a small smile.

“See you around, koneko,” Uranus added as she stood up. “And if you ever see a monster again...”

“I’ll run away,” the girl promised.

“Good girl.” The child hurried off in search of a phone, and Uranus turned her attention to Jupiter. “Come on. I have a feeling there are some people who’re going to want to give you a few pieces of their minds once they’ve heard about this.”

Jupiter sighed and followed after Uranus, the Aegis trailing swiftly in her wake—all except for the orb that remained in her hand, held fast by rigidly curled fingers.

# 

In its hidden sanctuary, Proteus activated the first of its new visual sensors and looked around. Although it had originally been a sightless entity, after having gained that sense and then lost it, Proteus found it very reassuring to be able to see once more. Especially after the bursts of energy its other, more esoteric senses had detected earlier in the day.

*What happened up there today, I wonder?* Slowly, cautiously, Proteus extended part of its body and mind into the underground portion of the city’s communications network. *Let’s see... a festival... public disturbance... and nothing more on the official channels...*

Proteus knew enough by now to recognize the pattern. The Senshi had been at the park at about midday, and the humans in authority were covering it up, either to minimize the general unrest or because they had something against the Senshi. Proteus wasn’t sure which; trying to understand why ordinary humans did the things they did was hard enough, but puzzling out the obscure motivations of politicians was quite beyond the entity’s capabilities.

Dismissing that particular question, Proteus redirected its probe towards the hospital where the Nanako hybrid still remained in a semi-comatose state, while the seeding pods continued to pump out their infectious agents. All was proceeding well in spite of Proteus’ own problems; under the guidance of the hybrid unit, the pods had started creating false symptoms of illness in several patients, keeping them in the hospital for extended observation and thereby giving the spores more time to do their work. Things were proceeding so well on that front that Proteus was sorely tempted to advance its timetable for the tests, but its own lack of a fully-functional body demanded doing otherwise.

What body there was quivered slightly and produced something small, round, and fungoid from an orifice in the bottom of a glowing pod. The vaguely spherical ejecta began to change shape as it hit the floor, and by the time it had rolled over to the wall, it had assumed the shape and colors of a rat. It was one of a score or more such half-living devices already stationed throughout the near tunnels as an early warning system against further encounters with those mysterious, well-armed humans.

*Atlanteans, Senshi, a free-roaming daimon, and now a small army from the new millennium. How’s an entity supposed to keep track of all the dangerous beings that go roaming around this city?*

# 

The fair lost an hour or so to the interruption at midday, but it went ahead anyway, first slowly, and then with mounting enthusiasm. The festivities went off without any further hitches, and as the fair wound to a close with a bonfire dance that evening, very few people gave the earlier disturbance a second thought. Very few—but not quite nobody.

Although there was no moon that evening, the park lamps provided plenty of light for the crews that were cleaning up the leftovers of the fair. The lamps’ illumination did not reach everywhere, however, and while none of the workers was aware of it, there was something—or more precisely, someone—moving through the shadows. Between its abundance of trees and bushes and the lack of a moon, the park had plenty of hiding places to offer, which was a good thing, for the solitary figure did not move in a manner that suggested complete physical health. Its left leg was supported by a plastic and metal brace, half-hidden beneath the long coat the person wore, and every now and then there came a halt, which would inevitably be followed by the sound of strained, raspy breathing. Its pace was therefore quite slow, and worsened by the way that it always froze in place whenever someone passed by.

After a tedious amount of hobbling, rasping, and freezing, the figure finally did something different, which was to take something that looked like a small and catastrophically short-circuited voltage meter out of one pocket. The patchwork device made no sound, but its glowing LCD face was quickly filled by a shifting bar graph, around which several different sets of numbers also changed rapidly back and forth.

“I’m not getting anything conclusive,” the figure muttered. The voice was harshly distorted, but it sounded like a that of a woman—a sorely irritated one. “This had better not turn out to be another system glitch...”

“I swear, it isn’t an error,” another woman said. Coming through a headset radio, this voice was normal, and would have even been sort of pleasant if not for the tone of utter, abject servility its owner used to address the woman in the park. “I’ve checked everything four times, and all the...”

“Shut up,” the first woman rasped. The silence was immediate, save for a slight gust of wind in the trees, and things stayed so until the woman completed a full arc with her instrument and squinted suspiciously at the reading. “I don’t recognize this signal,” she finally said.

“It’s not on record,” the other woman replied, “but it’s similar to...”

“I can *see* that for myself. Tell me something useful, like where the source is, so I can get a closer reading.”

“It can’t be far away, not with such a weak signal. It should be right next to you.” The woman in the park considered this and then took out a small flashlight, turning the beam down towards the ground. After a short search, she spotted a piece of wood with uneven edges and what looked like paint on one side. When she held the scanner over the fragment, the device’s display reacted.

“I’ve got it. A piece of wood, irregularly shaped, perhaps five centimeters long and about a centimeter thick at its widest point. Discoloration on one side, possibly paint, and the edges are uneven, as if it was broken off from a larger piece.” She glanced at the readings. “And the scanner’s confirmed that it *was* possessed by a daimon.”

Putting the device away, the woman slowly bent down to get the splinter, which she stuffed into another pocket before straightening up and beginning the long, difficult walk out of the park. What with the limping and dodging, it took her a good half an hour to reach her car, a boxy, drab white thing which she seemed to have parked in a hurry. The vehicle was sitting almost blatantly in front of a No Parking sign, facing in the opposite direction of the normal flow of traffic, with heavy skid marks leading to its rear tires from the far lane.

Its ticket-worthy positioning wasn’t the car’s only unusual feature. It rode low on its shocks, as if weighed down by something fairly heavy, and all the windows were of black-tinted one-way glass, which made it impossible to tell at a glance whether or not the vehicle was as heavily loaded as it appeared. The metal meshes fixed to all of the windows—including both the front and back windshields—were certainly not factory-issue, and neither was the large, makeshift ‘sun roof’ that had been cut into the ceiling and fitted with another pane of mesh-protected tinted glass. It was open at the moment, several antennae sticking up from inside.

As the woman approached, the driver’s side door automatically opened, revealing some of the extensive modifications that had been made to the car. There was additional mesh on the insides of all the glass, and heavy metal bars ran the length of the passenger space, sealing the doors and giving the impression that this car was supposed to be able to withstand collisions with buses, tanks, and the like. All of this reinforcement seemed to be for the purpose of protecting the electronics that had replaced the rear seats; the forward passenger’s seat had also been removed, freeing up room for a large computer whose monitor had been fixed into the dashboard. All of the equipment had the same patchwork appearance as the scanner the limping woman had used in the park, but it all clearly worked.

After a bit of maneuvering to get her braced leg in, the woman closed the door and started up the car. As the engine came to life, the assorted antennae protruding from the top of the vehicle withdrew, the sun roof sliding shut behind them. Then, with a sudden roar and a great squealing of its tires, the car shot away from the curb and into the night, leaving more black streaks along the road.

 

# 

 

_(Fade in on Makoto’s apartment. Ami is sitting on the living room couch, radiating all the warmth of an Antarctic glacier as she gazes steadily at Makoto, who is once again sitting in her chair, tending to her plants with help from Calypso. The Nereid looks up.)_

**Calypso** : The moral of this episode is that while you should be mindful of your feelings, you should also be careful not to let them run away with you. I’m sure you’re all aware of the key example of this...

_(Without turning her head, Calypso indicates Makoto with a quick roll of her eyes.)_

**Calypso** : ...but there are some other ones as well. The Science Director is restraining herself from following through on a desire to clean up her workspace; Proteus is being very careful not to overextend itself just because it wants to do something very badly; and Hotaru is regretting letting her childish jealousy take over with Kaolinite, way back when. The Tsukinos also got a wake-up call from Setsuna on this subject because of the way they were overdoing the watchful concern, which just goes to show that a positive emotion can be taken to a bad extreme as well.

_(Again without turning her head, Calypso indicates Ami with a quick roll of her eyes.)_

**Calypso** : And now that that’s been taken care of... what’s for dinner, Mako-chan?

_(Makoto and Ami both start and look up at the innocently smiling Nereid as the screen fades to black.)_

27/11/01 (Revised, 22/08/02)

Delays, delays, delays... gah.

Why Hinamatsuri? Because to the best of my admittedly somewhat incomplete knowledge, there isn’t a Sailor Moon episode that mentions it, and I find that rather unusual. You’d think that Usagi and Minako at the least would be nuts about it.

I’ve also never heard anything to suggest just how Kaolinite came to work for Professor Tomoe in the first place, but I don’t think my depiction of her as a maid/governess/lab assistant brought in when Hotaru’s mother got sick is too far out of the realm of possibility. We know Hotaru’s mother died, and in her flashbacks, we see that Kaolinite’s been with them for some time. The whole situation struck me as being a lot like the classic ‘wicked stepmother’ concept; Hotaru’s mother dies and is replaced in most ways by this other woman, who is always deciding what’s best for her and telling her what to do without even asking Hotaru what she wants. Add to that the way Kaolinite threw herself at Souichi almost every chance she got, and it’s no wonder that Hotaru kept giving her those dark looks.

Although I will grant that Hotaru might just have been silently wishing for the witch to go put some actual clothes on for once. Did that woman never get cold...?

Up next:  
-Working blues;   
-More mystical mayhem; and   
-(with luck) that major fracas I’ve been promising.

Also, one final note, for the sake of the language: the word ‘row’ can also mean a fight or disturbance.


	28. A Great Many Meetings, and A Testament to Stubborn Wills

# 

To say that it had been a bad weekend might have been something of an overstatement, but when Makoto woke up on Monday morning, the very first thing she did was to heave a sigh of relief as she remembered that today was the first day of Ami’s new part-time job at the hospital.

As expected, Ami had not been overly happy about Makoto’s decision to fight a daimon using the Aegis. None of the Senshi had liked the idea when they heard about it, of course, but Makoto didn’t have to live with the others—though there were times during that weekend when she truly wished that she did.

Rei would have yelled at her for making such a stupid, dangerous series of decisions, Makoto would have yelled back in self-defense, and they would have avoided each other for a few days thereafter until mutually agreeing to forgive and forget. It would have gone similarly with Minako, except with less yelling, more arguing, and a lot of confusing catch phrases, which probably would have ended the argument with the two of them laughing. Hotaru would have and in fact *had* agreed wholeheartedly with Makoto’s decision to go after the daimon, but then given her serious grief for letting it get away AND for the damage she’d done to herself with the Aegis. Haruka—who had something of a reckless streak herself—probably would have shrugged off Makoto’s choosing to risk her own neck and then clobbered her for screwing up in battle, while Usagi and ChibiUsa would probably both have gone straight to the forgive and forget part. Michiru would have spent a lot of time worrying about her and trying to get her to be more careful in the future, and Setsuna... Makoto had to admit that she wasn’t sure what Setsuna’s reaction was or might have been, but she suspected she would have preferred it to Ami’s.

It was something of a rule with Ami not to get angry with people for making mistakes. She was too practical for that, and found it much easier to put her time and energy into correcting the error rather than obsessing and raising a stink about it—although that said, Ami could and often did get visibly annoyed if her desire to fix mistakes was frustrated, particularly if it went on for a while. Her periodic blow-ups at Usagi’s and Rei’s constant squabbling were a good example of this, but even with these occasional flashes of temper, it wasn’t the mistake itself that upset Ami; indeed, once such a problem had been corrected, she usually seemed to put it from her mind altogether.

But when someone made a very large mistake, when—against all odds—they did something that they knew better than to do, something that they simply should not have been *able* to do, then Ami noticed, and reacted to it.

Makoto would rather have had Rei yell at her for a week straight than spend the weekend seeing that look in Ami’s eyes every time she turned around. It was shock, pity, and disappointment; it was like there was some standard that she had not lived up to, some simple test, far more important than anything to do with pen and paper, that she had somehow failed. Far from being angry with Makoto, Ami was sorry for her—but at the same time, she seemed almost unable to believe that it had happened, that someone she knew and trusted could make this kind of bad judgment. *That* was the truly painful part; Ami’s disappointment was not directed out at Makoto, but in on herself, for not seeing the mistake coming, for not being there in time to stop it.

After two full days of feeling the full force of the emotions behind those sad blue eyes as clearly as if they were her own, there were very few things Makoto would not have done to make up for her actions in the park. Waking up to find the source of those troubling emotions gone was a blessed relief for Makoto, right up to the moment where she stepped into the living room and saw Luna sitting on the couch in her human form, reading.

“Was this her idea or yours?” were the first words out of Makoto’s mouth.

“Good morning to you, too,” Luna replied, closing her book and setting it aside. “I was beginning to think you were going to sleep until noon.” Makoto glanced at the clock, grimacing when she saw that it was getting on towards ten; it was a reminder, with all the subtlety of a slap in the face, of just one more problem she was having.

“You didn’t answer my question, Luna,” Makoto said as she tied the belt of her housecoat shut. It was hard enough to argue with Luna in the first place without trying to do so in your underwear and a too-short nightshirt.

“I spoke with Ami last night,” Luna admitted, “but I was planning to come over today in any event. It’s past time that we talked about a few things.”

Makoto sighed. “Can I at least have breakfast”—she glanced at the clock again and ran a hand over her face—“brunch, whatever... before we get into this?”

“Of course. Calypso?”

“Almost ready,” the Nereid said, leaning out of the kitchen with a smile. “Good morning, Mako-chan.”

“Caly.” Makoto couldn’t help it; she blinked. “You... cook?”

“I thought I’d give it a try and see if I’ve learned as much as I think I have after watching you cook for the last couple of weeks.”

Makoto blinked again. “But... the stove? The burners? I thought you couldn’t...” Her words trailed off as Calypso held out one of her hands, which was protected by one-half of a pair of oven mitts that Makoto owned. “Oh.” Makoto ran a hand over her face, and then said, “I thought you were going to work with Ami.”

“We’ve been discussing it on and off for the last few days,” Calypso replied, turning her attention back to something that was sizzling, “but after what happened Friday”—Makoto felt her stomach begin to tighten—“we decided it would be better if I stayed here. After all, if I go around hiding on Ami and making both of us burst into radiance every time a daimon pops up, someone’s bound to notice it sooner or later.”

“Oh.” *I need to go back to bed,* Makoto said to herself, rubbing at her eyes again and yawning. Then, as the sizzling from the kitchen increased, a certain smell hit Makoto’s nose; it made her nostrils twitch and started her moving towards the kitchen. “Caly...”

“I know, I hear it, too.” There was the sound of a spatula scraping against a frying pan as Makoto got around the divide between her kitchen and her living room. Here she stopped, blinked once more, and then stared at the scene before her.

Calypso had turned herself into a levitating mass of arms. One pair, with the benefit of the oven mitts and a couple of spatulas, was flipping slightly-crispy pancakes at the stove, while the second pair was buttering two pieces of toast, which looked as though they had been done for a while, and were therefore apparently cool enough for Calypso to touch barehanded. The third set of limbs was slicing up an orange, and the last two hands were pouring a glass of milk near the fridge.

“They’re supposed to turn brown like this, right?” Calypso asked, turning her head towards Makoto and indicating the just-flipped pancakes with one of the spatulas.

“Uh-huh...”

“Good. Why don’t you sit down, then? This ought to be just about done.” An eight-armed, one-headed, legless, floating version of Ami making breakfast for her was just too much for Makoto to take in right after getting out of bed; she nodded dumbly, wandered back over to her chair, and sat down, looking dazedly off into space as she tried to wrap her sleep-fuddled brain around the idea of a gaseous, electricity-eating shapeshifter who could cook.

All things considered, Caly turned out to be pretty good in the kitchen. The toast was a bit cool, and the pancakes were a little too crispy on one side, but everything was still completely edible. It seemed that Calypso’s only culinary failing was that, since she couldn’t touch hot water, she couldn’t wash the dishes—or so Makoto thought until after breakfast, when she saw the Nereid immersing the empty dishes into a cloud of mist at the end of one of her arms, along with a healthy dose of liquid soap. When the plate, glass, and cutlery emerged, they were absolutely spotless. Calypso repeated this procedure with the pan she’d used to make the pancakes, then made a face and produced a large ball of greasy grime from the palm of her hand.

“And this goes down the drain, right?” she asked, with a distasteful glance at the wobbling mass.

“Er... yeah.”

“Good.” Calypso turned her hand over and let the goo fall into the sink, turning the tap on to wash it away and then scrub her hands. Makoto turned to Luna, who shrugged.

“Nereids were always a little obsessed with cleanliness,” she said, “and Caly was no exception. It makes sense when you think about how important water is to her physiology, or what effect different sorts of dirt could have if they got into her system.”

Again, the “Oh.” Even if it was past ten, it was *still* too early in the morning for Makoto to really participate in this kind of talk. *Not that I have much choice,* she thought. “So, Luna... you wanted to talk...”

“I did. Are you going to listen?”

“That depends,” Makoto countered. “Are you just going to tell me the same thing that Ami and Hotaru and Michiru and pretty much everyone else have already said? That I shouldn’t fight again until I know how to keep the Aegis from going nuclear on us?”

“You *do* have a history of storming into fights even when you’re not in ideal condition for them, Makoto. You can’t blame the rest of us for being worried that you might do it again. But as a matter of fact, that isn’t all I came here for. I thought you might like to hear some things about the Aegis—for instance, why it keeps burning holes through your uniform without leaving a mark on you, or why Hotaru wasn’t able to fully restore your arm the other day.”

Makoto looked down at her left hand, flexing her fingers and thinking back. After she and Uranus had returned to the other Senshi at the park, they’d stepped through a dimension door to the shelter of a nearby abandoned tent, as a precaution against being spotted by the people Calypso had sensed but been unable to identify. While Uranus brought the others up to speed, Saturn had tried to purge the excess energy the Aegis had discharged into Jupiter’s hand; for once, Saturn’s healing touch had only been partially successful, reducing the muscle-locking pain to a dull ache, although even that had been enough to allow Jupiter to release the orb. That was when she had seen the black-edged hole the Weapon had left in her gauntlet, as well as the clear, unmarked skin beneath. The others had told her about how the same thing had occurred on Ganymede, although none of them had been entirely sure why it did.

“All right, Luna,” Makoto said, closing her hand. “Tell me why that happens.”

“I’ll do better than that,” Luna said. “I’ll show you. Calypso, could you get us a magnet from off of the fridge?”

“Certainly.” The Nereid drifted out to the kitchen and returned, looking as curious as Makoto was to know what Luna was up to.

“Give it to Makoto.” Calypso did that, having a brief moment of trouble when the sticker refused to release her hand. “Now, Makoto, touch the magnet to one of the sections of the Aegis. It doesn’t matter which one.”

Giving Luna a suspicious look, Makoto did as she was told, pulling one of the smaller orbs away from her neck and holding it on the magnet. She jumped slightly and dropped both objects as the pink sphere flashed a soft, sudden green. Drawn by its connection to the rest of the Aegis, the orb zipped back to its place in the necklace with a soft click, while the magnetic strip fell to the floor.

“Calypso, pick up the magnet again, and tell us what you feel.”

Calypso did that, and blinked in surprise. “It’s... weakened.” The Nereid turned her hand over, and after hanging for a precarious moment, the magnet strip fell away to the floor. “Its level of magnetic attraction has been reduced by almost a third. How did...?”

“The Aegis are designed to draw energy from their environment,” Luna explained. “They absorb free electricity, magnetic force, and even certain kinds of radiation, and then store it up to power their various abilities. The normal rate of absorption is very low, but when a section is brought into direct contact with a potential energy source, it creates a higher drain. If the Aegis is using up power to create an attack, the rate of absorption increased even further.”

Luna sat there and looked at Makoto and Calypso, apparently waiting for one of them to make a connection. Not too surprisingly, the Nereid was the first to get that look of dawning realization in her eyes.

“Then... whenever Makoto uses the Aegis... if she actually *touches* them...”

“...then they’ll draw power out of her just as readily as they would anything else,” Luna finished. “Faster, in fact. They’re already linked to her in a fashion, and as Jupiter, Makoto is a much stronger source of electrical energy than most others you could find—but once her energy is gone, it’s *gone.* THAT’s why Hotaru couldn’t fully restore your arm, Makoto. She’s said on any number of occasions that she can’t create energy, only move it around. If you put too much energy into the Aegis, you won’t have enough left to keep your heart beating, to say nothing of the sort of damage that a forced electrical drain can have on your nervous system before that.”

Realizing that she was toying with the Aegis, Makoto quickly pulled her hand away from the necklace. “But if the Aegis were taking energy *away* from me instead of putting it out... why did it burn my glove?”

“Your fuku is created directly from your powers,” Luna said. “That’s why you girls sometimes revert to normal in situations where your energy is being drained off; the potential energy of the fuku is sacrificed first, to spare as much of your vital energy as possible. It’d be more accurate to say that the Aegis disintegrated your glove rather than that the orb burnt it, but regardless, if you’re using so much of your energy that your fuku starts to break up, you’re well into the danger area.”

“What if she doesn’t hold the Aegis during a fight?” Calypso said. “That would be safer, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” Makoto said immediately, “it wouldn’t. My control over the Aegis is strongest if I’m in direct contact with them. If I hadn’t been holding that orb when I tried to create the cage, the Aegis would have reacted differently, and probably hurt someone.” She paused, blinked, and added, “I’m guessing that what I just said is an out-take from the instruction manual these things have been cramming into my head for the past week, right?”

“It certainly sounded that way,” Calypso agreed.

“That’s what I figured,” Makoto mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. “Is this supposed to happen, Luna?”

“I don’t know, Makoto. As I said once before, four of your predecessors died from trying to use the Aegis at full power. A fifth had her abilities burned down to almost nothing, and one other was left so mentally unstable that she had to be confined for the rest of her life. All of the other Jupiters who ever used the Aegis installed the orbs into other devices as power sources; it was a much safer and far less taxing method, but it also kept the Weapon itself from ever fully activating. It could be that the Aegis are only doing now what Serenity I originally designed them to do, but unless they give you answer to that themselves or Rei unearths it in the Book of Ages, we may never know for certain.”

“What? Come on, Luna; in that whole huge computer library, there must be something like a blueprint...” Makoto’s voice trailed off as she took in Luna’s expression. “There... isn’t?”

“There’s a large collection of information on what the Aegis can be used for,” Luna said, “but there’s nothing on *how* they work except for a few vague theories. It’s the same story if you try to find similar information on the ginzuishou, the Talismans, the Time Gate, or a few other equivalently powerful items; you get lots of their history and guidance for using them, but nothing that could tell you how to build one on your own. The common belief among the court scholars on the Moon was that the first Serenity purged all the information from the archives and then sealed it up inside the ginzuishou, where nobody who was likely to misuse it could get their hands on it. That would have been just one more reason why Beryl wanted to get her hands on the crystal so badly.”

“I can’t ask Usagi to start fiddling around with the ginzuishou over this,” Makoto protested.

“I don’t think you’ll have to. The safest and most logical place for Serenity to have put her notes on the Aegis is in *there*”—Luna pointed at the Weapon hanging around Makoto’s neck—“where any Jupiter who had need of the data could get it, and where no one else would even be aware of it. I may be wrong, Makoto, but I think that all you need to do to figure out what the Aegis are doing to you is to access that information they’ve been channeling into your mind. I can help with that, if you’ll let me.”

Makoto looked at Luna, then turned to stare silently at the potted sapling over by the balcony. At length, she asked, “If you go inside my mind, you’ll have to search through most of my memories to be sure of what the Aegis have been doing, won’t you, Luna?”

“I will,” Luna said with a sympathetic look. “We don’t have to do this, Makoto. I literally *can’t* do it unless you’ve given me permission. But you should know, whenever someone or something else touches your mind, it leaves traces that are just like fingerprints. Even if it turns out that my guess about the Aegis holding their own design schematics is wrong, anything in your past that they found important might help us to understand whatever it is that they’re doing to you now.”

“I know, I know... and I *want* to know what they’re doing. It’s just...” Makoto broke off, glancing at the tree again and rubbing her arm. “I got a little... unhinged... the last couple of times somebody went poking around in my mind, Luna. There are... some things...” She bit her lip and fell briefly silent once more. “Luna, I want you to promise me... no matter what you see, you won’t talk to anyone about it. Not unless it has something to do with the Aegis.”

“I understand, Makoto. I give you my word that I won’t discuss anything I see about your life; only the Aegis.” She genuinely meant that, and Makoto nodded.

“Thank you.” The room was silent for several long seconds, and then Makoto hesitantly asked, “Um... are we going to try this right now?”

“No,” Luna said. “The Aegis have already surprised us once, and they’re so closely linked to you now that I can’t imagine that they *won’t* react to anything I try, so we’re not going to take any chances. We’ll try tonight, at the training session, when we have both Mercury and Saturn on hand to help.”

Makoto wasn’t sure if she should be reassured by the precautions or spooked by the implication that the Aegis might fry her or Luna’s brain, but she nodded anyway.

“In that case,” she added, pushing herself up from her chair, “if you two don’t mind, I’m going to go have a shower and finish waking up.”

“Of course,” Luna replied, as Calypso murmured something similar. The two of them turned to speak to one another, but their heads both whipped back around as Makoto let out a startled cry and began to fall over.

With a great billowing of blue mist and a light sound like ten thousand tiny wind chimes, Calypso rushed forward, transforming into a vaguely-defined sort of cushion which caught Makoto half a foot or so above the floor. When the lack of an impact registered a moment later, Makoto opened one eye and peeked past her defensively raised arms. Sighing, she glanced over her shoulder at Luna and said, “When you go digging around in my head tonight, be sure to ask when I can expect to get my balance back.”

“Noted,” Luna replied, not smiling outwardly in the least as Calypso extended herself upwards and resumed human shape to help Makoto stand.

“Are you okay, Mako-chan?”

“Yeah, Caly, I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Not a problem.” The Nereid smiled mischievously as she added, “Maybe I’d better help you with your shower, too.” She started laughing as Makoto gave her a startled, blushing look. “Go on, you silly thing. And I promise, I won’t sneak in under the door.”

Once Makoto was safely in the bathroom, with the door closed and the water on, Luna turned a level gaze on Calypso. The Nereid met it with an unwavering expression of innocence, until finally Luna sighed and shook her head.

“You’re sure there’s nothing else you can remember that might be helpful?” she asked, changing the subject.

“You know as much about the Aegis now as I do or Elder Darai did,” Calypso said, smiling through her serious tone. “I rather like how the passage of a thousand years and the right set of circumstances has turned her idle hobby of raiding old libraries into something so important.”

“I’m sure Darai would have appreciated the irony of the situation as well—especially since it’s one of her worst students who actually *has* the information in her head.”

Calypso gave a mocking little bow, but then her good mood evaporated. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you, Luna?”

“No, I haven’t. Makoto’s even more uncomfortable with the idea of a scan than I’d expected her to be, and having two people inside her mind would only disturb her that much more. Even if that wasn’t the case, I still don’t think Ami is ready for something like this.”

“She could do it,” Calypso insisted, something more than simple sisterly pride in her words. “She speaks as clearly to me as she ever did, and she knows *how* to do all the things she used to be capable of...”

“...but is she *comfortable* with the idea of actually doing them again?” Luna interposed smoothly. When the Nereid turned a faint shade of purple as her attempt to mimic a human blush and her natural blue embarrassment mingled, Luna had her answer. “That’s what I thought. You have to be patient, Caly. Ami’s mental abilities were thrust upon her very suddenly, and even with her Nereid memories, it’s going to take her a while to get used to them.”

# 

Ami was beginning to get used to the way that half the people in the hospital did a double-take every time they saw her face. It wasn’t unexpected; she and her mother did look a lot alike, and she was moving around quite a bit, going places or handling tasks her mother generally didn’t during her normal rounds. If she’d had a little more of Minako’s, Usagi’s, or Calypso’s turn of mind, she might have enjoyed making everybody just a little bit less sure of themselves, but as it was, Ami figured that a hospital was not one of the best places to go spreading uncertainty.

Aside from that little detail, her first day on the job was going ahead quite smoothly. Everyone was being polite and helpful, and so far, there had been no accidents, no sudden emergencies... no monster attacks...

With a certain amount of Haruka-like wry amusement, Ami admitted that she’d been expecting a monster to show up almost since opening her eyes at five-thirty this morning. It wasn’t pessimism, really, just four years of experience with the general insensitivity and bad timing of the forces of evil. With the way things were going, though, evil must have been on its very best behavior today.

*But the day is far from over,* Ami reminded herself as she put the last of the freshly laundered sheets into the storage closet and then closed the door. *They still have plenty of opportunity to prove me wrong.* Taking hold of the handcart that waited patiently next to her, Ami headed for the elevator. She had one last batch of blankets to drop off on the third floor, and then it should be just about time for lunch.

Another of those briefly startled looks was waiting for her in the elevator. This time, it was Setsuna’s ex-doctor, Lucas.

“Good morning, Yotogi-san,” Ami said as she steered the cart into the elevator car. A quick glance showed her that Doctor Yotogi was headed for the third floor as well.

“Mizuno-san,” he replied, nodding as the doors closed and the car began to descend. “I see that they’re keeping you busy.”

“Actually, I was just thinking about how quiet it’s been today. I’d pictured something rather different after listening to Mother for all these years.”

“I can imagine.” Lucas grinned. “Joking aside, though, you do seem to have picked a fairly stress-free time to test the waters.” He rolled his eyes. “And of course, now that we’ve both gone and said it out loud, something terrible is going to *have* to happen, just to teach us the error of our lazy ways.”

“I was thinking about that as well,” Ami said. The elevator doors slid open then, and Lucas held out a hand to hold them, making an ‘after you’ gesture with his free hand. “Thank you.” Ami directed the cart out into the hall, pushed it out of the way of the elevator doors, and then looked around for the closet. As her eyes swept the immediate area, she frowned and put a hand to her stomach.

“Something wrong, Mizuno-san?” Lucas asked curiously as he stepped out of the elevator.

“I just had the oddest feeling...” Her stomach chose that moment to make a small noise, and Ami blushed. “Never mind. I guess I’m not used to being on my feet quite this much before lunch. Fortunately, this is the last stop I have to make before I can go eat.”

“Then I’ll just get out of your way.” Lucas started to leave, then turned back. “Oh, and in case your mother’s horror stories left it out, the cafeteria’s sandwiches and ramen are edible, but you’ll really want to avoid the casserole.”

“As it happens, I brought my own.” Calypso had been in a culinary mood that morning, and the warm feeling of her sister’s affection made up for the likelihood that the sandwiches probably weren’t going to be as good as something Makoto might have whipped up.

“Wise precaution,” Lucas said, nodding sagely. He started to turn away again, hesitated once more, and then added, “Er... Ami?”

“Yes?”

“The next time you see Setsuna... would you mind passing along my best regards?” Even though he was perhaps ten years her senior, the young doctor still coughed under the amused look Ami gave him. “In a... strictly professional capacity, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I am allowed to check up on my patients’ well-being, after all. Perfectly acceptable.”

“Perfectly.”

“You’re not buying a word of this excuse, are you?”

Ami smiled and shook her head. “Not one. But I’ll tell her you said hi. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to get back to work.” With that, she headed for the supply closet. She’d just put away the last of the blankets when she felt that odd stomach pang again. Ami was sure this time that it wasn’t hunger, but it didn’t quite feel like nausea, either.

*Cramps?* she thought, frowning. *No, that can’t be it. I never feel like this, and I’m not due for another two weeks anyway... so then what is it?*

The odd feeling subsided again. Puzzled, Ami closed the closet door and headed back to the elevator.

# 

Sitting patiently in the dim light of its chamber, the substance of its half-complete new body hanging heavy around the edges of its awareness, Proteus reviewed the latest data from its system in the hospital. Part of that system was a series of concealed sensors mounted at the major entrances and exits of the third floor, for the purpose of tracking metabolic activity and infection rates within each individual who passed through one of the doors. The sensors had already proven their usefulness by allowing Proteus to calculate the effectiveness of different forms of its unit’s spores against various human body types, but now a routine scan had picked up something quite unexpected.

*11:49:02. A new subject enters the target area and is routinely scanned and classified as #117. Female, between sixteen and eighteen years of age. Subject’s metabolic rate is fifteen percent above average for this age and body type; infection level is at zero percent.* All was well here, and Proteus proceeded to the next piece of the puzzle, where the problems began. *11:54:21. Subject #117 leaves the target area and is scanned again. Metabolic activity is unchanged, and infection level remains at zero percent.*

This did not make sense. By all of Proteus’s observations and calculations, after five minutes of exposure to the spores, even a person as healthy as this girl should have an infection rating of approximately point- zero-four percent. It had expected that some people would succumb more quickly, and that others would have a higher resistance—that was simple biology—but zero percent infection, in such a saturated environment...

A diagnostic had already confirmed that the sensor was functioning properly. Did that mean, then, that this girl was actually immune to the spores?

Intrigued, Proteus began a more detailed analysis. The girl’s biosignature had a close similarity to that of subject #083, a female in her mid-forties, which suggested a kinship.

*Mizuno Rikou,* Proteus noted, cross-referencing its data with the hospital’s personnel files. *Age: forty-five. Resident general practitioner, office on second floor. Degrees in biology, chemistry, mathematics... valedictorian, class of 1981... post-graduate studies... ah. One daughter. Mizuno Ami, born September 10th, 1983. Subsequent medical history... is virtually nonexistent. Regular immunizations and checkups, but no indication of major illness or injury. That would seem to support the sensor readings.*

It was unusual, though, that mother and daughter could have such closely matching physiologies and yet react so differently to the spores. Where the younger Mizuno appeared immune—or at the least, very strongly resistant—her mother had been approximately fifteen percent infected during her last passage through the target area, two days ago. That was not enough to influence most humans, let alone control them, but it clearly showed that whatever was allowing the girl to resist the spores did not apply to her mother.

As it made its way through the files, Proteus began to experience an odd, nagging feeling that it was missing something, but it was forced to put the emotion aside for the time being. It had experiments to run, a defensive perimeter to establish, test subjects to acquire, a new body to finish, and evolution to pursue. Even for an entity capable of dividing its awareness between several dozen tasks at a time, that was a lot of work.

The Mizunos were just going to have to wait their turn.

# 

The Imperial apartments were dim and empty, save for the one body and two minds that were supposed to be there. Sitting at a desk in the main room, Janus and Jenna were watching a holographic overhead map of the city of Tokyo, one which was overlaid by slowly-shifting patterns of light in various soft colors.

“I must admit, I’m still not used to that,” Janus was saying. “An elemental nexus isn’t supposed to be so large, or to have so many of the ley lines gathered into it... with so many conflicting powers flowing around in that region in such large amounts, it’s a wonder that the whole city hasn’t just spontaneously combusted by now.”

“You never did pay enough attention to our geomancy tutor,” Jenna chided her brother. “An elemental nexus that is the size of a pin and includes only two elements is every bit as dangerous as this one—which is to say not at all, until someone or something comes along and taps into it. The power can’t just go off on its own, and most particularly not here. Yes, there’s enough concentrated fire energy in that city to dry up an ocean, but there’s also enough water energy to counter that.”

“Thank you for the lesson. Now put your expertise to a more immediate use” -the Prince waved his hand at the image—“and help me finish planning this operation.”

“Are you still determined to focus on electrical energy?”

“It’s the most efficient choice,” Janus replied. “More than half of our key systems can run off of it with little or no modification, and restricting ourselves to a single form of energy will mean that only one Senshi—Jupiter— will be aware of the nexi once they become active.”

“Unless the Senshi use whatever it was that allowed them to penetrate the cloak of that temporal nexus,” Jenna pointed out. “Or if they see the nexi arriving, like last time.”

“That’s why we’re sending Draco.”

“Do you really expect him to be able to stand up to a half-dozen Senshi all at once?” Jenna asked as she studied the map. “Even with eight mixed squads of units to back him up?”

“He doesn’t have to beat them, Jenna; he just has to delay them.” Janus’s half of their mouth quirked up in a mirthless smile. “Besides, a hopeless battle against overwhelming odds is just the sort of thing that Draco lives for. Since he insists on handicapping himself by not using his sword against an unarmed opponent *and* by not finishing off an enemy who happens to be a woman, ’hopeless’ and ‘overwhelming’ is just about what he should find.”

“It’s called chivalry, dear brother. You really should try it sometime.” Jenna raised her hand. “The three best points for gathering electrical energy are here, here, and here.” Her touch left small red dots on the map, the points of an uneven triangle with roughly thirty square city blocks’ worth of space inside. “Unless of course, you wanted to cluster all three nexi over one spot?”

“No, we definitely want them spaced out.” Janus pressed a button, and the map rotated, becoming a three-dimensional view of the many buildings in Tokyo. “The longer it takes the Senshi to locate and reach each nexus, the more time they’ll have to operate undisturbed. Let’s see... if we place this nexus atop *that* building, the others around it will provide some extra concealment when it first appears... and the same in this area.”

“The third site isn’t so accommodating,” Jenna noted as the display scrolled along. “Between the time it lands and the time the cloak goes up, the nexus will be totally exposed, and that’s a residential district. Even if the Senshi don’t see the nexus themselves, a lot of other people will, and when *they* go to investigate...” She left the thought hanging, letting her brother draw the obvious conclusion.

“Then let’s try to make the most of that nexus while we can,” Janus said. “Our first nexus ran for roughly three hours, generating a storm the entire time, and it still gave us a large enough reserve to run our environmental systems at nominal levels for six months straight. If we remove the drain of the storm and consider the first of these three nexi a loss, we’d need the other two to run for...” The Prince’s forehead furrowed in concentration, and then he sighed. “I can’t do these numbers in my head.”

“At full power and with no drain,” Jenna said, “two nexi could match the total energy output of the original in one hour and twelve minutes. Approximately.”

“Thank you. And what if all three of them were able to run uninterrupted? How long to match the output of the first nexus then?”

“Forty-eight minutes. But brother,” Jenna added, “I don’t need to remind you of how quickly the Senshi have been able to destroy our nexi thus far.”

“Ten minutes on average from the time of discovery,” Janus said promptly. “I know—and it takes five minutes for a nexus to reach full operational status after its arrival. That leaves us with anywhere from forty to sixty minutes to fill with diversionary tactics.” Again, the male half of the face became reflective, and once again, the look and the mood behind it ended in a sigh. “I can’t see any way to keep the Senshi off the first nexus for more than half an hour, and that only if the luck goes our way.”

“Assuming that we can keep all three nexi running for the full half an hour,” Jenna said after some quick calculation, “that would give us roughly half the amount of energy that the first nexus did. Say another six percent of our full capacity, after conversion. That would bring us up to fifteen percent, which would be enough to stabilize the security systems and get one of the factory complexes running under full automation, with a surplus of whatever energy the other two nexi can gather before the Senshi find and destroy them.”

“Very well, then; we go for the half hour.” Janus zoomed the map image in on the location of the first nexus. “We’ll send in a squad of second-generation units to scout the area and pick out the best sites for a perimeter. We’ll use first-generations for that—three squads. Once the area is secure, we’ll teleport in the nexus, the half-squad of third-generations, and Draco. The remaining units will be divided evenly between the other two nexi.” The Prince paused. “I think we should have Archon calculate recall coordinates for those two nexi. The first one’s a loss no matter what we do, but I’d like to save the others if we can.”

“And the units?”

“Too difficult to teleport individually at this distance. Any of them actually on the nexi when they jump out will be carried along, but as for the rest...” Janus considered it. “The first-generations would hardly be worth the trouble of retrieving even if any of them were likely to survive the battle, but we can program the others to go to ground and rendezvous elsewhere if they’re damaged or get left behind. Archon’s apprentice should be able to collect them later without revealing herself, if she’s as good a mage as he seems to think.”

“I’d imagine that she is,” Jenna noted. “You know how sparing Archon usually is with praise for his students, but I don’t think I’ve heard him use any words less glowing than ‘adequate’ or ‘sufficient’ when describing her.”

“As I recall,” Janus said with a trace of a smile, “he had a tendency to use those words quite often when discussing *your* performance.”

Jenna’s eye looked across their face at her brother, unamused.

# 

Watching Setsuna read gave Usagi a headache.

The Moon Princess had come to this realization fairly quickly over the weekend, since—when she wasn’t sewing or sketching projects for work—Setsuna chose to pass most of the hours of her convalescence in the company of books. Lots of books. In the last three days, she had gone through six paperbacks, three hardcover volumes, and a couple of mangas besides, covering subjects from one end of the literary spectrum to the other. As they sat together in the living room, Usagi saw that Setsuna was currently reading a romance novel that looked suspiciously like one Minako had bought not too long ago. It was a different book than the one Setsuna had been reading before lunch, and she was already nearly a quarter of the way through it.

It wasn’t that Usagi had anything against books—other than school books, of course—it was just that watching Setsuna skim her way through a hundred pages of solid text in a little over half an hour made her feel hopelessly illiterate by comparison.

It didn’t help that Setsuna kept changing her hairstyle, either. After the odangos on Thursday, she had tried a ponytail; the day after that, it had been a single heavy braid; and then yesterday, it had been a mass of many small braids, piled up about her head like a miniature crown. Today, Setsuna had decided to just let it all hang freely, a fact that Usagi was very grateful for, as her arms had been hurting after helping set up some of those elaborate hairstyles. Now, if only she could do something about the speed-reading...

Shaking her head with a silent sigh, Usagi went back to the video game she had been playing. It was one of Shingo’s: ‘Tournament Fighter Gods IV,’ or something like that, a loud, colorful, not especially mentally-taxing game where almost impossibly well-defined characters beat each other up and down the screen for reasons that were only half-explained by the instruction manual or in-game text. Usagi had chosen to control a savage, shaggy Beast Lord that reminded her of any number of past monstrous opponents, and she found that she was getting a great deal of satisfaction out of guiding the creature as it mercilessly smacked around the game’s roster of female characters, virtually all of whom were attractively fit, generously proportioned, or scantily clad. Where they weren’t all three at once.

“HA!” Usagi laughed, as her digital alter-ego backhanded a regal woman in an elegant white gown through a stone wall. “Take that, Goddess of Magic!” The red-furred humanoid raised its arms and head in a howl of triumph, which was mirrored by a remarkably similar gesture from Usagi.

“I’m glad that you’ve found a way to work out your frustrations, Usagi- chan,” Setsuna said, not taking her eyes from her book, “but don’t you think you might be getting a bit carried away?”

“Who, me?” Usagi asked, looking away from the television with an innocently wide-eyed smile. The expression was replaced by one of disappointment when she turned back and saw a tall, black-cloaked figure standing opposite her character in the opening of the next stage. “Feh. It’s just the Death God. I was sure it would be the Love Goddess this time...”

Setsuna shook her head at the implications of that statement, just as the phone rang. “Cool your vengeful impulses and answer that, would you?”

“I’m pregnant,” Usagi said. “You get it.”

“I’m an invalid,” Setsuna countered, in the same self-serving tone of voice. They both turned away from their respective pastimes to look at one another for a moment, smile the same little smile, and then raise their heads slightly to call out, “MOM!”

They heard Ikuko quite clearly as she said, “Oh, honestly,” somewhere down the hall, sounding equally affronted and amused. The phone was on its third ring by then, but it did not sound for a fourth time. Setsuna went back to her reading, and Usagi—who had forgotten to hit ‘pause’—went back to her game just in time to see the Death God finish cutting the Beast Lord to ribbons with a digital second cousin of the Silence Glaive. As her warrior’s bones got up and did a garish little jig in accordance with the Death God’s finishing move, Usagi made a face and then watched the timer on the ‘CONTINUE?’ screen tick down for a few seconds before she shrugged and switched the game off.

“Change of heart?”

“I’ve been sitting on this floor too long,” Usagi returned, getting to her feet and then shifting the right one around with an annoyed expression. “My foot’s asleep.” She winced a moment later as the pins-and-needles sensation rushed through the foot in question, and then the expression increased as her back decided that this would be a good time for it to ache. Twisting a little awkwardly to stretch out the twinge, Usagi happened to look out the window at the right time to see Shingo walk through the front gate. In spite of her mild back pain, Usagi had to smile when she saw that Mika was with her brother.

Anybody who looked at Kayama Mika when she happened to be looking at Shingo would have little trouble realizing that the girl clearly had long-term plans that rather heavily involved Shingo, regardless of how often *he* said that they were just friends. From the way Minako tended to sneak knowing glances at the pair on the infrequent occasions when she saw them together, Usagi guessed that the Love Goddess approved of the match, but in a rare moment when her usual sisterly snoopiness lost out to her sisterly concern, Usagi had asked Minako not to divulge anything she knew about Shingo and Mika. She didn’t want to risk ruining everything by blurting out something Minako had told her.

“We’ve got company,” Usagi said as she headed for the door. On a mischievous whim, she turned the deadbolt. A moment later, the door rattled briefly as someone tried to open it, and Usagi could almost hear her brother blinking in surprise on the other side.

“Usagi,” Shingo called out. Apparently, he could hear his sister’s grinning as clearly as she could hear his blinking.

“Yes?” she called back.

“Can you open the door?”

“Yes, I can.”

There was a pause. “*Will* you open the door?” Shingo rephrased.

“Yes, I will.”

There was another pause, and then an irritated sigh. “Will you open the door NOW?” Shingo growled.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Oh, for the love of... just open the door, Usagi! It’s COLD out here!” That was true enough. There had been a late cold snap the night before, winter making its power known one last time before spring pushed it away entirely, and it was just cold enough out to make breath steam in the air. Of course, it wasn’t really all *that* cold outside, particularly not to someone with a jacket, but Shingo had left his jacket behind when he walked over to Mika’s earlier.

“Mika’s got a coat,” Usagi replied. “She’ll be fine. Won’t you, Mika- chan?”

“Oh, yes,” Mika called back, unmistakable amusement in her voice, “I’m very warm, Usagi-chan. But you really should open the door; I brought something with me that doesn’t do well going from warm to cold. Other than Shingo-kun, I mean.”

Frowning, Usagi unlocked and opened the door. “Thank you,” Shingo said sarcastically, taking a step forward before Usagi halted him with one outstretched hand. “Now what?”

“Ladies first.” Shingo gave Usagi a flat look, but he backed up and let Mika go in ahead of him—and then all but leapt through the open door, just in case Usagi tried to lock him out again. He needn’t have worried; most of Usagi’s attention was on the thickly-wrapped object Mika was carrying, so she only gave the door a halfhearted push and made no effort to bolt it. “Here,” Usagi offered, as Mika carefully worked her shoes off with her toes while keeping both hands beneath the wrapped item. “Let me hold that for you.”

“No!” Shingo said immediately. Usagi blinked, and in a calmer tone, Shingo added, “You might drop it.”

“I haven’t dropped anything in months.”

“How about that suitcase?”

Usagi glared at her brother. “That was *your* fault.”

“It’s okay,” Mika said, smoothly breaking up the argument. “It’s not heavy. I could use some help with my coat, though.”

“You heard her, Shingo,” Usagi said. “Help her with her coat.” Shingo shot a glare of his own back at his sister, but he helped Mika out of her coat, and then hung it up. While the boy’s back was turned, Mika glanced at Usagi with a small smile that would have sent Shingo running if he’d seen it, and Usagi answered with a quick wink of approval. She didn’t need Minako’s guidance to recognize what was going on here, or to entertain herself by taking a hand in it.

“So,” Usagi said aloud. “I think I can guess what’s in the bag. Is it for me?”

“No,” Shingo replied flatly. “It’s for Meiou-san.”

“It is?” Usagi looked at the two of them—Mika’s gaze flickered briefly towards Shingo—and then folded her arms in that ominous fashion her mother often used. “What are you up to this time, Shingo?”

“Nothing.”

“Shingo.”

“I said, nothing.”

“Do I have to get Mom to come out here?”

“Shingo came over last Thursday and told me about what happened to your friend Setsuna,” Mika said, while Usagi and Shingo were both still shooting eye daggers at each other. “He wanted to do something to make her feel better, so...”

“...so he had *you* make a doll and do all the work so *he* could take all the credit?”

“Hey!” Shingo protested, even as Mika once again smiled out of his field of view. “I helped! I did! Sort of... I paid for everything Mika had to use making it. That counts as helping, right?”

“I suppose...” Usagi began.

“Good.” Shingo looked around. “Is Meiou-san upstairs?”

“No,” Setsuna said, coming out of the living room, “as a matter of fact, she’s not.” Everyone started in surprise, Usagi so violently that she would certainly have dropped the wrapped gift if Mika had given it to her.

“Setsuna,” Usagi said after a moment. It almost sounded as though she were about to reprimand her friend for sneaking up on them, but then she indicated Mika with one hand. “Setsuna, this is Kayama Mika. Mika,” Usagi continued, turning to the younger girl and reversing the hand-gesture, “this is Meiou Setsuna.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Setsuna said with a graceful bow.

“Likewise,” Mika replied, bowing in turn, and carefully, so as not to shake the wrapped doll too much. There was a brief pause in which the young girl seemed uncertain of how to proceed, and then she stepped forward, holding the gift out. “This is for you, Meiou-san.”

Setsuna blinked. “Me? I... not to... sound ungrateful, but... why?”

“It was Shingo’s idea, apparently,” Usagi replied.

All three ladies turned to Shingo, who blushed. “Well... eh... last week, when you were... upset... I wanted to do something that would cheer you up... and when Hinamatsuri came along, I thought maybe a doll might help, so I went to talk to Mika about it—she makes all these really great china dolls, you see— and she agreed to help me out, and we would have given it to you on Friday, except that I only asked Mika for help the day before, and it takes a while to make one of these things... and she was out of some of the supplies, so we had to go and find them...” Shingo was babbling now, and he knew it, so he clamped his jaw shut and took a moment to breathe. He was about to speak when Setsuna held up one hand.

“I understand, Shingo. May I see it?” Mika nodded and held out the doll; rather than take the gift, Setsuna had the younger girl hold it while she untied the little red ribbon that held the wrapping in place, and then gently pulled the paper down.

From what Shingo had said about Hinamatsuri, Setsuna and Usagi had expected to see a doll similar to the traditional ones of the Festival, and they were not disappointed. Nor were they surprised to see that this particular doll had some differences from the classic ones; like any artist, Mika had her own vision of how the final product should appear, and her own particular methods of making it so.

The doll’s attire conveyed the same sense of royalty as those from the Festival. Her elegantly cut kimono was of a soft white fabric that deepened to rosy pink about the shoulders and towards the end of the skirt, bound at the waist with a belt of translucent silver ribbons; in her hair were tiny pins and combs of gold and shining blue, and from one of her delicate hands emerged a fan, blue at the outer edge and bright gold at its heart, with tiny red characters painted on. Rather than an empress, though, the porcelain face conveyed the youth of a princess. Her eyes were closed beneath a string of minuscule silver beads, and her face was peaceful yet firm, as though she was gathering her resolve to issue a difficult order or had just witnessed something unsettling and was steeling herself against it.

It was an exquisite piece of work in every respect, but what caught Setsuna’s and Usagi’s attention the most was the hair. It was long, reaching to the princess’ lower back even with the styling of the pins and combs, and in stark contrast to the rest of the doll’s generally pale colors, it was a dark and shining green. Setsuna glanced out of the corner of one eye at her own hair, comparing the two.

“Shingo insisted on the hair being that color,” Mika said.

“He did, did he?” Usagi asked, raising an eyebrow at her brother.

“Never mind,” Setsuna said. “She’s beautiful, Kayama-san. Are you sure you want to give her to me?” Mika nodded, and Setsuna smiled. “Then I accept. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And thank you for thinking of it, Shingo,” Setsuna added, smiling at him as well. Shingo started to reply, then blushed and looked away, scratching at the back of his head and mumbling something that none of the girls caught. Usagi grinned; she was really starting to enjoy the silencing effect Setsuna had on Shingo, but she decided to give him a break for once.

“Shingo, why don’t you show Mika-chan my New Year’s present? You can put Setsuna’s new doll beside it while you’re up there.”

Shingo switched from embarrassed blush to beaming smile so quickly that, by all rights, the sudden rush of blood from his head should have knocked him unconscious.

“Come on, Mika,” he said, backing up towards the stairs. “You really have to see this.”

After Shingo and Mika had disappeared, Setsuna looked at Usagi. “Has your brother ever done something like this before? Given a gift to a sick or injured person, I mean.”

“Not exactly,” Usagi replied. “A few years ago, one of Mika’s dolls won first prize in an arts competition, and she decided to give that doll to Shingo. The other boys at school teased him about it, though, so he pushed it back to Mika, and it fell and got smashed. Shingo didn’t want to apologize at first, even though Mika was really upset—you know how boys are sometimes—but I pestered him about it, and he finally tried to make a sort of doll as a gift for Mika, to make up for the one he broke.”

“I don’t recall any of you mentioning that Shingo has much in the way of artistic talent,” Setsuna said dubiously.

Usagi rolled her eyes. “Trust me, he doesn’t. His first one was supposed to be a miniature Sailor Moon, but it came out looking more like a piglet that fell into a few buckets of paint. It was the thought that counted, though, and Mika forgave him.”

“What did you mean, ‘his first one?’”

Usagi looked around quickly. “This was back during our first year as Senshi,” she explained in a low voice. “Before the time loop. When things got reset, Shingo broke Mika’s doll all over again, and since there wasn’t any Sailor Moon around to inspire him, he ended up trying to make a miniature Sailor V doll instead. It didn’t turn out much better than the one he made the first time around, but I think Mika still has it.”

“I see.” Setsuna glanced towards the stairs and the bedroom beyond, slowly nodding to herself. Usagi was about to ask why Setsuna was doing that when Ikuko came down the hall.

“Was there someone at the door?” she asked.

“Shingo and Mika had a gift for Setsuna,” Usagi said. “They’re putting it up in our room, and Shingo’s probably showing Mika my Phoenix right about now. Who was that on the phone?”

Ikuko gave her daughter a decidedly cool look before answering. “It was a call from the hospital. Your next checkup’s been pushed back to this Friday.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Shingo and Mika came downstairs a moment later, Mika minus the doll but with a thoughtful expression on her face. “So, Mika- chan,” Usagi asked. “What did you think of my Phoenix?”

“It’s very lovely, Usagi-chan.” Usagi blinked; Mika’s distracted tone did not fit with her appraisal of the tiny crystal sculpture. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but where did you get it?”

“It was delivered on New Year’s Day,” Usagi replied. “There wasn’t a name or a return address, and I haven’t been able to think of anyone who would have sent it. Why?”

“Well... it’s just that my mother owns a piece almost exactly like it. The only differences are that hers is yellow and white, and it doesn’t have an eggshell like yours.”

Alarm bells were going off in Usagi’s and Setsuna’s brains by the end of the first sentence. “Mika,” Usagi said carefully, “are you sure it’s the same?”

Mika nodded. “Very sure. Mama keeps hers on a shelf, too, so I even looked at them both from about the same angle.” The girl paused, then hesitantly added, “This may sound a little strange, but... does yours... when you turn most of the lights off and leave one to shine on the Phoenix, does it seem to... glow?”

“I think that answers your question, Usagi-chan,” Setsuna said.

# 

Today, Haruka’s car was moving through traffic with something less than its usual racecar pace. Haruka’s slower driving didn’t have quite so much to do with Michiru being in the passenger seat or Hotaru and ChibiUsa being in the back as it did with the conversation the four of them were carrying on over their communicators.

“There’s *another* Phoenix?” Hotaru asked in amazement.

“It certainly seems that way,” Setsuna replied through the communicator. “A yellow and white one, according to Mika. One that doesn’t have a shell.”

“You didn’t let Usagi take off to investigate this thing, did you?” Rei asked. Haruka’s expression said she had been about to ask the same thing.

“I didn’t have to,” Setsuna reassured Rei. “As soon as Usagi asked about going over to see it, Mika said her mother had gone out and wouldn’t be home until late. She *did* agree to ask her mother if she wouldn’t mind having some guests for tea tomorrow, so we’d better get some kind of plan together. I don’t think I can talk my way out of the house until I’ve healed a little more.”

“I’ll stay home tomorrow and see if I can get myself invited,” ChibiUsa promised. “If that doesn’t work, we can always send Luna with Usagi and then have someone else follow at a distance using the Lunar Pen.”

“Artemis can lend a paw there,” Minako put in.

“Are you sure you can make do without your trophy boyfriend for a whole day?” Haruka asked teasingly.

“Oh, I’ll survive.” Minako fell silent and then added, “We could get Calypso in on it, too, if you really want to get serious. Is Caly there, Mako- chan?”

“I’m here,” Calypso answered, cutting off Makoto’s reply. “I wouldn’t mind helping, but since Ami will be at work, somebody’s going to have to come over here and keep an eye on Mako-chan while I’m gone.”

“I can look after myself, thank you very much!”

“You’ve already tripped over your own feet three times since you got out of bed today,” Luna said.

“Not to mention that slip in the shower,” Calypso added.

“I caught myself that time.”

“The *Aegis* caught you. If they hadn’t, you...”

“Did I hear that right?” Haruka interrupted as she made a left. “Makoto, you actually *shower* with those things?”

“I can’t take them off, Haruka,” Makoto responded irritably. “They may move away from me when I transform, but even then, they’re still linked to me— by bolts of electricity, no less.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, ouch. Not to mention that I don’t even know if we *can* take off those fukus without changing back to normal...” There was a pause.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Luna said, obviously in response to a questioning look from Makoto. “I know that since your uniforms are created from your own energy, you can cause them to change shape if you concentrate on them, but I honestly don’t know if you can physically remove them or not.”

“We can,” Michiru said confidently.

“Really?” Makoto asked curiously.

“Really?” Hotaru asked, at the same time. ChibiUsa did not speak, but her expression was identical to Hotaru’s, and Haruka glanced briefly at Michiru with the same gleam of faint interest in her eye.

“Yes, really. It takes a bit of doing, of course, but the hardest part is getting one of your arms pulled back through the shoulder. If you can manage that, all you have to do from there is slip your arm up and out through the collar, pull the fuku off your other arm, and then just slide it off. It helps that the material is so flexible; otherwise, it would be just about impossible to get out without help.” Michiru noticed in the rearview mirror that both younger girls were looking at her strangely, and even Haruka was giving her another sidelong glance after the detailed walkthrough, this one more concerned than curious. She had a feeling Setsuna, Rei, Minako, Makoto, and the two cats all had similar looks on their faces. “Don’t tell me it never occurred to any of you to wonder about it?”

“Oh, I’ve *wondered* about it,” ChibiUsa replied slowly. “I just never wondered that *much*...”

“Me neither,” Rei said, to murmurs of assent from the others. Michiru looked at her three companions in the car, openly surprised.

“Getting back to the original subject,” Haruka said, “who can spare tomorrow afternoon to babysit? Or should we just draw straws after training tonight?”

“I’ll do it,” Minako said. “Setsuna and Mako-chan can’t go anywhere right now; Rei-chan has to stay home and keep reading the Book; Ami-chan has to work; and tonight’s already Michiru’s turn to watch Usagi-chan. Besides, it’ll probably take two of us to make sure Mako-chan stays put at home tomorrow, and she and I get on each other’s nerves easily enough when we’re both in a good mood.”

Wisely, nobody made any smart remarks on that subject. “Sounds like a plan, then,” Haruka said. “I guess... aw, damn it.”

“What was that?” Minako asked.

“Nothing, Mina-chan,” Hotaru replied, grinning at the back of Haruka’s head. “Haruka-papa just got cut off by a red light, that’s all.”

“I can usually make this stretch without having to stop,” Haruka grumbled. “It’s paying attention to all this chatter that slowed me down.”

“Maybe we should get out of your hair, then,” Rei said.

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Okay, then,” Minako agreed. “Talk to you all later.” Her communicator blipped off, and was followed shortly by the others.

“Amazing,” Haruka said, as the light changed and they began moving forward again. “Not one of them wished you a happy birthday.”

“Somehow, I doubt that they’ve forgotten.” Michiru smiled. “You should probably go ahead and get your party face ready for tonight. Right, girls?” she asked, looking into the backseat a second time.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” ChibiUsa said. Her tone of deliberately badly-faked ignorance was a perfect match to Hotaru’s expression of wide-eyed and unconvincing innocence. “So,” the pink-haired princess continued, with a look around at their downtown surroundings, “where exactly are we going, anyway?”

“I have a family meeting I need to attend,” Michiru replied. “I feel I should warn you that it’s likely to go on for quite a while, and it will be dull and uncomfortable, so if the two of you would rather go somewhere else with Haruka for the duration, I won’t mind.”

The two younger girls traded glances. “What *sort* of meeting is this, exactly?” ChibiUsa asked slowly.

“It has to do with my inheritance,” Michiru said. “My mother’s father chose to leave some of his possessions to his grandchildren, in special bank accounts which would be opened to us on our respective eighteenth birthdays. There’s also a larger account that holds most of Grandfather’s money, and it will be opened and divided between the family this afternoon, after I’ve received the contents of my personal fund.”

After a moment of expectant silence, ChibiUsa said, “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. Hotaru?”

“I think I’d like to meet the rest of Michiru-mama’s family.”

“You might want to think again,” Haruka warned. “I’ve been to two of these little get-togethers, and they’re not exactly what you’d call warm and fuzzy.”

“I don’t understand,” Hotaru said, frowning.

“How do you suppose people react when a five year-old girl draws apocalyptic floods and oceans of stars with her finger-paints?” Michiru asked gently, looking up at Hotaru’s reflection in the rear view mirror. “Or when she tells her eight year-old cousin not to be angry at her father for getting remarried, because it doesn’t mean that he loves her or her dead mother any less?”

Hotaru was very quiet as she met Michiru’s gaze. “You did that?”

“I did—at least early on. After a while, I learned to keep quiet about the things I saw in my dreams, unless they were extremely important. I always went and talked to my mother after an important dream, or a bad one.” Michiru smiled wistfully, her eyes distant. “She’d let me climb into bed next to her, safe and warm, and we’d talk about what I saw until I fell asleep again. After she made Father go sleep in the guest room,” Michiru added, the smile growing to a soft laugh. “He was a terrible snorer.” She sighed as her eyes came back to the present.

“Your family knows about your dreams, then?” ChibiUsa ventured cautiously. That sigh had not been an unhappy one, but...

Michiru nodded. “To an extent. They don’t discuss it, but at the very least, my relatives know that *I* know more than I should. How many of them chalk it up to my being ‘gifted’ and how many suspect the truth, I couldn’t tell you.”

“They don’t get along with you... because you’re smart?” Hotaru asked in astonishment.

“If it were only that,” Michiru said, shaking her head. “No, Hotaru, my family doesn’t dislike me for my abilities. Certainly, they don’t fully understand me and aren’t comfortable around me, but it’s not what I can do that they dislike; it’s what I *didn’t* do. I was the only witness when my parents were killed, and I’ve never spoken to any of my other relatives about it.”

Hotaru and ChibiUsa both blinked, and then blinked again as they considered what had happened to Michiru’s parents and understood why she couldn’t talk about it. Setting aside the questions that story would raise about Michiru’s mental stability, how exactly *would* a teenage girl have escaped physically unscathed from a monster powerful enough to shatter a small yacht, when both her parents had not?

“It doesn’t help matters that I stand to inherit whatever was left to my parents in addition to my own share of the estate this afternoon,” Michiru continued. “I don’t need the money and I don’t want the money, but more than a few of my relatives want it very badly, and resent the fact that it’s going to me. I’d gladly give it to them...”

“...except that they’re too snooty to lower themselves to taking handouts,” Haruka finished.

“Haruka,” Michiru chided, her tone amused, pleading, and reproving all at once.

“I know, I know,” Haruka replied, apparently picking up on all three aspects of the word. “I promise I’ll behave myself—up to a point. Nothing personal, Michi, but after twenty minutes in a room with your relatives, I generally want to reach for my sword. And on that cheery note,” she said, guiding the car to a smooth halt, “we’re here.”

ChibiUsa looked up at the skyscraper that housed the bank. Up until now, her experience with banks had been limited to infrequent trips to the nearest cash machine, and one or two very dull visits to the local branch office, where she would kick her heels and wait for Ikuko to finish talking with the tellers. This particular institute of finance was a much larger and more important one than the neighborhood office, and less friendly-looking as well, with heavy grey walls, small windows, and a stream of almost grim people in business suits moving in and out of the doors.

The only place in ChibiUsa’s experience really similar to this bank was the royal vault back in Crystal Tokyo, but even that didn’t really match up. The palace was an arcology, designed to be as close to self-sufficient as possible, and its vaults were mostly storage for the few items that were both important to the palace’s operation and not produced within it. Electronics, for the most part, and some small vehicles, or the materials to make more of them. Aside from that, there were also the high-security chambers where some of the most important and powerful items in the system were kept under heavy guard. Useful things, like the interstellar transporter and the palace’s mainframe, or seldom-used ones, like the engine which enabled four Senshi to surround the entire palace with an impenetrable force field. No money, though.

Looking up at a real bank for the first time, ChibiUsa decided that she did not really care for its appearance, and said so as they all got out of the car.

“I’m not overly fond of it myself,” Michiru agreed, looking up at the building in turn and shaking her head. “Ah well. Shall we go in?” It was a rhetorical question; Michiru took Hotaru’s hand and led the way, Haruka following to her left, ChibiUsa to Hotaru’s right.

The bank’s interior was not much more colorful than its exterior. Against all the drab browns and faded shades of white and grey, ChibiUsa’s hair was like a neon sign, and she found herself grateful that she had gone with a dark blue jersey and skirt today instead of something in brighter colors. Haruka’s well-worn slacks, blazer, and open-at-the-throat-because-the-damn-collar-chokes-me dress shirt were nothing short of rakish in contrast with the buttoned and pressed lines of all the suits, particularly since she wasn’t wearing a tie; Michiru, on the other hand, managed to wear her comfortable blue dress and look like it was the bank that had failed to match *her* appearance, rather than the other way around. Next to that, Hotaru’s little-girl violet jumper was rather easily overlooked.

Michiru spoke briefly with the severe-looking receptionist and then proceeded to a door near the back. On the other side was a large meeting room with a sizable table and a dozen or so chairs, only one of which was in use. The occupant was an older man who looked to be somewhere in his fifties, with hair that was black at the roots and mostly white otherwise. Although he had a briefcase and a suit like most of the other businessmen, lawyers, and bankers they’d passed, this man’s clothes were a rich shade of brown that was far less drab than the colors dominating the bank. He looked up at their entrance, and his face creased into a smile before he stood up from his seat—and kept on going. ChibiUsa’s eyes widened slightly as the man’s head continued to gain altitude.

“Good afternoon, Michiru.” The voice wasn’t especially deep and certainly wasn’t menacing, but the fact that it originated a bit more than six feet off the ground definitely added something.

“Benjamin-san,” Michiru replied, looking up and returning the warm smile. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.”

“And miss the look on Sumire’s face when your mother’s share of the estate slips entirely through her fingers? Never. Besides, I thought that the presence of legal counsel might help persuade your aunt and some of the others to be on their best behavior. I do loom rather impressively, after all.”

“When you’re not hitting your head on the tops of doorframes,” Haruka agreed.

“Nice to see you again, too, Tennou-san. And you, Hotaru-chan,” the tall man added, looking down with his bright brown eyes. “How are you today?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Bengonin-san,” Hotaru said then, looking and sounding very formal, “I’d like to introduce you to Tsukino Chibi-Usagi, my best friend. ChibiUsa, this is Benjamin Darius Wolfe, Michiru-mama’s lawyer.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Benjamin said, bowing.

“The pleasure is mine,” ChibiUsa replied automatically. A moment later, she added, “’Counselor?’” in a pained voice.

“That was my fault,” Michiru apologized. “Benjamin-san worked with my father a great deal, and he was in and out of our house many times when I was little. I called him ‘Bengonin-san’ once when I was about four, and he mentioned it to Hotaru the first time they met.”

“I had to say something to get her to stop staring at me,” Benjamin said lightly, pulling the chair next to his own back from the table for Michiru. “It was either tell her about the nickname or growl at her and chase her out of the room. As I recall, the last little girl I tried that on wasn’t very impressed by my imitation of my namesake.”

“You sounded more like a broken lawnmower than you did a wolf, Benjamin- san,” Michiru said as she sat down. She might have added more, except that Hotaru chose that moment to scramble up onto her lap.

“Still haven’t broken her of that, I see,” Benjamin noted in amusement. As he moved to pull out the next chair, ChibiUsa noticed that there was a definite stiffness in the motion of Benjamin’s left leg when he walked, and as she smiled up at him and settled into the chair, she spotted a long walking stick resting atop the table, on the other side of Benjamin’s briefcase.

“She doesn’t want to grow up,” Haruka replied, leaning back against the wall. “For that matter, I’m beginning to suspect that there are a few others—in this very room, even—who don’t want her to grow up either.”

“You’re a very suspicious person sometimes, Haruka.” Michiru hugged Hotaru a little closer as she spoke, then looked up at Benjamin. “As long as we have a few minutes before the others arrive, Benjamin-san, was there anything you needed to discuss with me?”

“Nothing much comes to mind,” the lawyer said as he walked back to his chair and sat down. “Unless of course you’ve decided to let me go and manage your money yourself after today...”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing that to an old friend,” Michiru assured him.

“...then all that’s left is the opening. And the paperwork, of course.”

“Of course.”

It was another five minutes before Michiru’s relatives began to arrive. The first was a young man hardly any older than Haruka and Michiru, brown-haired and bright-eyed, whom Michiru greeted as ‘Cousin Kenta.’ Contrary to what had been said in the car, ChibiUsa and Hotaru found Kenta’s manner to be amicable, even warm, if not out-and-out overflowing with affection. He struck up a dialogue with Haruka almost immediately—they seemed to share that passion for cars—and kept talking animatedly with her until the next arrival walked through the door. This was a sophisticated twenty-something brunette named Mitsuki, who was much less pleasant than Kenta, and reminded ChibiUsa and Hotaru more of the lawyers and bankers milling around outside. She did not talk about cars, or anything else, and instead took a seat across the table, pulled a laptop computer from her briefcase, and began to work as though the rest of them weren’t even in the room.

The next person to enter was a lawyer named Urimo, who represented the bank, visually as well as legally; he was one of the blandly unremarkable drone-types from the front room. With him came two men in security uniforms, each of whom carried one of the proverbial grey-metal safety deposit boxes, undoubtedly just removed from their accustomed places in a vault. One box was about the size of a two-slice toaster, the other a good five times greater in volume, and seemingly far heavier. The two guards carefully set the boxes down at the far end of the table, then stepped back and stood against the wall, flanking Urimo as he removed some documents from his briefcase and took a seat to wait.

Four relatives arrived as a group as Urimo and his two assistants were setting up, and Michiru eased Hotaru off her lap as she stood to greet the new arrivals, for at the front was her Uncle Amano. A tall and impressive gentleman in his middle fifties—if not quite so tall or as impressive as Benjamin—Amano’s blue-black hair was tinged with a touch of distinguishing grey, a fitting mark for the head of the extended family. With him came his wife, Yuriko, every inch a respectable lady of wealth and status, and following the pair was their daughter Ogawa, a thirty-years-younger version of her mother, with the same long brown hair and dark blue eyes. She was beautiful, but with a cold, hard manner that intensified while her father returned Michiru’s greeting.

Still leaning casually against the wall, Haruka gave Ogawa a smile and a wink, which only seemed to deepen the woman’s icy demeanor.

Right after Ogawa came her older brother, Ohta, who had the same kind of close resemblance to their father that Ogawa had to their mother. The oldest of the assorted cousins, Ohta was accompanied by his own wife, Nina, and their five year-old daughter, Suzako, who had her father’s and grandfather’s green eyes and her mother’s bright red hair, plus more freckles than anyone ChibiUsa or Hotaru had ever seen. She was also a very shy child, huddling close to her mother even as she murmured a brief hello to Michiru. Michiru considered that reaction for a moment and then turned.

“Hotaru-chan, aren’t you going to come say hello to your cousin?”

Heads went up all around the room as Hotaru stepped out from between the vacant chair and ChibiUsa’s. Ignoring the looks, she walked over in front of Michiru and waved cheerfully at the little redhead. “Hello.”

“H-hello,” Suzako replied hesitantly. “Are you... really my cousin?”

“Sort of,” Hotaru replied. “Your father is Michiru’s cousin, and she’s my mother, so I think that makes us second cousins. The grown-ups will probably make a fuss about it, but they always do. Why don’t we get out of their way?” And just like that, Hotaru spirited the younger girl off to one corner of the room, where in no time they were talking animatedly—if quietly—and giggling every so often. More than a few of Michiru’s relatives looked at her, but no one said anything, least of all ChibiUsa, who watched the two girls and thought fondly of Saturn’s army of child-followers in the 30th century.

It was another fifteen minutes before the last members of the family arrived. The first one to step through the door was a striking brunette of indeterminate middle age, with pale blue eyes that immediately reminded ChibiUsa of ice. Behind her came an older gentleman who had to be Amano’s younger brother, but who was nonetheless much more visibly aged. Helping steady his steps was a young woman with the same blue-black hair, and eyes that were even more vividly green.

Michiru, ChibiUsa noticed, did not stand until her uncle entered the room. The older woman, her aunt, noticed it as well.

“Sho,” Amano said, inclining his head. “I was beginning to worry.”

“My daughter seemed to feel I might break if we drove too quickly or if she let me try to walk on my own,” the younger brother replied, as he was helped to a chair.

“I offered to drive you, Dad,” Kenta said.

“I wasn’t in that much of a hurry,” Sho replied dryly. Once seated, he turned to his youngest niece and nodded curtly. “Michiru.”

“Uncle Sho,” Michiru replied with a respectful bow. “Aunt Sumire.” She did not bow quite as much, and Sumire did not respond as she sat down next to her husband; Michiru had already turned to the green-eyed young woman. “Nikki.”

“Michiru,” the young woman replied as she sat down next to her father. “Happy birthday.” She was the first member of the family to say that.

“Thank you,” Michiru said softly, smiling. She returned to her chair and gestured for Hotaru to come back. Once again drawing all eyes, Hotaru walked little Suzako to her mother before returning to Michiru and hopping up onto her lap again.

“Who is that?” Sho asked curiously.

“This is Tomoe Hotaru,” Michiru replied. “Our foster-daughter.”

“Since when?” Sumire demanded, her head turning sharply.

“Since a little under two years ago,” Michiru said calmly. “Benjamin-san has all the forms on file, if you want to see them.”

“I think we can forego that,” Sho said, looking briefly at his wife, who nodded. Turning in his chair and looking past his daughter at ChibiUsa, Sho added, “And you, miss, are...?”

“Tsukino Usagi, sir,” ChibiUsa replied with a courtly bow of her head. “A friend of the family. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Michiru’s uncle actually smiled, and the expression made him look much younger. “Charmed, I’m sure,” he murmured, and ChibiUsa believed that he was. Sho turned to the banker. “Shall we begin, then?”

Urimo looked at Amano, received a nod, and picked up a pen as he regarded the topmost of his small pile of papers. “Umiou Amano?”

“Present,” Amano replied.

The banker made a check on the paper. “Umiou Sho?”

“Present,” Sho responded.

Another check. “Kaioh Shinjubo?”

“Represented,” Michiru said quietly. Urimo made another tick on his list, then named—and marked off—the six cousins, finishing with Michiru’s name. The process reminded ChibiUsa of nothing so much as morning roll call at school, but she did not say this aloud.

“Monday, March 6th, 2000,” Urimo noted, writing those words down on the paper below the list of names. “All parties named in the will have been confirmed present or represented; in the presence of said witnesses, item six of account #3302 may now be delivered and opened.” He took a key from within his briefcase and inserted it into the lock on the front of the metal box to his left, but did not turn it; instead, the banker glanced at the man to his left, looked down at the deposit box, and then down the table to Michiru. The security guard nodded and picked up the larger of the two boxes, the very essence of the old phrase “handle with care” as he moved to the end of the table and set his burden down. Michiru thanked him gravely and slid Hotaru off her lap again before reaching out and turning the key. The key clicked and the top of the box popped up, after which Michiru released a slow breath before lifting the lid all the way back.

The safety deposit box held three things. One was a wooden jewelry box, square and perhaps a hand’s length across, with beautiful carvings of leaves along the sides, a small blooming rose at the center of its lid, and a ring of thorns around the keyhole. The second item was actually a collection of over twenty books of the same style, diaries with worked silver bindings and locks. The final object, resting across the top of the box and one of the books, was an old envelope with Michiru’s name written across it in elaborately-drawn kanji. A slight bulge in the middle of the envelope suggested the location of the key to the jewel box, which Michiru took out and set down on the table, looking up at her uncles questioningly.

“It belonged to your grandmother,” Amano said, “as did the diaries.”

“All this time I thought she’d left them to Shinjubo,” Sho added, sharing a look with his brother.

The back of the envelope was merely folded shut, so Michiru had no trouble opening it. As she’d expected, the bulge inside the packet was a key, one bearing a rose and leaf pattern. Setting the key down next to the box, Michiru unfolded the almost thirteen year-old letter and began to read silently:

*Hello, Michiru.

As was my custom with these trust funds, I wrote this letter on your most recent birthday, so if you’re reading these particular words, I must have died before you turned six. That may well mean that you don’t have an altogether clear recollection of your old grandfather; if so, don’t feel badly about it. It was my own fault that I didn’t play a larger role in your life; I was too caught up in my recollections of the past and my practical plans for the future to enjoy the present. You can take a warning not to repeat that error as my first piece of advice to you, if you like.

You’ll be a young lady of eighteen by now, and I have no doubt that you’re every bit as lovely as your mother and your grandmother were in their own days. I saw both of those times, and speaking as a onetime lovestruck suitor, and as a more recent overprotective father, I hope you’ll listen when I say not to take it too seriously when handsome young men compete for your attention, or when your parents chase them away and forbid you to see or speak to them. No matter how rational they might be otherwise, young men and parents alike will behave strangely when beautiful daughters are in attendance. The same can be said of those girls when their young men are present, although I suspect you’ll have more sense than most. You have your mother’s features just as she has her mother’s, and I have met few people indeed with even half the good sense your grandmother possessed. Your mother is one of them, and I believe you will, in time, be another.

It is because of that resemblance that I decided to leave these things of your grandmother’s to you, Michiru. They would have gone to your mother years ago, except that I simply could not bring myself to part with them at the time. Perhaps it was selfish of me, but your grandmother was taken from us far too soon, and there were days when the comfort of these familiar objects was something I needed badly. That is the blessed curse of a great love, granddaughter; for good or ill, it will follow you for the rest of your life, comforting you in your dark moments and robbing your bright moments of joy, if the one you love is not there with you. The thoughts on those pages gave me a measure of peace, and I hope that they will in turn provide you with some insight into the mind and manner of the grandmother you never knew.

As for the rosewood box, it was my wedding present to your grandmother, a safe place for a few small treasures and a private, tired old joke between us that she never ceased to smile at—for I, as you may not know, have been allergic to nearly all flowers since my earliest childhood. Inside the box, you will find the key to your grandmother’s diaries and the old pen she used to write in them, as well as her favorite pair of earrings and a rather curious heirloom she received from her own grandmother many years ago. I am no poet, so I do not have the words to adequately describe it to you. I will say that of all her treasures, only her children and grandchildren were more precious to your grandmother than this object. You will understand why when you see it.

There is one last object in the box: a plain gold ring, which bears a tradition you should be aware of. My father was from Europe, and the women of his family wore this ring on their wedding days for more years than we now bother to count, passing it to the line of the eldest daughter in each generation—or to the wife of the eldest son, if no daughter existed or married, as was the case for both my father and myself. Your mother wore the ring at her own wedding, but returned it to your grandmother for safekeeping; now it comes to you. I hope that when the day comes that you have need of a wedding ring, you will remember our tradition and wear this one in memory and in honor of the many women before you who have worn it—but most especially the one who was my wife, and whose face, eyes, and very name you carry already.

Your grandfather, Koji.*

As she read the letter, Michiru felt a great sense of closeness and affection towards her grandfather, not to mention a certain amount of amusement over the contents of the second paragraph. The final lines, however, left her a little shaken.

Michiru had known for years that she was named for her grandmother—her mother had told her any number of times—but she had never once heard about this ring. It was not surprising, really; the most natural time for her parents to have mentioned it would have been before or during a wedding, and Michiru had only attended two weddings—her uncle Sho’s marriage to Sumire, and her cousin Ohta’s wedding to Nina—while her parents had been alive. On both occasions, Michiru had still been young enough to make her own future wedding seem a distant event indeed. Moreover, having been almost literally born knowing the person with whom she was destined to fall in love, Michiru had never felt the need to play the wedding-games some other little girls did. Her parents had never told her about the ring because nothing had ever made them feel a need to; there would be time enough later.

As surely as the rest of the letter had awoken Michiru’s affections for the grandfather she only half-remembered, those last few lines had stirred up the old pain dwelling in her heart. There was so much that she still didn’t know—about the world, about her own family, about big things and little ones—so much that she had never gotten a chance to ask or to say. For a moment, she was back on the shattered remains of that boat, a frightened fourteen year-old girl crying as she never had before or since because her mother was dying in her arms, all the while whispering for her to be brave, to be strong, to never forget that they loved her and were proud of her...

“Michiru?” a little girl’s voice asked.

Michiru blinked and snapped out of the trance-like memory to look down at Hotaru. “Yes, Hotaru-chan?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why...” Michiru fell silent as Hotaru reached up to touch her cheek. There was a damp feeling there, she realized, a single tear that had gotten through her normally unflappable composure. Blushing slightly, Michiru lightly wiped it away.

“I’ve never seen you cry before,” Hotaru said, looking at the drop of moisture on the end of her finger wonderingly.

“There are a lot of things you’ve never seen her do, kid,” Haruka said, stepping forward and putting a hand on Hotaru’s shoulder. “That doesn’t mean she can’t do them.” Haruka’s tone was light, but her left hand was resting on the back of Michiru’s chair, the fingers touching the top of her shoulder. The touch was both a gesture of support and a question.

“It was just a bit of a surprise in the letter,” Michiru said, speaking as much for Haruka’s benefit as for Hotaru’s. “I’ll be fine. Come on,” she added, setting the letter down and holding her arms out for Hotaru to hop up again. “Help me open up the box.”

Resuming her favorite seat, Hotaru picked up the key and proceeded to open the wooden box. Thirteen years of being shut up inside another box did not appear to have harmed it; the lock snicked open without trouble, and Hotaru raised the lid with no squeaky protests from the hinges. Once she had the lid up far enough to see what was inside, however, Hotaru’s eyes widened, and she closed the box again.

“Hotaru?” ChibiUsa asked, blinking. “Is something wrong?”

“You... might say that,” Hotaru replied squeakily. She reopened the box, this time flipping the lid all the way back.

As the letter had said, the box’s cushioned interior held a small silver key, an old-fashioned wooden pen, a plain gold ring, and a pair of earrings. Each of these was a cluster of three small blue stones above three slender silver strings, at the ends of which hung bright white crystals that might even have been diamonds. The earrings were really quite beautiful, but it was the object nestled in the center of the box—the ‘heirloom’—which captured everyone’s attention.

It was a smooth globe of some perfectly clear crystal, roughly the size of a tennis ball. It appeared to be filled with water, and there, somehow suspended in the exact center, was a near-exact replica of the Phoenix Egg. The only differences were that this one had no shattered eggshell around it, and that its colors were those of water. The body was deep blue, the wings and plumage a mix of pale blues and sea greens, and traces of white lined the tiny sculpture like foam or frost.

Looking at the tiny crystal bird, Michiru could suddenly hear the ocean waves in her mind, the loud, crashing roar of the angry sea that she always heard when something dangerous was coming closer. As it often did, Haruka’s voice came to her quite clearly through the noise of the rushing tide:

“The next time we run into our grey-haired friend, remind me to kick his ass.”

# 

As with most big cities, Tokyo did not shut down as the day progressed into night. In many ways, it became more awake. All the streetlights and neon signs came on. People who worked during the day went out to dinner and movies, while those that were employed in all the various night jobs got up, had their breakfasts, and drove to work. Stadiums and ballparks filled up for night games; museums and galleries hosted special exhibits; and hospitals, fire departments, and police stations were staffed round the clock.

The other creatures of the night added their own touches. Insects flew or crawled out of hiding in great numbers, to be snapped up by larger insects, web-spinning spiders, and the occasional nocturnal bird or beast. Cats and dogs prowled the back alleys and empty lots, and rodents scurried about in many locations. Otherworldly monsters appeared from time to time, followed close behind by supernatural warriors, and of course, there was a magically-engineered biomechanical mutant fungus lurking in the sewers, planning and plotting twenty-four/seven.

No, with all this going on, Tokyo definitely did NOT sleep at night. The regular abundance of nightlife might also explain why people tended not to notice out-of-the-ordinary occurrences unless they were glaringly obvious. Giant UFOs and mysterious towers appearing in the heart of downtown, for example.

So the general population could perhaps be forgiven for failing to see the thin beams of greenish energy that shot down from the roof of a certain skyscraper, traced the top of a low building next to it over the course of nearly a minute, and then winked out. It had happened twice before already that night, but all three times had been in different locations, well above street level, and the beams were not really very large.

When her Atlantean pager had completed its scan, the apprentice nodded in satisfaction. Done at last. And thank Heaven for buses.

Oh, certainly, spells of flight and teleportation *sounded* wonderful, until you considered the fact that flying would attract attention unless you were invisible. As for teleportation... the list of things that could go wrong with teleporting was as long as her arm, but the main reason she hadn’t been able to use the teleport magic worked into her pager to get around was because she’d never been to any of her three destinations before.

She could have used a teleportation spell of her own, but there was a limit to the number of spells the human mind could retain at any one time, and the apprentice had devoted a large part of her own mental storage space to a series of other spells she wanted to cast tonight.

Archon had not gone into a great amount of detail about this operation—and why should he? After all, her part in it was simply to confirm the transport coordinates for the nexi, and that was done. From what her master HAD said, however, the girl understood that while there were going to be three nexi involved, the majority of the units would be dispatched to the most distant nexus in order to divert the Senshi away from the other two for as long as possible. Although they would be well hidden behind a number of skyscrapers and their own cloaking shields, the towers would have relatively few defenses once the Senshi tracked them down, as they undoubtedly would.

It had occurred to the apprentice that she could do something about the lack of defense, and studying her surroundings, she found a perfect means to that end. One of the nearby buildings had been constructed in a Gothic style, complete with stone gargoyles. It was the work of only a few moments to cast a spell of flight, and although not very suitable for crossing large expanses of open sky in secret, the magic worked admirably for this little task of urban renewal. The apprentice wove an intricate pattern of magic, recreating the web of spells that had created her daimon-empress a few days before, then copying the pattern twice. The completed magic took on the form of glowing grey orbs, which she directed into the bodies of the three nearest statues. Satisfied, the apprentice called on the magic of her pager and teleported back to her room.

Archon had said he expected her to make progress. Let him see it in action.

# 

“Then what happened?” Minako asked eagerly.

The Senshi were sitting together in Michiru’s living room again, all except for Rei, who was sitting on a chair in her own bedroom, watching and listening through one of Saturn’s dimension doors. The training session that they should have been in the middle of—and which should likewise have turned into a birthday party for Michiru—had instead become an extended retelling of the afternoon’s events, with a cake less than two hours from Makoto’s oven being served all around.

“Well,” ChibiUsa said, “you can imagine that we had to talk fast to cover for Haruka’s little slip about Balance. I think we sort of managed to convince Michiru’s relatives that Haruka was annoyed at some jeweler or antiquities dealer for selling the Phoenix Egg and lying about it being one of a kind. Something like that, any way.”

“And they bought it?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Michiru said. “My relatives mistrust me, and they would be just as likely to disbelieve the word of anyone with me, even if it wasn’t such a hastily and obviously made-up story.”

“I did the best I could,” ChibiUsa complained. “You two were no help at all, and they wouldn’t have believed Hotaru for an instant.”

“Iph no my fau,” Saturn said around a mouthful of cake.

“I’m not saying you did anything wrong, ChibiUsa,” Michiru replied, “or that we could have done any better. It’s simply that my relatives weren’t going to accept any story we gave them.” Michiru looked at Saturn and added, “And don’t talk with your mouth full,” before cutting off and eating a corner from her own slice of the cake. Almost immediately, she started smiling and making sounds of enjoyment.

“You were saying something?” Haruka asked.

“Huph,” Michiru said, pointing a warning finger at Haruka while swallowing the mouthful of vanilla-frosted chocolate. “This is wonderful, Mako-chan.”

“Thanks. It’s nice to know that *some* people actually take the time to taste what they’re eating.” She glanced at Usagi and ChibiUsa, who were already well into their second pieces.

“Whe taphte it,” Usagi protested. “It jupht taphte pho goomph, whe can’t phtop eatingh.”

“I’m not even going to try to make sense of that,” Rei commented from her room.

“So what happened next?” Minako pressed.

“Nothing much,” Haruka said with a shrug. “The suspicious glances kept up right until the end, but the bird didn’t turn into a monster or do anything out of the ordinary, and the reading of the rest of the will was pretty routine. Up until Michiru offered to give back her mother’s share of the inheritance, that is; I thought Sumire was going to spit in her face when she said that.”

“Haruka.” Michiru’s expression was pained.

“Hey, she *did* look pretty pissed. Not that I can really blame her, I suppose; I mean, seventeen percent of half a billion yen *is* a lot of money.”

There was a heavy silence. “Seventeen percent... half a *billion*...?” Minako repeated, a very pronounced tic going off in her right eye. She turned to Michiru, who was beginning to look distraught. “Your grandfather left you THAT much money?”

“That’s what he left to her mother,” Haruka corrected. “Half of the account was divided up between the old man’s three kids, and the other half between his six grandchildren. Since she’s her mother’s legal heir, Michiru received that seventeen percent in addition to her own share. All told, she got about one hundred and twenty-six million yen out of the deal.”

There was another, even heavier silence. Finally, Minako shook her head and rolled away the tic in her eyelid. “Well, that definitely outdoes the present *I* got for you—but at least there’s no price on friendship. More cake, please, Mako-chan.” Everybody looked at her. Minako looked back. “What?”

“You’re not... intimidated by all that money?” Michiru asked.

“Or jealous?” Makoto added.

“It’s just money.” Once more, Minako looked around at them. “Are you telling me that when I’m a big idol, you’re all going to stop being my friends just because I’m rich and famous, and you aren’t?” Usagi’s face turned blue as a piece of cake took a wrong turn on its way to her stomach.

“It’s not a bad question,” Rei admitted. “Of course, if anybody here is going to be famous, it’ll be me.”

“You?” Minako exclaimed. “Why would anybody idolize you?”

Usagi was thumping her chest and swallowing repeatedly. Finally, the lump in her throat changed course, allowing her to breathe. Nobody seemed to notice.

“Well,” Rei said, with a flip of her hair, “I can write my own songs as well as sing them, can’t I?”

“Are you saying I *can’t*?”

“Ami could help you with lyrics, Mina-chan,” Calypso offered.

“Calypso,” Ami chided.

“Ha!” Rei laughed. “I could write *and* sing a song better than anything the two of you could put together.”

“Now wait a minute,” Ami added.

“Um, hello?” Usagi ventured. Nobody seemed to hear her.

“I hate to point out the obvious,” Haruka said, even though she obviously intended to enjoy her next words, “but Michiru already has you beat in terms of fame, fortune, and musical talent.”

“Haruka,” Michiru scolded, her tone slightly different from the one Ami had used on Calypso.

“Ah, nobody takes that classical stuff seriously,” Minako said with a dismissive wave.

“You said *what?*” Michiru asked, rounding on Minako with an amazed look that bordered on being insulted.

“Hello?” Usagi tried again. “Future queen of the world, here?” Again, nobody seemed to notice, even though this time she waved her hand. Luna and Artemis were already moving in to break up the argument, but Makoto—who normally would have been doing the same—was not, and neither were Saturn or ChibiUsa. The others only realized this when there was a yelp from ChibiUsa, the ringing sound of something metallic hitting something else, a streak of blue as Calypso shot across the room, and a violet-tinted blur as Saturn leapt up from her place on the couch to follow the Nereid.

Makoto had just fainted.

At about the point where Rei had tossed her head and egged Minako on, Makoto had experienced a very bizarre sensation which, for a moment, she had confused for both an itch in her neck and a wave of dizziness brought on by her empathic reception of the antagonistic emotions rising between Rei and Minako. When she tried to scratch the itch, her hand reached the Aegis, and the location of the annoying tingle sorted itself out in Makoto’s mind as coming from—or more precisely, existing WITHIN—the orbs themselves. The realization that she could feel what the Aegis were exposed to, even if only dully, was a startling one, but Makoto didn’t have a chance to dwell on it as the scrambling sensation in her head suddenly increased.

As Haruka stuck her and Michiru’s oar into the argument, so to speak, Makoto’s right hand—holding the blunted divider she had been using to cut and serve the cake—had been groping for the edge of the table. ChibiUsa, Saturn, and Setsuna had noticed the noise of the cutter scraping against the table and turned to look, whereas Calypso had picked up on Makoto’s oddly disjointed thoughts and the unexpected activity of the Aegis. Being the closest of the four, ChibiUsa had set down her plate and started to ask Makoto if she was feeling all right; a moment later, as Makoto’s eyes rolled back and her body went limp, ChibiUsa was frantically trying to catch the taller girl before she hit her head. The ringing had been the broad metal wedge falling from Makoto’s hand and bouncing off the table.

“What the...” Haruka began.

“She just passed out,” ChibiUsa said, laying Makoto down on the floor with some help from Saturn. Calypso tried to assist, only to withdraw with a flash of light, an electrical snap, and a brief exclamation consisting of whispery Nereid sounds and something in the musical Lunar tongue that might have been swearing.

“Caly?” Ami asked, blinking at her sister in surprise. “What happened?”

“The Aegis just bit me,” Calypso complained, shaking her left hand and giving Makoto’s green-tinted pink necklace an unfriendly look.

“She’s not hurt,” Saturn reported, kneeling next to Makoto and studying her closely with purple-glowing eyes. “The Aegis are doing something, but it’s not strong enough to be dangerous. I think she’s...”

Makoto’s eyes opened. After taking in the three faces above her, she asked, “What happened?”

“You fainted,” Saturn said.

“I don’t faint.”

“You didn’t used to trip over your own feet all the time, either,” Saturn replied.

“Right,” Makoto said, closing her eyes for an annoyed moment. “Could somebody look out the window and tell me what the weather looks like?”

Usagi was still asking “Huh?” as Luna growled and made for the nearest window. Once she’d pulled back the curtains, the weather turned out to be pretty clear and normal, and Luna frowned.

“I don’t see anything,” she reported.

“In here, Luna,” Rei said from the now-open door of her room. Luna hurried through the dimension door to join Rei, and—thanks to the greater elevation of Rei’s shrine as opposed to Michiru’s house—saw the problem almost immediately.

There was a large dim spot out in the middle of the city. Where the lights of hundreds of buildings should have been shining brightly, they were either flickering feebly or out entirely. It wasn’t precisely a blackout or a brownout—some buildings had full light while others next to them were dark—and after a few moments of close observation, Luna was able to make a good guess as to the center of the phenomenon.

“Maybe it’s just as well that we hadn’t gotten around to training yet tonight,” she noted, before ducking back through the dimension door to get the other girls up and moving. Rei was already transforming.

# 

Proteus was not given to the human habit of swearing, but it was strongly considering growing a mouth and some vocal chords so it could take up the habit. Just *thinking* the curses did not seem to have much effect.

What was going on up there? The electric lines it had tapped into as a supplementary energy source were going crazy, and most of the communications lines were flickering on and off, on again and off again, reducing a normally comprehensible flow of computer, television, and phone signals to utter gibberish. The lights around the area it had taken over for its ‘nest’ were flickering in and out with the same sort of annoying regularity, and radio signals were getting overwhelmed by static, making contact with its distant rat- drones and its human subjects impossible.

The lights buzzed low again. With a resigned half-shake of what was almost a head, Proteus shut off its optics and waited for the storm—whatever its nature—to ride itself out. There really wasn’t much else it could do.

# 

Not everyone had Proteus’s ability to calmly wait for resolution to the bizarre brownouts, or its inability to swear effectively. On a side street flanked by flickering streetlights and eerily-lit windows, the thick-bodied white car that had visited the park Friday evening was tearing along with screeching tires, roaring engine, and one pronounced profanity trailing in its wake.

“What do you MEAN, you can’t connect with the lab?” the driver demanded, her rasping voice all the more grating for its angry tone.

“The problem isn’t on this end.” Her companion’s voice, coming from the passenger side, was even more meek and servile—and afraid—than before. “If it was just interference, I could get through, but the signal keeps cutting out altogether. I think the systems at the lab are having the same problems as everything else hooked up to the city’s electrical grid.”

“The backup batteries had a full charge, didn’t they?”

“Yes...”

“Then quit making excuses and start triangulating the source of all this!”

# 

“The ENTIRE network is down?” Sciences said in disbelief.

“Maybe not ‘down,’ ma’am,” the technician admitted over the phone. “Forty percent of the sensors are off-line, another fifty percent or so are hovering on the edge of failure, and the sections that still work are too widely-scattered to be of any help. And their status keeps jumping around. A cluster will be working one second, gone the next, and then back on a moment later.”

Sciences sighed. “And this started out as such a nice day...”

“Ma’am?”

“Never mind. Are the portable scanners still working?”

“To some degree. There’s a lot of electromagnetic interference, so their range is about a quarter of what it ought to be.”

“That’s better than nothing.” There was a pause. “I can see a lot of browned—or blacked-out areas from up here. Are any of our other systems being affected by this disturbance?”

“Direct-line communications with facilities two through nine are sporadic or down entirely,” the technician replied. “Security’s still in contact with all their people via personal radio, although the interference is scrambling the signals. Their Director told me to pass on a report; the specimens housed in facilities four through seven all had to be destroyed to prevent their escape when the power to their cells failed.”

“Good riddance,” Sciences murmured. “What about the main facility?”

“Everything here’s still functioning normally, ma’am. All our other stations have checked in and reported only minor difficulties, aside from widespread radio static, but Security has extra personnel on watch in the other specimen labs.”

“Plus a small army in the streets, no doubt. Very well. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Have any sensors that are still functioning begin a full-spectrum analysis of their surroundings, and route the findings to my office.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And stop calling me that!”

# 

The nexus stood revealed to the world, a tall green tower wreathed in a halo of crackling blue and yellow energy. A virtual thunderstorm raged at the structure’s peak, bolts of lightning-intensity electricity surging back and forth between the many prongs, but in the open space between the spires and the zone of high-voltage destruction there stood a figure in armor, its arms crossed over the hilt of a downturned broadsword whose point rested on the top of the nexus. A tongue of lightning leapt from the heart of the nexus and licked over the armored form, the energy dissipating harmlessly against magical shields before it even touched the enspelled armor. Gleaming golden against the fury of the storm above him, Lord Mikhail Draco stood still and silent atop the mana nexus, waiting.

Many of his fellows in Atlantis did not hold a particularly high opinion of Draco’s intellectual prowess, and he himself would be the first to admit that the basics of magecraft and scientific theory gave him a powerful headache, but this was due more to a lack of interest than a lack of any basic mental skills. Draco’s talents lay in the direction of battle, both in personal duels and true warcraft. Tactics and strategy, the rules that governed warriors and armies, were well within his grasp, and they fired his imagination in a manner that no dusty old spellbook or technical journal could ever equal.

There were those among the Lords wiser and more brilliant than Draco, but none short of the Prince were his equal in military thinking, and only Cestus and a handful of others could match his fighting skills—and then only if he stood without his armor. Fully armed, Draco’s only rival was the Imperial bodyguard, Talos, but then, the nigh-invincible black knight was devoted solely to the task of protecting the royal person from harm, a duty that would otherwise surely fall to the last Lord of House Draco. Ties of blood and ancient loyalty accounted for some of it, as did more personal commitment, but it was his oath as a Knight of the Order Aeterna that would truly compel Mikhail to take up the task if Talos did not exist. Since the beginning of the Empire, the Order’s first duty had been to the Imperial Throne and its heirs, and as the most senior remaining member of that proud heritage, Lord Draco could allow no being of lesser skill to defend his Prince and Princess.

In that sense, Talos was the greatest ally the warrior could ask for, for the dark one’s presence ensured the safety of the royal twins and enabled Lord Draco to venture out to battle.

For one of the few times in his life, however, Draco’s feelings towards an imminent battle were curiously mixed. The prospect of facing opponents as skilled and as powerful as Senshi promised to make it a glorious contest, a trial of skill such as every true knight should face with joy and determination. That it came by Imperial command added the weight of duty, a charge to be borne proudly and with nothing less than total success.

And yet... to fight against Senshi...

In the dawn days of Atlantis, the Knights Aeterna had been granted their name by a powerful seer, who had foretold that the Empire would stand for ten times a thousand years and more, and that for all that time, the Order would stand by the Throne. They had been forever first among the warriors dedicated to the Empire, but the Senshi, who by the ancient records far predated the Empire, owed their allegiance to no master but humanity itself. There was an honor in that such as even the Knights Aeterna could not claim, no matter their rank or prowess. To be sure, individuals had fallen into darkness and dishonor, but the Senshi as a whole had never failed in their duty to the human race, and this new generation would not—could not—be any different. If they opposed Atlantis, it was because they believed that it was in the best interests of humanity to do so.

*And yet we ourselves are working towards that very same goal,* Draco mused. *The Rise of Atlantis and the survival of humanity are one and the same... if we could just speak with the Senshi, and make them understand...* The warrior sighed and chuckled ruefully. Not much chance of that, now, not after all these confrontations. And yet, a little hope was better than no hope at all. The Senshi were currently foes only due to circumstance and misunderstanding, both of which could be changed; blood was another matter. This mission was of vital importance, but it remained just one battle in a larger war, a war in which the Senshi would certainly play a part, perhaps even as allies to Atlantis -unless blood came between them.

A flash of red light some distance away from the nexus drew Draco’s eye. They had arrived. There was an ancient battle cry—“Victory or death!”—which had always inspired Draco, but he understood that tonight, there must be victory and *life,* on both sides.

Shrugging back his long cape as he lifted his blade in his right hand, Lord Draco stepped off the edge of the nexus and soared down towards the battle.

 

# 

 

_(Michiru’s living room. Setsuna, Saturn, and ChibiUsa are sitting around the table, which Calypso is hovering above in the form of a chyetsa board. Behind them, Usagi is eating cake like there’s no tomorrow.)_

**ChibiUsa** : So let me get this straight: the soldiers can advance or attack one space in any direction; the knights can move up to three spaces, but can only attack at a range of one; and the wizards can only move one space at a time, but can attack out to three?

**Calypso** : *That’s right. And don’t forget...*  _(She pauses.)_  *Oh, I think we’re on.*

_(The three friends look at the camera, then at each other. Finally, ChibiUsa sighs and stands up.)_

**ChibiUsa** : I’m not really sure if it’s a moral, exactly, but there’s a recurring theme in this episode about will, particularly in the sense of stubbornness. Makoto is pushing to overcome the problems of the Aegis, and they’re pushing back at her; Usagi and Shingo push each other around; Michiru takes the suspicions and dislike of her relatives without complaint; and Rei and Minako start up another all-around clash of the egos.

**Saturn** : I think it’s what’s known as the Ranma Factor.

**ChibiUsa** : Hey, is this my narration or what?

**Saturn** : Oh, sorry.  _(Goes back to studying the floating gameboard.)_

**ChibiUsa** : There have been any number of times in the past when our respective determination not to quit has saved our lives or the world, but there have also been just as many times when it’s landed us in the middle of all sorts of trouble and misunderstanding that could have been avoided if we’d just sat down to talk rationally about our problems. Sheer persistence has its place, but it really works best in combination with other traits, not as the one and only solution to every single problem you encounter.

**Calypso** : *If this is going to be a discussion on rational thinking, shouldn’t Setsuna or I be the one to do it?*  _(Saturn and ChibiUsa both give her annoyed looks, but ChibiUsa glances at Usagi, who is still stuffing herself on chocolate cake, and has to sigh. Setsuna pats her comfortingly on the back as the scene fades out.)_

17/02/02 (Revised, 22/08/02)

From two weeks to two and a half months... *sigh*

I’d just like to extend a big thank you to all the readers, for being as patient as you have been in waiting around for this episode to come out. I’ve received a number of emails on the subject of the delay, and they have without exception been helpful and welcome.

Up next:  
-Fight! Fight! Fight!


	29. Triple Play, or A Busy Knight In Tokyo

# 

Makoto’s apartment was faring a little better than some other residences during this evening’s ongoing cycle of brownouts, blackouts, and burnouts. The girls had turned the lights off when they left, so none of the bulbs had been flash-fried by the shifting current, and while the VCR and radio clocks were blinking 12:00 in the most traditional annoying fashion, Calypso could fix that in seconds when they got home. The fridge was alternating between operation and dormancy every few minutes, but that wasn’t nearly long enough for any of the contents to spoil.

The real problem was the new behavior of the young sapling. At about the same time that the power problems had started, the little tree’s leaves had rustled silently, as though a faint breeze had blown through the room. This had been followed by an odd scratching sound, as though the roots were scraping against the inside of the large pot, and then a single low creak from the slender trunk. Silence had returned after that, but not stillness; the leaves of the tree continued to move, and they were being joined in that dance by the leaves and blossoms of the other plants in the living room.

If someone had been present and had looked at the dirt in all of the assorted pots, he or she would have noticed a number of small buds working their way up from the roots of each plant. The sight was nearly identical to time-lapse footage of sprouting seeds, but it begged the obvious question of what exactly would be the result of this curious spring.

# 

Neptune, Uranus, Venus, and Artemis were standing together on the roof of a neighborhood convenience store about five blocks from the nexus which was the heart of tonight’s disturbance. Saturn had not wanted to risk opening a dimension door in the middle of a residential area—particularly not with so much electrical energy in the air—and so, since teleporting would have left them briefly weakened and smack in the middle of what was so obviously a trap, they had run here from Hikawa, with Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Luna breaking off a few blocks back to circle around and come at the tower from a different direction.

“Well, there’s definitely *somebody* up there,” Venus said, “but I can’t tell if it’s my buddy from the last time or not. Uranus?”

“I don’t think it’s the same guy. Not unless he had a major change of wardrobe.” Uranus had eyes like a hawk, and she was currently exercising that particular gift. “Whoever’s up there is covered with armor; it’s shining from all the light that artificial storm’s giving off.”

“The knight Ryo mentioned seeing?” Neptune suggested. She was standing over by the corner, keeping watch in case any units appeared and attacked.

“Maybe. It might also be one of those nth-generation super units Luna warned us about, but we won’t know until we get closer.” Uranus scratched her neck. “Personally, I’d rather it was the knight.”

“Harboring a girlhood fantasy, are we?” Venus asked with an arch look.

“Hundreds,” Uranus replied without a trace of embarrassment. “Come around some time and I’ll let you in on a few of them.” She winked while, behind her, Neptune’s turned back stiffened noticeably.

“Do you have something in your eye?” Venus asked innocently.

“Could you take a look for me?”

“Sure.” Stepping closer, Venus lifted her face and hand to mimic checking Uranus’s eyes. Lips hardly moving, she murmured, “You are a terrible flirt, Haruka. You know that, right?”

“It’s good for her,” Uranus said in the same quiet tone. “And if you object so much, why are you helping me?”

“Maybe I’m just keeping in practice.”

“Or maybe you want to steal a kiss,” Uranus countered, smiling.

“Down, girl,” Venus chided, putting her finger to the tip of Uranus’s nose and pushing her back.

“How are the others doing?” Neptune asked then. She had not turned away from her vigil over their immediate surroundings, but from her timing—and the slightly peevish note in her voice—she seemed to have a pretty good idea of what was going on behind her back. Of course, Venus realized as she stepped away, Neptune *did* have the Mirror...

“I haven’t seen them since they went behind that row of houses there a minute ago,” Uranus replied casually, “but nothing’s blown up yet, so they’re probably doing okay.” She looked down at Artemis, who was sitting behind Venus in his tiger/panther form, his forepaws up on the rim of the roof. “You’re *sure* that letting Jupiter try to shut that thing down on her own is a good idea?”

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Artemis replied. “With all the electrical energy flying around, Venus can’t use her Chain to cut this nexus down without the risk of creating a feedback loop in the process. Mars could burn it down, but she’d have to set fire to something else first to avoid the magic being soaked up by the nexus, and I doubt that whoever’s up there would give her the time. That leaves us with going for the ley lines.”

“It took three of us the last time we tried it that way,” Uranus reminded him.

“That was a little different. There are only so many ley lines carrying the energy of one element in any given area; setting up a nexus to draw on multiple elements allows it to tap into more ley lines and makes it seem more powerful on the surface, but it also makes it more vulnerable to disruption. Trust me, it won’t be any harder for Jupiter to shut down this nexus than it was for any one of you to neutralize the first one. With the Aegis helping, it’ll actually be a lot easier for her.”

“I don’t think a tendency to make her pass out really qualifies as ’help.’”

# 

Being able to feel a necklace as though it was part of your body was just plain weird.

Jupiter had been constantly *aware* of the Aegis since she’d found them, and that sense had grown clearer in the intervening days and weeks, as Luna and Artemis put her through a very careful series of exercises to help improve her control of the Weapon. Even so, she’d never suspected that she might start feeling as though the Aegis were physically joined to her.

Fortunately, that very disorienting sensation had ceased the moment she’d transformed. Jupiter was glad of that, for it would have been beyond weird and well into the realm of seriously freaky to be able to feel a cloud of sixteen free-floating high-voltage orbs as though *they* were all part of her body, and she had enough things to worry about at the moment.

“Clear,” Mercury said, lowering the Caduceus and gesturing for the others to begin moving towards the next house. They were leap-frogging their way around the nexus, stopping behind cover so that Mercury could scan the vicinity for any sign of units without being spotted by anyone who might be on top of the nexus itself. The process was trickier than it might otherwise have been, thanks to the electromagnetic interference the tower was throwing out; the varying frequencies and intensities were making a mess of Mercury’s attempts to scan at a distance, forcing them all to wait while the Caduceus sorted out the real information from the ghosts and echoes masking it.

“How are we doing?” Mars asked as she joined Mercury behind the wall, treading carefully to avoid stepping on someone’s little garden.

“I think this ought to do it,” Mercury replied, checking the map currently displayed on her visor. “We’re far enough from the others to be out of the path of any response that comes from the nexus when they move in on it.”

“Then do we tell them to go?” Jupiter asked, half-raising her communicator.

“Not just yet,” Luna said, holding up a hand as she stood with her back to the wall and glanced quickly around the corner. Unlike Artemis, she had chosen to assume her hybrid form, a black-furred body as tall as Jupiter’s and appearing just as strong, with the added bonus of short, sharp nails on the fingers and a cat’s soft paws and retractable claws on the ends of the legs. Luna’s head in this form had a cat’s mobile ears and bewhiskered muzzle, all three of which were at work now, and her long tail was twitching in synchronous agitation.

“What is it?” Mars asked.

“We’re being watched,” Luna replied in a soft growl, the fur on the back of her neck rising visibly. “I think...”

The only way Jupiter could later describe what happened next was to say that the ground suddenly came to life and tried to knock them all down. One moment it was a patch of rich brown soil and a few small blades of grass, and the next it was a pillar of earth, rising up with explosive force in the very middle of the small group.

For all the speed of the attack, it didn’t accomplish much. Luna leapt back and away with a dazzling combination of human agility and catlike reflexes, escaping the thrust of the hidden enemy with ease. Mars jumped clear as well, warned by the sudden twinge from her built-in warning system, and Mercury—responding to the bright red light on her visor—was not far behind her. That left Jupiter, who unlike her friends, didn’t try to move away. Instead, she launched an attack, gathering up the energy for Sparkling Wide Pressure and then slamming it directly into the living dirt with both hands at point-blank range.

The unit—for she could recognize it as such, now that it was in the open— went flying away from Jupiter in a long, ungraceful arc, sailing past a hastily backpedaling Mercury before crashing heavily to the ground. Rather than flailing about in an attempt to stand, the creature’s dirt-clod substance boiled up almost like water in a fountain, flowing from its supine position directly into an upright stance. Jupiter’s hit had clearly staggered the unit, for its left arm was hanging low, but the right was up in an aggressive position, and the fingers curled and hardened into a claw as Jupiter followed up her electrical blast with a rushing bodycheck, the fingers of her trailing arm clutched around a piece of the Aegis.

The unit swung at her, its arm glancing off a narrow field of energy being generated between three of the green-glowing pink orbs, and then Jupiter smashed into the automaton’s body, her shoulder protected by another force-barrier. Jupiter might not have mastered the Aegis, but she’d learned a *few* of their tricks, at least, and though the unit didn’t go flying five feet this time, the collision did knock it back down. Instead of rising, the unit’s body spread out in all directions along the ground, sending up a spray of dust as it began to sink into the dirt.

“Don’t let it submerge again!” Luna called out, even as Jupiter sent several more spheres rushing forward to surround the unit and seize it with beams of force. There was no electrical sizzle or brilliant flash of light, but the artificial being halted half-in and half-out of the ground, thrashing about within the pale green radiance of five orbs. Gritting her teeth against the spreading ache in her fingers, Jupiter brought her hand up and caused the glowing spheres to shoot a meter into the air, then turned on her heel and brought her arm down, a motion which sent the orbs sailing over her head and down to the ground in front of her.

The effect of all this on the unit was rough, to say the least. It was yanked explosively from its semi-immersion in the soil, hurled into the air, and slammed back down to earth under a crushing field of green force. The thing tried to rise again, looking for a moment like a man struggling to stand under some incredible weight, and then the edge of the Frost Lancet cut through both the green light and its prisoner. There was an emerald flash as the Aegis scattered, and the unit writhed wildly under the cold blade, but Mercury ignored both the light and the lashing limbs and drove her Weapon deeper, very nearly pinning the unit to the earth.

With both hands on the grip and no small amount of effort, Mercury wrenched the Lancet up through the unit’s body, to swing free with a spray of dirt and small stones torn from the innards of the unnatural creature. Even riven in half from the waist up, the unit did not quit; while the left half of its body scrabbled at the ground for balance, the right side—arm, leg, shattered head and all—moved like the fingers of a huge claw to grab at Mercury. This clumsy move was met by a blast of icy water, a Shine Aqua Illusion which Mercury had begun as soon as she had pulled the Caduceus free. The unit’s substance simply sloughed away under the force of the sustained assault, leaving a small pile of frozen wet dirt on the ground and a great deal of icy spray on the wall of the house beyond.

Mercury had reversed her grip on the Caduceus and tucked it behind her arm to make it easier to maneuver during her attack. Correcting her hold now, she eyed the fallen enemy with a suitably cold look that also held a degree of chagrin. “I didn’t pick it up,” Mercury said in embarrassment. “Not a thing, until it was already attacking.”

“Third-generation units are almost totally indistinguishable from mundane earth until they move,” Luna said as she walked back over. “Even a standard scan from the Caduceus would miss it with all this interference.”

“*You* noticed it,” Mercury replied with a hint of annoyance.

“I have sharper senses in this form than you do,” Luna countered, “plus more experience at sneaking around than you and your old self combined—and I still didn’t notice the thing until we were standing right on top of it.”

“I didn’t pick up a thing until it attacked, either,” Mars offered. This was true, and a phenomenon she had noticed in the past; when there was something major setting off her internal danger sense, lesser threats could sometimes slip by her, unnoticed in the psychic noise of the greater problem. “Did you, Jupiter?”

“Not from that,” Jupiter said, her gaze fixed on the mana nexus. Even if it had been invisible, she felt certain that she would have been able to tell where the thing was. There was a massive concentration of electrical energy directly ahead, and her sense of it sent a shiver down Jupiter’s spine.

The plant-like units, with their aura of almost-life, of nature twisted into unnatural *wrongness,* made Jupiter feel sick and sweaty whenever she was close to them. This feeling was certainly present now, telling her clearly that this nexus was fashioned from the same ugly, half-alive green material as its predecessors, but the *energy* of the nexus evoked a very different response. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, Makoto felt invigorated. She was perfectly content to sit back and enjoy the mix of gossip, idle chat, and attempts to coax Usagi out of hiding that typically filled stormy afternoons spent with her friends, but when she was alone in her apartment, Makoto liked to stand out on the balcony with her eyes closed, breathing and feeling the gathering energy in the air before the storm broke.

That same exhilaration was rushing through Jupiter now, but with it came an unfamiliar reaction from a deep corner of her mind, a blend of deep sadness and unsettling fear that she could not explain. It was as if part of her, on some instinctive level, recognized the danger posed by the nexus. Jupiter couldn’t tell if the feeling was coming from her vague awareness of Amalthea’s memories, from her weird connection to the Aegis, or from the core of her Senshi powers, but she knew she didn’t like it, and she fully intended to deal with the thing that was making her feel this way.

As Jupiter looked towards the blazing peak of the nexus, she was aware that Mercury was looking at *her,* and that her friend’s moment of mild self-recrimination had been replaced by sympathy. Mercury could recognize what Jupiter was feeling at the moment because she had been through it herself; at least as much as Luna’s and Mars’s attempts, that helped Mercury to get over her embarrassment at having missed the unit.

“Who’s back there?” an unfamiliar voice called.

The three Senshi and their advisor traded a quick look and then silently scrambled behind the house, away from the voice. Luna pointed to a pair of second-story balconies adjoining unlit rooms, and the four of them leapt up and then ducked down as best they could. It took Jupiter a moment to get the Aegis to descend and darken themselves; they lay on the wooden porch around her like so many marbles and earned a brief look from Mars, who seemed to be trying to decide whether to smile at the current state of the mighty Weapon or be nervous about its proximity.

The man who came around the side of the house a moment later was moving slowly and peering around at the backyard very carefully. He seemed harmless enough, just a nervous resident investigating some unusual noise, but they could all sense something odd about him. Mercury noticed a lack of projected thoughts, something that her Nereid memories associated with a degree of mental focus that would be very uncommon in an average person. Jupiter, on the other hand, was alerted to the fact that despite the man’s outward appearance of caution, there was no accompanying *inward* sense of caution—no fear. Mars just got a good old-fashioned bad vibe when she focused on the stranger, and Luna’s heightened feline senses—all six of them—picked out things that even the three Senshi missed.

It was almost a dead giveaway when he hardly even glanced at the nexus, but they weren’t fully sure until the man’s left hand came around into their field of view and was revealed to be a thick, two-pronged claw of white bone rather than five fingers. Immediately, a black shadow flickered over the railing of the first balcony as Luna moved to dispatch the unit, her meehara a sliver of moonlight in her hand.

Perhaps alerted by that flash of light off the blade of the knife, the unit looked up and raised its right arm in time to protect its head; the dough-like flesh parted easily before the meehara’s sharp edge, but sustained little real damage. Realizing this, Luna used the leverage of her weapon to pull the unit’s blocking arm low so that she could slash its face with the claws of her free hand. Luna’s claws were not nearly as effective as her knife, but they left four satisfactory scratches running across the unit’s already-warping face, and one of these marks went right over its eyes.

Strictly speaking, the unit did not need eyes to function effectively, and by that reasoning, Luna’s attack should not have impaired her foe. However, whether the unit *needed* eyes or not was quite besides the point; it had them, and its facsimiles of eyes were every bit as sensitive as the genuine article. With a strange, gurgling snarl, the unit fell back. Bone spikes erupted from its arms as it lashed out—blindly—at its assailant, but Luna was already well outside their reach.

“I’ve got this one,” Mars said, standing up. “FIRE SOUL!”

“No, wait!” Luna raised her hand once more, but this time she moved too slowly. Left off-balance by its own clumsy attack and unable to see the incoming fireball, the unit was engulfed in brilliant red and orange flames—flames, Luna noted with a growling sigh, that were at least five times brighter and ten times larger than Jupiter’s brief bursts of electricity, and which illuminated the entire area like a neon sign. Mars realized her error at once, and her face turned nearly as red as her flame, but there was nothing to do about it now except follow through on the attack and finish this enemy off.

The Fire Soul lacked the power to incinerate this generation of unit with the same ease it had demonstrated against the flammable first-generation types, but it was still enough to send the unit to its knees. Blinded, with most of its upper body withered and black and its skin cracked and flaking away in the aftermath of the intense heat, the unit simply could not offer any sort of defense as Mercury turned loose another blast of her Aqua Illusion and froze it where it knelt. Luna followed this up by rushing forward and bringing the hilt of her dagger down at the base of the unit’s neck with both hands.

Superheated and flash-frozen, the unit shattered under the force of the blow, its right arm and a large chunk of its torso bursting into a hundred pieces. Luna stepped back and spun on one paw, delivering a solid kick that took the ice-encrusted head clean off what remained of the unit’s shoulders. The unbalanced left arm fell away on its own a moment later, leaving the unit’s legs and the lower third of its torso frozen to the grass.

Satisfied that this enemy was down for good, Luna turned and looked at the girls. Mercury already had her attention and the Caduceus directed towards the mana nexus, and Jupiter was reactivating the Aegis; Mars met Luna’s gaze with her arms folded and the bright blush reduced to a light tint in her cheeks.

“The power of Mars isn’t very well-suited to sneaking around at night unnoticed,” Luna said with surprising calm.

“I’ll try to stick with my ofudas and hand-to-hand skills if a situation like this comes up in the future,” Mars promised. Luna nodded silently.

“In the meantime,” Mercury said, “may I suggest that we all get ready for company?” She pointed towards the nexus, and more specifically at the small dark shape which was soaring in their direction and getting larger with every second.

There was a sudden flash of light from behind them, but when they spun to confront it, they found Uranus, Neptune, and Venus standing in the familiar teleport formation, with Artemis—back in his everyday cat-form—riding along on Venus’s shoulders.

“We saw the flash and figured the original plan was moot,” Uranus explained as she released Neptune’s and Venus’s hands. She glanced at Mars, but held any comments back for later.

“What do you have, Mercury?” Artemis asked as he hopped off of Venus and blinked back into his predatory form, his eyes fixed on the approaching enemy. It was close enough now for all of them to see the fiery colors of the heavy plate mail, if not the finer details of the work.

“That armor seems to be shielded,” Mercury answered. Her visor was filled with an enhanced image of the knight and a great many boxed captions of information. “I can pick up human life signs and a high level of unspecified magical energy, but that’s it. I wouldn’t recommend punching him, though.”

“I wasn’t thinking of it,” Uranus said as she summoned the Space Sword. She and the others fell silent then, as the flying knight came in for a landing at the rear of the yard. His descent was the slow, controlled sort of levitation they had seen many times before, but his gleaming armor was an entirely new feature, and one which presented a problem.

The rules were different when fighting with armor, as opposed to making do without. An armored enemy could afford to stand and take some blows, and would therefore move and react differently than a target whose only defense was getting out of the way of an attack, or one that could conjure magical shields. Discounting many monsters with naturally armored bodies, the Senshi had really only ever faced two opponents who wore armor. One had been Endymion, who hadn’t precisely been an enemy even during his time under Beryl’s control; the other was Galaxia, who most certainly hadn’t needed the protection, and had likely worn her golden battle dress as more of a fashion statement than anything else. Neither of these cases had given the Senshi much helpful experience for dealing with other armor-clad warriors.

One thing they could infer was that if the knight needed his armor because he lacked the innate ability to command the force-fields and energy-deflecting powers past opponents had used, then getting him out of his heavy metal wardrobe would greatly reduce his ability to fight them. But how to get rid of the armor without seriously harming the man inside? Destroying dark spirits and unthinking machines was one thing, but killing a human was a whole other matter, and one which the Senshi were usually able to avoid. They had faced a number of human, once-human, or humanoid alien adversaries over the years, and while many of those people had died, the Senshi themselves had not been forced to kill more than a small handful. None of them were eager to see that change, even if it did always put them at something of a disadvantage, since most of their enemies had no compunctions about wiping the floor with the Senshi if they got the chance.

It never helped when the enemy looked like this knight, either. Taller than even Jupiter and Uranus, the dimensions of his armor and the strong line of his chin—the only part of him that was visible through the metal—suggested that he possessed the build to match his height. The armor’s design only added to the trouble, with the dragon’s head adorning the torso and the one forming the helm both appearing to glare fiercely, perhaps even intelligently, at those who stood before them. When people dressed in that sort of attire and carried weapons like the heavy-bladed sword in the knight’s left hand, they were seldom interested in playing nice.

Therefore, when the warrior swept his sword-arm out to the side, crossed his right arm before his chest, and bowed from the waist, the Senshi were understandably caught off-guard. Mars, Mercury, and Neptune were all automatically returning the respectful salute with cautious bows of their own before they realized it, and Luna and Artemis both nodded slowly. Venus smiled and folded her arms, her head tilting unconsciously to the right as she studied the knight; Jupiter and Uranus merely stood their ground, Weapon and Talisman at the ready.

“Six Senshi,” the knight said, his helmet turning slightly from side to side as he examined them. “Two with Talismans, two with Weapons... and two members of the Nekoron warrior societies, unless I miss my guess,” he added, looking at Luna and Artemis closely and with interest. “You two are a long way from home. I wasn’t aware that there had been any contact between Terra and Mau in this age.”

Before any of the others had a chance to speak, Artemis rumbled, “Name yourself, warrior,” in a formal tone that only Luna and Mercury recognized—and then only from another lifetime.

The knight seemed to recognize it as well, for he straightened and touched his blade to his right shoulder in another salute. “I am Mikhail, scion and Lord of House Draco of Atlantis, Lord High Defender and acting commander of the Order Aeterna, Lord General of the Imperial Legions, and champion of the Imperial Throne.” He managed to get all of that out in one sentence, leaving the Senshi momentarily stunned and giving them a clue as to why *their* introductory speeches always seemed to throw their enemies into a mental stall. Draco barely paused for breath as he asked, “And you?”

Artemis stood up on his hind legs as he blinked into his hybrid form, a body somewhat taller and considerably heavier than Luna’s, sporting a tufted mane about the head. “Artemis, of the Urrinn Pride of Clan Raharhaam, m’ram’ha of the Garheer, and Master of Arms to the Royal Family of the Moon.” The heavy- bladed metal claws Artemis had used back in Atlantis were on his forearms now, and he crossed the s’srah before his chest, points curved over his shoulders as he returned the knight’s original bow.

“Here goes the testosterone,” Uranus said under her breath, bracing herself for an elbow in the ribs. Surprisingly, it didn’t come; Neptune was smiling in amused agreement.

“The Moon?” Draco repeated, lowering his weapon. “Interesting.” Although the Senshi couldn’t see it through the visor of the dragon-helmet, Draco’s eyes flickered briefly to the silver-capped black pearl in the hilt of Luna’s knife. “And a m’ram’ha working alongside an elite of the Feri’al? Very interesting indeed. The last I had heard, your societies had been all but blood enemies for the better part of two millennia.”

“Your information is more than a little out of date, Atlantean,” Artemis said, pointedly ignoring the look Luna sent his way, “and we’re not here to discuss ancient history. That nexus behind you is a device whose use has been forbidden for twenty centuries, and we intend to remove it.”

“Then I fear we have a problem. I have been ordered to use every means at my command to defend the nexus. You will have to get past me to reach it.”

“You may want to reconsider that,” Uranus advised him, raising her voice. “Venus kicked your scarred friend’s butt pretty easily, so I can’t imagine that your chances against all of us would be very good.”

Draco chuckled. His laughter, the Senshi noted, held an emotional warmth that their other enemies tended not to display. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “And perhaps I might surprise you.”

“Enough!” Jupiter snapped, her outburst punctuated by a brief flash and crackle from the Aegis. “Either put up, or shut up and get out of our way.”

For the first time, Draco frowned. “I have no wish to needlessly pursue a battle with you,” he said firmly, his voice cautious but unafraid, “but my orders are clear. Fight me if you feel you must, but I cannot allow you to pass.”

“Your choice,” Jupiter retorted angrily. In response to her emotional state, energy rippled through the Aegis and then fired out at Draco in the form of a minor lightning bolt.

There was a blur of white, gold, and black as Draco’s sword came up into the path of the electrical discharge. The blast parted around the suddenly white-lined edge of the blade and sizzled past the knight’s heavy shoulder plates. One arm of the forked beam hit the ground near the fence and left a patch of scorched grass; the other half of the bolt arced up over the top of the fence and fizzled out in the air.

As the sparks of Jupiter’s attack faded, Draco raised his right arm and lay the flat of his sword across it, looking down the length of the weapon at Jupiter as he called out, “ICTUS!” There was a low-pitched hum and then a whine and a flash of light as a vaguely cone-shaped white projectile shot forth from the sword and hissed through the air. The Aegis came forward immediately, three of the smaller sections swatting the counterattack out of existence with another of the green barriers.

Draco was already set to fire another bolt at Jupiter, but golden force smashed across the back of his left gauntlet, a quick shot from Venus that spoiled the warrior’s aim and sent his attack flying well over Jupiter’s head. Draco recovered almost immediately, but had to forego launching another blast in order to use his weapon in the more traditional fashion, raising it to the level of his head to catch the Space Sword before its edge found his armor. The white edge of Draco’s broadsword and the yellow blade of Uranus’s Talisman connected with a violent hiss. Each warrior was using two hands in an attempt to push the other off balance, and though their weapons continued to spit sparks from their point of contact, neither gained any further distance.

Considering that Draco was probably half again as big as she was and could bring the weight of his sword and his mail to bear, Uranus wasn’t so much impressed as she was reasonably satisfied by the knight’s ability to match her strength for strength. She wasn’t about to let him know that, of course. Faking a look of strained effort, Uranus allowed herself to be slowly pushed back and down until she was in a half-crouch and using the Space Sword’s slender but nigh-indestructible blade to hold back Draco’s heavy broadsword. Then she stood up, using the extra force to push her enemy’s weapon away as she jumped back.

As soon as Uranus was clear, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter attacked together, combining Crescent Beam, Fire Soul, and Aegis-enhanced Supreme Thunder into a single high-energy blast. Mercury and Neptune did not join in, for there was already enough raw force in the strike to wipe out anything short of a sturdy daimon; anything more would have been sheer overkill until they had a better idea of Draco’s ability to withstand their powers.

They got that information a split-second later, when the attack collided with a barrier of force surrounding Draco’s body. The bulk of the energy was canceled out in a rippling flash, and although Venus’s Crescent Beam pierced the shield and scored a direct hit against the ornate breastplate, the only visible effect was a brief shift in Draco’s stance as the force of the shot knocked his upper body slightly back.

The knight’s swordarm had dropped to his side as he adjusted his posture; he brought it and his blade around now in a wide, sweeping arc, this time shouting, “ARCUS!” and unleashing a whip-like length of that white force along the path the sword cut through the air. Everyone still on the ground got out of the way as the three-meter wide wave lashed across the length of the yard and hammered against the back wall of the house, leaving a definite dent in the siding. Landing atop the rail of the balcony where Mercury was still standing, Venus countered with another Crescent Beam, which once again either ignored or punched through Draco’s shields, and again failed to even scratch his armor. On the other balcony, Jupiter let fly with Sparkling Wide Pressure, only to see it explode ineffectually against the knight’s semi-visible shield.

“You can do better than that,” Draco said critically, pointing his sword at Uranus one-handed and triggering its shooting power again. Neptune put herself in the way and sent the projectile flying back at its creator with Submarine Reflection, and triumph glowed briefly in her eyes when the redirected blast went right through Draco’s forcefield.

“Mercury!” Neptune called, asking for confirmation.

“I see it,” Mercury answered. “Stick with focused attacks! They can push through the shield!”

Uranus and Venus responded to that by combining Crescent Beam and Space Sword Blaster into a sliver of golden force that moved almost too quickly for the eye to follow. It crossed the field of Draco’s barrier with no trouble and hit the knight’s armor with an explosive report, blowing him backwards into the fence with the heavy crash of metal against stone.

Surprisingly—and a bit disturbingly—the knight was grinning as he regained his footing a moment later. “That’s more like it!” Draco applauded, before sending a second whip-blast at them, this time angled up towards Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. They cleared it easily, but the wooden posts of the balconies and the glass doors beyond were crushed and blown to splinters, sending down a dangerous rain of jagged edges and piercing points which Uranus, Neptune, and the two cats had to do their best to dodge.

Venus got a clever idea then and sent her Chain snaking down at Draco before she had even hit the ground, trying to tangle up the sword and yank it from its master’s grip. The shield did not materialize to block the Chain, and Draco’s armor slowed his reactions just enough for the first part of Venus’s tactic to go over perfectly, but when the Senshi of Love hit the ground and pulled, she was startled to discover that the knight didn’t budge. She dug in her heels, but Draco maintained his balance and his one-handed grip.

“Guy weighs... a freaking ton!” Venus exclaimed through her teeth, looking at the others. “What are you waiting for? Get going!” Uranus, Neptune, and Artemis did not move to leave, but the others all took the opportunity and made a break for it. Draco watched them for just an instant before turning his attention to Venus.

“PULSO!” he cried, shooting his right arm forward as if throwing a punch. A wide blast of force much the size and shape of Draco’s clenched fist flew from the knuckles of his gauntlet, catching Venus in the chest and smashing her backwards with sufficient force that the links of her Chain slipped through her fingers, shredding the material of her gloves. Not done yet, Draco aimed his still-entangled but otherwise released sword at the ground in front of Uranus and Neptune and called out, “ICTUS!” The shot sent a spray of dirt up into their faces, and in the moment that the two Senshi and Artemis turned their heads to protect their eyes, Draco whirled and launched into the air in pursuit of the others.

Laying stretched out on her back, eyes closed, Venus let out a soft but profound, “Ow.” She started to lift her hands and then breathed out sharply through her nose as the movement caused the slashes along her palms to sting. When Venus opened her eyes, Neptune’s worried face was looking down from the left; Venus waved up at her. “Uranus took off to be a hero, I see.”

“Hai,” Neptune said with a short-lived look of amusement. “How do you feel?”

“Like I was just punched in the chest,” Venus replied, laughing and coughing simultaneously.

“Of course. Hold still.” Neptune lightly probed Venus’s collarbone with her fingertips, then checked the breastbone and ribs. At length, she looked up at Artemis, who had knelt to Venus’s right.

“Nothing’s broken as far as I can tell, but I’m not the medical authority that Mercury is, and that seemed like a fairly heavy blow.”

“Try the Mirror,” Artemis advised.

Neptune blinked. “Ara?”

“Just try it. Hold it up and angle it so that you can see Venus’s reflection, and focus on the here and now. It’ll start up with the usual metaphorical imagery if you let your mind wander.”

Frowning, Neptune did as she was told. At first the reflection was totally normal, the same thing any other mirror would show, but then the glass filled with a swirl of faint blue light, and the image changed. Neptune’s eyes widened as, in the reflection, Venus’s skeleton was suddenly aglow with a golden light that was very similar to the light which surrounded her entire body. That light was, however, the *only* thing surrounding Venus’s body, as if her entire fuku had just turned into pure energy—and not very opaque energy, at that. Neptune blushed and lost her focus, and the image vanished instantly, replaced by one of Venus with her head bowed and her right hand placed over her heart, a gold ring on her third finger. Neptune was immediately certain that it wasn’t a wedding ring, but the vision faded before she could get a closer look.

“Well?” she heard Artemis ask. “Did it work?”

“It worked,” Neptune said, not surprised that Artemis apparently hadn’t seen anything other than a normal reflection. “Nothing’s broken,” she continued, helping Venus sit up, “although she’ll have some spectacular bruises unless Saturn sees to her. And there are these,” Neptune added, turning one of Venus’s hands palm up and frowning at the lightly bleeding cut, “but they aren’t deep.”

“That’s one less worry, then. Let’s...” Artemis paused, his eyes sliding sideways just before he made a fantastic leap at something that had just slipped around the corner of the house. There was a flash of red light, the sound of something tearing, and then three soft thumps. Neptune turned around in time to see a first-generation unit laying in three pieces on the ground, one of its energy-spitting ‘eyes’ seeming to glare balefully up at Artemis and his heavy claws before its body crumbled away.

“I’ll make a quick check of the area for any more of them,” the half-man feline said. “You two head after the others.”

“Be”—Artemis disappeared around the corner—“careful,” Venus finished with a resigned shake of her head. Looking up at Neptune, she sat back, leaning lightly on her sore hands and smiling coyly. “Enjoy the show?”

“You noticed.”

Venus tapped the side of her head. “Goddess of Love, remember? I pick up on all the emotional frequencies that have the slightest thing to do with the job, and you *did* like what you saw. Besides,” she added in a less teasing tone, “you don’t blush very often. Considering that you were looking at my reflection when it happened *and* that the Mirror can apparently see through things...” She shrugged.

“I’m sorry about that,” Neptune apologized as she helped Venus stand up.

“That’s okay. You couldn’t have known what your Mirror was going to do, and I’m not embarrassed that you saw me naked and liked it. In fact, I’d be hurt if you *didn’t* think I was attractive.”

“I am partial to blondes,” Neptune admitted with a small smile. “Particularly the ones who run track.”

“Somehow I guessed that might be the case. And now you have something you can use to get back at Uranus for that bit on the roof. Come on,” Venus said then, stretching as she turned towards the nexus and the brief flashes going off somewhere closer to it than she was. “We’d better catch up and see what sort of trouble the others have managed to get into without us.”

# 

Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury had been able to make good progress towards the nexus. Thanks to the mix of running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop that they had long since mastered, the three Senshi crossed the better part of a block in a hurry and without incident. Knowing that her hybrid body would have had difficulty keeping up with the superhuman speed and endurance of the Senshi, Luna had assumed her predatory form and matched their pace without too much trouble.

Then they heard the whining discharge of Draco’s sword, and Mars let out a cry of pain as the blast caught her in the back just as she was about to jump down from another stone wall. Mars landed on her hands and tried to avoid any further harm by pushing herself into a forward roll, but her left shoulder hurt too much for her to maintain the handstand long enough, and she came crashing down in essentially the same position Venus had been blasted into a few moments before. It gave her the perfect view of the knight as he flew by overhead, by all appearances not giving her a second glance.

*His mistake,* Mars thought, raising her hands and summoning her powers. “MARS FLAME SNIPER!”

Whether he had been watching Mars or not, Draco certainly heard her, and he turned around in the air at the sound of her voice, raising his sword into the path of the blazing arrow just as it struck. Draco’s shield did not materialize to defend him, and thanks to whatever magic was allowing him to fly, the force of the Flame Sniper threw the knight up into the air by another ten meters before he managed to regain control. Mars realized in dismay that her attack would have been far more effective if Draco had been standing on the ground when it hit him; as it was, most of the force spent itself in shoving him backwards, doing little if any real damage before Draco swept his sword and the remaining flame off to his left.

The effort hadn’t been completely wasted, though. Hanging at an altitude equivalent to four stories in his gleaming armor, Draco made a very inviting target, and the other Senshi weren’t about to pass up such an easy chance. The shield shimmered into view as a Supreme Thunder Dragon roared up and engulfed Draco from behind, just as a streaking yellow bolt slammed into his armored chest. The Dragon’s explosion seemed to anchor Draco against the force of the other attack, but he emerged from both unscathed and flew down towards Jupiter and Mercury, firing blasts from his sword as he went.

Mars looked up as Uranus leapt over the wall and landed a short distance from her. “What is it going to take to crack this nut?” the tall Senshi muttered, speaking to herself before she saw Mars out of the corner of her eye. “You okay, Mars?”

“I’ve been better,” Mars said as she sat up.

“Do you need a hand?”

“I’ve got her,” Luna said, jumping down from the roof in panther-form and landing as a cat-woman. “Go!”

Uranus didn’t need to be told twice; she was over the next fence and out of sight within two breaths. Mars could guess why. Except for that first shot from the Aegis, none of Jupiter’s attacks had been able to penetrate their enemy’s barrier, and trying to attack someone in armor with your hands and feet guaranteed nothing except bruised knuckles. She was at a terrible disadvantage against Draco, which meant that Mercury would very likely have to fight him head-on. Most of her powers were diffuse by their very nature, suggesting that Draco’s shield would brush them aside, and if he could match Uranus for strength, Mercury wouldn’t be able to hold Draco off with the Frost Lancet. Oak Evolution or Aqua Rhapsody might be able to punch through the knight’s defenses, but if Jupiter and Mercury had to start throwing their strongest attacks at Draco, they’d exhaust themselves in short order. And they still had a nexus and who knew how many units to worry about.

As Luna reached down and took her hands, Mars gritted her teeth against the pain in her back and stood up. This fight was not going very well, and it got worse when two green shapes and a lone flesh-colored one came over the back wall of the yard and rushed towards her and Luna.

# 

Jupiter’s hand was starting to shake again, but she held on to the orb and sent the other pieces of the Aegis spiraling up to form their shields and intercept the blasts from Draco’s sword. Mercury was off to her right, watching Draco closely and waiting for an opening. Just as the knight was about to land, Mercury tucked the Caduceus behind her arm and spun a Shine Aqua Illusion straight at him. The freezing liquid bypassed the shield and struck the warrior head-on, covering him in a layer of solid ice from helmed head to steel-toed boots.

“YES!” Jupiter exulted. “Nice shot, Mercury!”

But Mercury, watching through her visor, was already shaking her head. The lines of Draco’s armor flashed red through the ice, triggering an explosion of flame that shattered his temporary prison and sent its melted fragments flying. A cloud of steam rushed off of Draco’s shoulders as he brought his sword down in an overhand slash and unleashed another whip-snap of white force between the two Senshi, driving them away from each other, and he turned the blade to begin firing a succession of force-bolts at Mercury, tracking her movements with the point of his sword before each shot and advancing steadily as he fired.

Both Senshi understood what Draco was trying to do. Mercury and her computer played an important role that could not be easily assumed by any of the other Senshi, and because she was still one of the smallest members of the team in the purely physical sense, she could be more quickly overcome by injury. Jupiter immediately opened fire on Draco’s half-turned back, taking a chance and calling on her Oak Evolution in the hopes of buying Mercury some room to breathe. The first of the high-energy bolts to strike Draco were not deflected by his shield, but Jupiter was dismayed to see that when those initial shots began exploding across the warrior’s back, his protective barrier shimmered to life in time to catch the bulk of the barrage before it struck home. Draco was left nowhere near as damaged as he should have been, although he was staggered long enough for Mercury to flood the area with her Shabon Spray and disappear.

The typical reaction from monsters trapped in Mercury’s blinding fog was to stumble around cluelessly, clawing or firing at the slightest hint of a target; Draco responded by flying straight into the air, out of the cloud, and turning through a slow circle above it. Failing to spot Mercury, Draco shrugged and took aim at Jupiter instead, preparing a new strafing run from above, but the impact of another Space Sword Blaster ruined that plan and sent the airborne warrior veering off course once more. Uranus hopped down from a nearby roof and landed next to Jupiter.

“Mercury?” Uranus asked with a glance at the mist. Jupiter nodded. “Come on, then,” Uranus said, heading for the fogbank. “We need to regroup.”

You did not enter a Shabon Spray and find Mercury; either she found you, or you just got lost in the fog. Uranus was only three strides in, and Jupiter had just crossed the edge when Mercury appeared to their right, her visor alive with shifting data.

“There are seven units closing on our position,” she said quickly. “Three more have attacked Luna and Mars, and Artemis is dealing with number eleven.”

“I only saw four,” Uranus said. “What about Neptune and Venus?”

“They’re about to meet up with Luna and Mars, but I’m reading another five units moving towards them from the north.”

“Our Tin Man out there brought a regular army with him,” Uranus muttered. “Right, then. Hold on.” She dismissed the Space Sword, caught Mercury’s right arm and Jupiter’s left, and then concentrated and began to glow. Before either of the others had a chance to blink, their auras flared in response—as did the Aegis—and the fog around them blipped out, to be replaced by a sidewalk beneath their feet, a street behind them, and a vaguely familiar garden wall in front. There were roaring flames on the other side of that wall.

“Find out where he is,” Uranus said, releasing her hold and springing over the wall, summoning the Space Sword in midair. Thanks to the post-teleport daze, it took Mercury a moment to begin scanning again. She immediately picked up the other Senshi, plus the pair of units—make that one unit—that Luna and Mars were fighting on the other side of the wall, and the five that were closing in from the north.

Jupiter noticed these as well, for they were all plant-based, and as they appeared down the street, she sent Supreme Thunder surging towards them. The shambling green automatons dodged, only to be caught by surprise as the five sections of the Aegis that had been carried along within the thunderbolt caused it to fork out in five different directions, each arm spearing one unit. Two of Jupiter’s targets fell and did not rise again, and the three survivors were swept away by a Beam Shower before they could do more than get back on their malformed feet.

“Haven’t you managed to get any farther than this?” Venus asked as she and Neptune leapt down from the roof where they had been standing.

“Our friend in the armor makes for an effective roadblock,” Mercury replied. “How are you feeling?”

“Very sore,” Venus admitted, lightly patting her midsection, “but nothing’s broken.”

“I guess the bone in her head isn’t the only one that’s hard as a rock,” Uranus observed as she came around the corner with Luna and Mars.

“Exactly,” Venus agreed. Then she frowned. “Wait a minute...”

Uranus didn’t give her that time. “Where’s Draco, Mercury?”

“I’ve got an intermittent trace of him near the nexus. I’d say that when the three of us teleported, he assumed we were going to attack the nexus, and he fell back to protect it.”

“And the units?”

“Jupiter and Venus just dealt with five of them,” Mercury noted, checking her visor. “The other seven are right where we were and have stopped moving... no, they’re coming back this way.”

“Good,” Uranus said. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Oh dear,” Neptune sighed.

# 

The flash of lightning down in a street was not enough to make Draco leave the nexus unguarded again, but when it was accompanied by a red burst of flame, he took to the air.

However unlikely it might have seemed, it was clear from the reports that it only took one Senshi to destroy even an active nexus, if it was the right Senshi. Uranus, Neptune, and Mercury had been able to work together to neutralize the first nexus because it had been drawing on several elements, but Athena had destroyed the temporal nexus on her own, or at least with no more help than the Garnet Orb. Draco had no doubt that this new Jupiter—armed as she was with the Aegis—could destroy this nexus single-handedly, and Mars could simply set fire to the techno-organic mechanism. As long as those two were held off, there was really nothing the others could do except let the nexus run.

The thought of the Aegis made Draco shake his head. Cestus was likely to explode when he found out about it, but more importantly, the presence of the Weapon pointed to a direct if distant link between these Senshi and Serenity. That was one more wedge between them, one more argument to make any chance of an alliance or cease-fire even more unlikely.

The Aegis also added a note of urgency to Draco’s defense of the nexus. He had already seen one woman die from using the Weapon; he had no wish to witness such an event a second time.

As he closed in, Draco could see that his opponents had managed to completely regroup, and were in the process of eliminating one of the teams of units that he had dispatched to engage them. A quick check of the display system within his helm confirmed that of the forty-five units he had begun with, twenty had been destroyed, most of them first-generation types. Draco still had fourteen of those, plus another seven second-generation and four third- generation units, but the timer that had been steadily counting down at the corner of his right eye told him that he also had seven minutes left before he could allow the Senshi to destroy the nexus.

Draco briefly regretted not taking the opportunity to fire on Uranus, Jupiter, and Mercury while they had been hiding within the Shabon Spray, but he’d had no way to guess where they might be, and considering that he had been restricting his sword’s projectiles to their stunning force, such an attack would not have been particularly effective. He shrugged that concern aside and focused on his defense as the Senshi began firing.

Venus led the attack, launching three Crescent Beams at Draco in quick succession as he flew closer. He managed to dodge the first; the second one scored a direct hit against his breastplate. The projectile did not penetrate, and Draco was able to get his flight back under control in time to take only a glancing blow to the shoulder from the last Beam as he landed and counterattacked with a sidelong sweep of the force-lash. Splinters flew from the trunk of a nearby tree, and windows in the wall of the house beyond shattered at the touch of the semisolid energy, but the Senshi evaded easily.

A series of eight flaming rings shot down at Draco next. He was startled when the scattered barrage failed to trigger his body shield; evidently each ring was composed of such tightly condensed fire-energy as to be indistinguishable from solid matter. Draco’s armor had been specially designed and enchanted to ward off heat, but by the time the last of the rings had hit him and expired along the metal plates of his armor in a gout of flame, he most definitely felt a few degrees warmer. He raised his sword and sent a stream of bolts at the Senshi, aiming more to scatter them than to inflict any real damage, and Neptune moved right into the path of the attack, using her Mirror and a great sweep of blue energy to reflect no less than three of the shots back at their creator. Two of them missed, but the third—by luck or skill—scored a direct hit on Draco’s helmet, right between the crystal lenses that covered his eyes. He had to take a step back to steady himself and shake his head once to clear out the ringing.

Then there was a much louder ringing as something hit him from behind, something slower but considerably larger than the projectiles that the Senshi had been pelting him with throughout this battle. Draco started to turn, but when his arms encountered resistance, he realized that someone had him in the beginning of a full nelson. Coming from a Senshi, the move would have disabled him in no time if not for his armor, the simple bulk of which preventing the hold from being complete, or even very effective.

At least, that was what Draco thought until a bright yellow light flared from the gloved forearms he could just see out of the corners of his visor. The world blurred around him in a most disconcerting manner that he recognized instantly, and when it came back, Draco had no idea where he was. The pressure on his arms was gone at once, and he turned to find Uranus standing some distance behind him. Around them rose an open-aired structure that bore a resemblance to a stadium, large in size if not nearly so grandly built as the ones Draco remembered from the last days of Atlantis’s glory. The center of the place was a massive oval track; the two warriors were standing on the grassy island in the center. The place was dark and utterly deserted, lit only by the stars and a distant haze—very distant—that suggested the location of the city where they had been a moment before.

In spite of his situation—or rather, because of it—Draco threw back his head and laughed. “Brilliant!” he exclaimed. “We must be a hundred miles from the city.”

“Not quite so far,” Uranus replied, pulling her glowing blade from the empty air, “but all the same, I’m glad you liked our little surprise.”

“Oh, indeed,” Draco said, still chuckling as Uranus attacked. He let her come, parried the first two strikes to measure their force and confirm his suspicion. When he felt certain that the expression the light of the Space Sword was revealing on Uranus’s face was weariness, Draco turned his third parry into a setup for a fast punch to his opponent’s midsection. The weight of his armor added to the impact, and Uranus, drained from the effort of teleporting Draco this far on top of everything else she’d already done in the last twenty minutes, was no longer fast enough to avoid the blow. She doubled over as the air flew out of her lungs, and then toppled to the ground, gasping for breath. The Space Sword fell next to her, sliding point-first into the ground almost up to its hilt.

Although he hated to leave a promising duel half-done, Draco had a mission to complete, and checked the timer again. Four minutes and forty-five seconds left. He had a pretty good idea of what he would find upon returning to the nexus, but he went ahead and teleported back to it anyway.

Uranus watched as her opponent disappeared in a haze of red, and let out a long, wheezing sigh when he was gone. Neptune had not been happy about the idea of letting her carry Draco clear out of the city without at least one of the other Senshi going along as backup, but considering how much of a struggle she had faced just getting herself and her unwilling passenger out to the racetrack -the first remote, unpopulated place that had come to her mind—Uranus knew that she would have been left completely exhausted if someone else had come with her. Not that she was in much better shape now, of course...

Groaning, Uranus managed to push herself into a sitting position. At least she’d been right about Draco. Honor was not a high priority for the majority of the enemies the Senshi faced, but after the way Draco had behaved during his introduction, he seemed to be one of the exceptions to the rule. Just as any other opponent Uranus could think of wouldn’t have hesitated to kick her while she was down, it didn’t seem to have occurred to Draco at all. Knowing that might be useful in the future, but right now, all Uranus wanted to do was go home and collapse.

She switched on her communicator. “Saturn? Be a considerate daughter and open up a door to the racetrack, will you? Somewhere out on the track itself, preferably.”

“What?” Saturn’s startled voice came back. “Uranus? What do you want a door out there for?”

“So I can come home, of course,” Uranus said patiently.

“What?” Saturn repeated. “What are you doing at the track? Why aren’t you—oh, never mind.” Five seconds later, Uranus heard the distinctive sound of the Silence Glaive tearing through space and time, and a dimension door opened up at the starting line. Saturn stepped through and looked around, then marched over to Uranus. “What have you done to yourself this time?” the little Senshi asked, sounding more like the parent than the child. “And where are the others?”

Off in the direction of the city’s dim glow, a brilliant flash suddenly lit up the night sky, followed several seconds later by a heavy rumble.

“Does that answer your question?” Uranus asked.

# 

When Draco rematerialized atop the nexus, things were more or less as he’d feared they would be. He could see Jupiter standing atop a roof less than half a block from the base of the tower, both of her hands glowing with the emerald radiance of the Aegis. Linked by an electric chain that started and ended with the orbs in Jupiter’s hands, the remaining fourteen spheres had formed a great circle around the nexus, and each was drawing other lines of energy into its own radiant core. Draco could see that the nexus had already been weakened; the storm at the focal point was shifting even more wildly than before, looking now like a caged beast struggling to break free of its prison, and the spires were trembling as they tried to contain the force.

The remaining units had attempted to respond, but the other Senshi and their allies were getting in the way. Mercury, Venus, and the two Nekoron were all employing blades of one style or another while Mars simply shot flames at any unit she saw. Neptune was standing watch near Jupiter, waiting patiently with her Mirror in case anything got past the others.

Draco was smiling as he shook his head, unable to deny his admiration for their teamwork. They had completely fooled him with that teleport-trap, and now there was nothing he could do to stop the nexus from being destroyed.

“Time to save what can be saved,” Draco said to himself, checking the display. Seven first-generation and two second-generation units had either been destroyed in his brief absence or were engaged right now. He ordered those and all the remaining first-generation units to pursue the hopeless attack, and then activated the escape command in the other automatons, sending them to ground until Archon’s mysterious protegee could retrieve them.

That done, Draco adjusted the teleportation system in his armor and jumped to the nearest of the two remaining nexi, to await the next move in the game. When he saw the flash of the first tower’s destruction, the timer was at 4:20. Not his best showing, but not entirely unsalvageable, either. Like his Prince, Draco had no real talent for the mathematics of geomancy and mana physics, but Princess Jenna did, and she had given him enough information to formulate several contingency plans.

With the premature destruction of the first nexus, one of those plans took effect and reset the mission timer to six minutes. Draco nodded. It would depend on how the Senshi chose to cover the distance between their current location and the two remaining nexi, but unless they teleported in, Draco knew he could manage a six minute delay without difficulty. On foot in this city, even the Senshi would have difficulty covering the distance between the two sites in that time, and...

The sides of his visor began to flash red, a silent warning that his armor’s sensors had detected something dangerous. Spinning towards the source of the reading, Draco watched in surprise as three stone figures mounted on the side of a nearby building were infused with a strange dark energy and suddenly came to life. They had been gargoyles before; now they were saurian daimons, an identical trio of slate-skinned, bat-winged monsters that resembled small, lanky dragons.

Draco raised his sword, the edges of the blade glowing intensely red as he prepared to blast the monsters into oblivion the moment they showed the slightest hint of interest in the nexus. The tower might have been invisible to the unaided *human* eye, but Draco had his doubts as to how effective the cloak would be against the supernatural senses of a daimon.

To the Atlantean knight’s amazement, the three creatures did not so much as glance in his direction. Instead, they took to the air and flew *away* from the tower, swooping past the downtown skyscrapers with grating cries and slow, creaking flaps of their stony wings.

# 

After a spectacular display of electrical pyrotechnics and violent tremors, the entire nexus was blown to kingdom come in a huge burst of ball lightning. The entire upper third of the tower was consumed outright by the destructive sphere, and the rest crumbled before the shockwave of the thunder.

As soon as the tower was gone, Jupiter dropped the two pink spheres she had been holding and fell to her hands and knees, breathing heavily. The Aegis had been able to draw on the enormous energy of the nexus and spare her the effort of powering them, so she didn’t feel hurt or numb like the last time she had used the Weapon to such a high degree, but she was still tired, and her head was pounding. After a moment, she realized that the latter was not a symptom of fatigue, and groaned.

“No...”

“Jupiter?” Neptune knelt down next to her. “Makoto, are you all right?”

“I’m not... I’m not hurt,” Jupiter said, sitting up. “But I can still feel... it feels like there’s another nexus out there.”

“Another one?” Neptune echoed, blinking and looking up at Mercury, who scowled and started scanning in all directions.

“We’ve been had,” the Water Senshi reported a moment later in a sour tone. “The jamming field’s completely gone, and I can read *two* more nexi out there now. One of them is thirteen blocks away from us, and the other’s two more blocks beyond that.” Mercury was about to say something further when the data on her visor abruptly changed. As her eyes followed the lines of text, the rest of Mercury’s face became grim.

“Do I even want to know?” Venus asked.

“No, I would imagine you don’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are three daimons coming this way. They’ll be here in another seventy seconds.”

“You were right,” Venus observed wryly. “I didn’t want to know.” She looked around at their group; Jupiter was by far the weariest after that battle, but none of the others was exactly looking at her or his best, either. “If the lot of us were all rested and fresh as muffins, this might not be an issue, but with the way things are, *can* we fight that many daimons at once?”

“‘Daisies,’” Artemis corrected absently, as he, Luna, Mercury, and Neptune traded long looks.

# 

The stone daimons flew in low, croaking to one another as the scent of magic grew stronger. The power that had brought them across from their world had shackled them, binding their wills so that it was impossible for them to prey upon the helpless humans whose scents filled the air to an overpowering degree. Instead, they were being driven to seek out and attack the source of this magic. It had a human smell to it as well. Female, in fact.

Two of the creatures chuckled horribly in anticipation of what was to come, but the third, older than its comrades, did not join in their vile mirth. One of its counterparts drifted over to utter a questioning screech at the apparent lack of eagerness; the elder daimon responded with a backstroke from its talons and a warning hiss for the other to leave it alone.

This particular daimon sometimes went by the name Brakareshkla, and although it was far from attaining the tremendous power enjoyed by the lords of its kind, it nonetheless held a certain degree of respect amongst the denizens of its world. Not because it was old, but because it was a survivor. Through just the right mix of strength, cunning, and luck, Brakareshkla had managed to hold its place in the chaotic hierarchy of the daimon realm for several thousand years, weathering challenges and treacheries and disasters beyond number without suffering any great loss. In its time, Brakareshkla had witnessed the rise and fall of daimon lords; it had taken part in the long-ago invasion of this world; and it had survived the apocalyptic counterattack by Saturn, in which the daimon realm had been virtually emptied of its denizens.

Something about this scent reminded the daimon very strongly of that ancient campaign, and that made it cautious. The only laws in the daimon realm were the whims of its lords and the rule of ambition and chaos, but after Saturn had used the accursed Grail to wipe out all but one in a thousand of their kind, the daimons had been naturally leery of returning to this world, even in its modern, magic-poor era. The legions of Pharaoh 90 had chosen to disregard that ancient superstition in a bid for vengeance and power, and most of them had therefore perished along with their master. A number of others had been summoned across more recently; many of these had also been obliterated, and others returned with warnings of the defenders waiting on the other side—the ancient enemies, the Senshi, were present in force, the Destroyer among them.

Given a choice, Brakareshkla would have denied the summons and remained in its own realm, but it had not been allowed that option; the magic compelled appearance and obedience, and so the daimon had no choice but to make the journey and do its best to survive.

That imperative met its first challenge when the three flying monsters left the region of the tall structures and began to pass over many small ones, closing in on the source of the magical scent. They reached an area where the air was suddenly thick with the residue of some powerful event, a magic strong enough that even its fading odor blocked the supernatural senses of the daimons’ assumed forms. With their noses blocked and no sign of their quarry evident, the two younger beasts hissed in frustration; Brakareshkla, on the other hand, immediately turned and began to climb away from the area. Just in time.

A spray of blue-white bubbles swarmed up towards the daimons and exploded into a thick, freezing mist. The cold was so intense that ice began to form over the monsters’ bodies, hampering the function of their wings and increasing their already considerable weight. Brakareshkla had pulled up quickly enough to clear the fog, and one of its companions limped out a moment later, its body thick with icicles, but the third fell out from the bottom of the cloud, struggling angrily to break the ice that had immobilized its wings. The daimon did not see the orb of blue force surging up behind it until it was far too late, and the creature’s cry of surprised rage was swallowed up as the magic exploded around it. The frozen stone of its surrogate body blew away in great chunks and countless tiny shards, taking the daimon’s left wing off at the shoulder and dooming it to a fast, devastating plunge to the surface. Impact shattered it entirely.

Brakareshkla had already traced the freezing mist and the deadly sphere to their source on a nearby roof, where two female humans in slightly different blue uniforms stood side by side. The daimon’s eyes narrowed suspiciously at the sight of the pair.

Enraged by the ease with which the two humans had destroyed the first daimon, Brakareshkla’s remaining companion roared in challenge and swooped down at them, only to be shot out of the air by a downpour of flaming red and gold beams that shattered its wings and left holes along its back. The diving daimon screamed in fury and crashed heavily atop another roof, where it struggled to rise and attack anew, spurred on as much by the magic that had summoned it as by its own rage and bloodlust.

Something red dashed forward from concealment and struck the fallen daimon on the back. It was another Senshi, and though her attack had appeared to be nothing more than a one-handed thrust, its effect on the daimon was incredible. Brakareshkla hissed and propelled itself backwards as the other monster let out a long, piercing shriek and was consumed from within by red and white flames. The elder daimon had witnessed the death of other daimons many times, both in the casual destruction of their mortal forms and the far more permanent death caused by the obliteration of their essences, and it had heard many different kinds of agony from daimon and mortal alike. Though it had heard this particular scream only once before, Brakareshkla recognized it immediately.

Ignoring its doomed ally, Brakareshkla flew towards the first two Senshi as quickly as it could. The taller of the pair stepped forward and unleashed her attack a second time, but the daimon just bent its long neck back to shield its head and flew straight into the blast. Unprepared for the daimon’s apparent suicide maneuver, the Senshi were slow to jump clear as it emerged on the other side, allowing Brakareshkla enough time to reach out and catch the smaller of the two by one foot, dragging her back down as it crash-landed on the roof. Part of the structure groaned and then gave way, and the daimon’s heavy body sank up to its waist.

Trying to figure out how to use this unexpected development, Brakareshkla was caught off guard as a sharp blue blade sliced away its claw and a good part of the adjoining forearm. Snarling in pain, the daimon nonetheless realized its opportunity and struck, extending its long but relatively thin neck so that it could strike at the Senshi with its toothy stone snout. Even with the awkward weight of the claw still curled around her leg, the human dodged, and Brakareshkla’s head blew through the roof so deeply that it became stuck.

A moment later, the daimon felt an icy sensation along the middle of its neck, and hissed in relief as the magic binding it to this body and this plane were severed along with its head.

# 

Mercury was breathing heavily as she watched the daimon’s body flicker and shift from a rocky mini-dragon into a lifeless stone gargoyle, its body in one hole and its head in another. The hand shifted shape and fell away from around her ankle, clattering noisily away along the roof and over the edge, but Mercury continued to look at the remains of the body.

That had been too easy. Mercury could accept the quick destruction of the first daimon; Neptune and *Uranus* had long ago shown themselves capable of wiping out such creatures in one combination attack, and Mercury knew from experience that her powers and Neptune’s tended to be naturally synergistic. The speed with which Mars and Venus had dispatched the second creature was a little surprising, but this was only the second time Mars had ever used that Cleansing Flame technique; maybe it really was that powerful, or perhaps something about it was particularly suited to neutralizing daimons.

Defeating one daimon without injury was good planning; two was that and a healthy dose of luck. Getting three of them without anyone taking so much as a scratch in return... that was a small miracle, and downright suspicious as far as Mercury was concerned.

But she had no time to dwell on it just now. Between getting themselves in position for the ambush and then pulling it off, the Senshi had lost almost two whole minutes because of the daimons. The Senshi could cover ground at a considerable pace, but thanks to the combination of distance and the steady rise of the ‘landscape’ from homes and stores to apartments and skyscrapers, Mercury estimated that they might need as much as ten minutes to reach the nearer of the two nexi on foot.

“Then we’d better huff and puff,” Venus said when Mercury repeated her conclusion to the others. Artemis was blurring into catshape at that particular moment, and the Senshi took off at a run in the next, so he wasn’t able to properly voice his disagreement with the latest Minakoism.

As they ran, the group naturally spread out according to their personal speed and endurance. The cats took the lead, followed not too distantly by Jupiter and Venus, while the other three trailed a little farther behind.

“It’s times like this that I *really* envy the rest of you those shoes and boots,” Mars said, half to herself.

“So I’ve noticed.” Neptune glanced at her friend’s stiletto-heeled shoes. “Your feet must hurt something awful after a run like this.”

“It helps that we heal up a bit when we change back. And besides, it’s not like I’ve got a lot of choice in the matter, is it?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Neptune replied. When Mars looked at her curiously, Neptune added, “I doubt that I can do anything about your shoes, but I know a few things that might help make your feet feel better. We’ll talk later, all right?”

“All right,” Mars agreed.

# 

The white car had come to another screeching halt, this time on a stretch of road between the residential ward and the downtown area.

“They’re *gone*?” the driver grated in her rough voice. “Are you sure about that?”

“All three source signals have disappeared,” her companion replied in tones of relief. “All that’s left is the normal residual radiation.”

“How could those annoying little girls beat *three* daimons in under three minutes when it used to take them twice that long to handle just *one*?!”

“Nearly all of our information on the Senshi is two years old,” came the cautious response. “They could easily have gotten stronger in...”

“Well, obviously!” the driver snapped. She might have said more, but the shout had aggravated whatever injuries in her throat distorted her voice so severely, and she was reduced to a coughing fit for several moments. When the raspy hacking had ceased, the driver sat back in her seat and breathed slowly, the sound a rattle in her throat.

“Are... are you all right?” the other woman asked.

“Of course I’m not all right,” the driver replied, her voice lowered to a harsh whisper. “You know that perfectly well. Stop wasting my time with stupid questions to which you already know the answers.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And don’t lie to me, either. Just shut up and figure out where the remains of the daimons are so I can collect a sample.”

# 

“Security’s responding on line three, ma’am.”

“Patch him through,” Sciences replied. “And stop calling me that.”

“Yes ma’am.” The Director sighed wearily and pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off the headache she felt forming.

“Make it quick,” her counterpart said brusquely, his voice coming through the speakerphone on Sciences’s desk.

*And speaking of headaches,* Sciences thought with a mental sigh. “Have I caught you at a bad moment?”

“Every squad I have is still on high alert thanks to that signal blackout,” Security said. “Whatever it is that you have to say, say it.”

Sciences gave the phone a look that would have frozen hot water before replying. “The two class fives and the class six that we detected a few minutes ago were just neutralized. Based on the nature of the energy discharges we picked up in their area, the Senshi appear to have been responsible.”

There was a moment of silence. “And the electrical interference?” Security asked in a more reasonable tone.

“It was reduced after the explosion, but not entirely negated. Based on our calculations, it would appear that two more of those energy-collecting towers are still active. They’re being shielded from view as nearly as we can tell, but I’m sending their most likely coordinates to you now.”

“What about the Senshi?” Security asked. “Any further sign of them or where they’re headed?”

“Nothing conclusive.”

“Guess.” The word had the snap of an order, and Sciences entertained a brief vision of defying the laws of physics and reaching through the phone line to strangle her obsessively military-minded colleague.

“I don’t make guesses,” she said coldly, before hitting the hang-up button and going back to studying this evening’s data. As it happened, the information on her screen showed one thing that *might* have been a clue as to the Senshi’s movements. While the analytical part of her mind said that further proof was needed to confirm or deny that, the Sciences Director might even have given the data to Security if not for his aggravating manner. She realized that it was a petty form of revenge, but petty suited her just fine where that overbearing generalissimo was concerned. Perhaps it would teach him the value of better manners. Or perhaps not.

The clue in question was this: once the first tower had been destroyed, the network had started reading a faint electromagnetic signature not far from where the structure had stood. The anomalous reading had moved towards the other towers, pausing in the area where the three newly-appeared creatures had been destroyed, and then continuing on, to disappear from their sensors once inside the energy fields being generated by the two remaining towers.

A detailed analysis of the energy signature had not been possible, given its faint nature and the sorry state of the sensor network, but they did have some preliminary readings. The Director was entering those into the files now, checking against their records of past incidents. After a few minutes, the system brought up three close matches: the unexplained EMP that had hit the city last Sunday afternoon; a minor reading from Monday evening; and, most recently, the brief fight between Sailor Jupiter and the creature that had appeared in the park during the Doll’s Festival.

A few quick keystrokes brought up the footage Security’s teams had recorded in the park, and Sciences watched very closely from start to finish, ignoring nothing. She lingered over the images of Sailor Mercury for quite some time, using an editing program to freeze the scene and then zoom in on the caduceus-shaped device in the Senshi’s hands, but after a time the Director skipped ahead to the next sequence. When she paused the playback again, it was to magnify and enhance a shot of Jupiter and the collection of peculiar glowing spheres that were following her around.

The Sciences Director looked at that shot for some time before picking up her phone and dialing. She needed more information from the archives than her terminal could conveniently access, and she could use a second opinion. Fortunately, she could get both by talking to one person.

# 

Even with the ongoing electrical difficulties, the streets of Tokyo were busy at night. In the absence of reliable lights, most of the major intersections had police officers stationed to help direct the traffic, and while it only stood to reason that accidents would be unavoidable, they were surprisingly few and relatively minor in nature. Alerted by experience and instinct that it was another one of *those* nights, everyone was driving at a snail’s pace and keeping their eyes and ears open.

Stuck in one lane of currently immobile traffic, Anon was idly drumming his fingers on the top of the steering wheel as he waited for one of the policemen out in the intersection to signal and get the vehicles ahead of him moving. He had turned off his radio because all the stations were jammed up with static; he might have listened to a cassette tape or a CD, except that he had neither in the car. Most of his temporary neighbors appeared to have been more foresighted, and the slow (as in nonexistent) pace of the traffic treated everyone to the mingled strains of everything from Mozart to J-Pop, even though none of the players were turned up especially loud.

Anon glanced at the passing pedestrians and was half-tempted to get out and join them. It surely had to beat being stuck like this.

Just as this thought entered Anon’s mind, he heard a loud female voice call out, “Excuse us! Coming through on official business!” in authoritarian tones. And the crowd on the sidewalk parted to let whomever it was go by.

It was several someones, actually, and a few things besides, all of them moving at high speed. In the lead was a young blonde woman in a blue miniskirt, sleeveless white blouse, and mask, who called out for people to move aside and apologized for the necessity as she went by. Close behind her were a pair of enormous cats, one black and the other white, and after them came a taller woman with an auburn ponytail, a short-skirted uniform that was green and pink, and a focused, angry expression that got as many people out of her way as the cats and the first runner combined. Behind *her* was what looked like a cloud of miniature green stars connected by periodic bolts of lightning, and after *these* came three more women. One wore red and had long black hair, while another wore blue of nearly the same shade as her hair. Anon had no trouble recognizing the third as the helpful young lady from the day of the snowstorm, although this time she was carrying an ornate short staff or baton of some kind.

This very peculiar procession went through the intersection and turned to pass down the line of waiting cars, everyone except the two cats and the tall, angry woman—and the floating, glowing stones, of course—making repeated apologies to the people they passed. Then they turned again and began disappearing into an empty side street. The one with the visor and rod was the last, and she took a moment to bow towards the people staring at her. This included the officers who had been directing the traffic, and who were now standing out in the street looking as startled as everyone else.

“Gomen nasai,” the girl apologized meekly, and such was the expression of humility on her face that quite a number of people returned the bow and made reassuring comments. Smiling gratefully, the young lady turned to follow her friends, and happened to spot Anon staring at her from his car. She blinked in surprise and waved slightly; he waved back, rather uncertainly, and then she was gone.

*On second thought, maybe I’d be better off if I just stayed in the car...*

# 

Moving around the downtown district in Senshi form was not something the girls had all that much experience with. Most of the time, their battles were fought in Tokyo’s residential wards, or in the adjacent areas where there was a great deal of room to maneuver and the buildings seldom exceeded three floors. Their usual tactic of getting around in those areas was to stick to the back alleys and side streets, take the rooftops when it was convenient, and generally stay out of sight.

For downtown, they typically stayed in civilian form, catching a bus or a train to their destination and transforming on site, but this approach was not an option because of the havoc the two towers were still playing with anything electrical in about a ten-block radius. The ‘rooftops’ were out as well, for Draco might see them, and even Neptune was visibly spooked by the idea of trying to race along and leap over wide city streets some forty stories in the air.

So the Senshi took to the streets, dealing with the reactions of the populace as best they could and sticking to the less-traveled routes as much as possible. After a quick discussion, Luna and Artemis had opted to remain in tiger form, to avoid casting suspicion on their day-to-day shapes. A pair of half-ton jungle cats were much less likely to draw unwanted attention on to their everyday bodies, although this had the unfortunate side-effect of scaring the wits out of just about every person who saw them.

Which was why Venus had switched identities and now led the charge. The other Senshi had been reluctant to agree to the move, but Sailor V did have a better public image than her friends, and her presence at the front of the line ought to be enough to keep at least some people from running blindly for their lives when Luna and Artemis went by. With luck, the apologies the girls were dropping in all directions would take care of the rest.

*That just leaves us two nexi, an unknown number of units, and one magical knight to worry about,* Mercury thought with a sigh. They had made better time than she’d hoped, crossing ten blocks in under seven minutes even with all the enforced twists and turns, but that still left another minute and a half before Jupiter would be close enough to begin shutting the second nexus down. That would take another two or three minutes, and then they would have to get to the last tower and repeat the process—and none of this was taking into account the time they’d lose because of Draco and whatever reinforcements he still had to draw upon.

Mercury didn’t know very much about the sciences or the sorcery involved in the mana nexi, but the Caduceus had allowed her to get a very good idea of their power-producing capabilities. Just those three towers could have met the electrical needs of the entire city of Tokyo, indefinitely, and still had some energy left over. The amount of power they would have been able to gather over the last half hour was a little frightening, all the more so since there was no way to be certain what it would end up being used for.

“Somehow,” Mercury said to herself, “I doubt that the end goal of all this is just to run someone’s lightbulbs.”

“What was that, Mercury?” Neptune asked as they ran down a remarkably empty sidewalk.

“Just thinking out loud,” Mercury apologized as she checked her readings. “We only have another two blocks to go, so we should expect to see more resistance soon.”

Neptune nodded. “Even so, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that we’ve managed to get this far uncontested. They wouldn’t have left these other sites defenseless, but losing thirty or so units and three daimons still must have put a serious dent in their ranks.” There was concern in Neptune’s voice as she said that, and Mercury didn’t need her telepathic abilities to guess why. They hadn’t come through the fight without their own force being lessened.

“How exactly are we going to handle this nexus?” Mars asked from beyond Neptune. “You said it was on top of a building, right?”

“A ten-story office building, yes, surrounded by taller buildings on most sides. Since we’re staying at ground level and the nexus is ten levels up, Jupiter will have to move in closer to affect it, but its height isn’t the real problem. We have to take out the cloaking shield, or we won’t be able to tell what we’re dealing with.” Mercury scanned the area again, checking the positions and sizes of the buildings. “Mars, you go on ahead with the others and make sure they all stop in another block or so. I’ll get Neptune in position to bring down the shield; when you see a blue flash, that’ll be your cue to move in with Jupiter.”

Mars nodded and hurried after Jupiter, V, and the two cats while Mercury and Neptune slowed to a halt. Neptune held out her hands, but Mercury shook her head and waved them away.

“We’re *not* going to teleport?” Neptune asked with some surprise.

“I’ve teleported once already tonight,” Mercury reminded her, “and we’ve still got two nexi to deal with.” Standing with her heels together and both hands around the grip of the Caduceus, Mercury bowed her head and concentrated. “WINGBOOTS.”

The jewel atop the Caduceus glowed; the jewel in Mercury’s tiara glowed; and small jets of mist were suddenly swirling around her boots. The tiny cloudlets rose up, thickened, and then solidified into a quartet of pristine white wings. Each wing was about the size of Mercury’s hand, and they extended seamlessly from the material of her boots, just above the ankles. With her feet held together, the wings on the insides of Mercury’s boots were raised up and pressed together, but the ones on the outer face lowered until they were halfway between her leg and the ground. At this point, the wings flapped once, scattering the last traces of the mist and easily lifting Mercury off the ground, to hover ten centimeters or so in the air.

Raising her head after a quick glance and satisfied nod at the change in her footwear and altitude, Mercury held out her right hand and gestured for Neptune to come closer. Neptune was blinking at the small wings.

“I’ve... seen those before.” A fairly clear memory of Mercury and Calypso taking her—taking Larissa—flying passed briefly through Neptune’s mind. She looked up and almost said something, then shook her head and stepped close enough to put her left foot down atop Mercury’s right. Although Mercury did not descend under the extra weight, it still took a moment for them to settle into a reasonable position, with Neptune essentially standing on Mercury’s foot and keeping her balance only with both arms around her friend’s neck.

“This was certainly easier when I was smaller,” Neptune noted with a nervous glance at the ground. Mercury gave her a quick look and then smiled and hugged her with one arm.

“I won’t drop you, Michiru. Just don’t look down, and don’t let go.”

Neptune was too well-mannered to give the obvious reply, but her wry, Uranus-like glance said, “Well, duh,” as clearly as words. Then the wings flapped once and locked into a downward position, sending the two Senshi into the air faster than an elevator would have carried them.

“Why wings?” Neptune asked, carefully keeping her eyes up. “You could levitate freely as a Nereid, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Mercury answered, “but my Senshi form was still essentially human. If any Mercury wanted to fight in the air, she needed the Wingboots to keep herself aloft.”

“And how long have you known?”

“Since the Blue Hall, technically. You?”

“Uranus had a flashback during our fight in the park, and remembered that she used to be able to fly. On her planet, at least. You happened to be in that memory. Fighting tempests?” Neptune supplied.

“I remember,” Mercury said, shaking her head in amusement. “Ariel was the only human crazy enough to go flying through the skies of one of the gas giants without some kind of gravity harness. Thankfully, she calmed down after you were... introduced.” Neptune caught the slip and frowned, wondering what the reason for it was. She started to ask, but Mercury continued on, saying, “I don’t recall that Larissa was ever that fond of heights.”

At the mention of heights, Neptune immediately started to look down, but she shut her eyes before they had been able to see more than the five or six floors they had just passed. “I’d say your memory is fairly accurate in that regard,” she said, raising her head before she reopened her eyes. She wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but they had just come even with the roof of several nearby buildings, which put them a good twenty stories up; they were still climbing, and the toe of Mercury’s boot was the only thing keeping Neptune from falling. Neptune risked a look around and saw a taller building about thirty floors high. “That one?”

“Yes,” Mercury replied. “You’ll have a clear line of fire at the nexus from the roof, and we’re far enough away that anything coming out to say hello won’t reach you before you’ve finished disabling the nexus’s shield.”

“Good.” Again, Neptune glanced around out of the corners of her eyes. “I *really* don’t fancy the idea of fighting on such a small area at this altitude when I can’t fly or teleport.”

“I’m not very keen on it myself,” Mercury admitted as they reached their destination and landed neatly atop the high roof. As soon as Neptune had disembarked, Mercury took to the air again, although not very high. “If they send units, I’ll go ahead and run interference while you hit them from here, but if Draco shows up again, I’ll teleport us down to the others. I’m not so confident of my flying that I want to try a high-speed chase with a passenger just yet.”

“The passenger approves wholeheartedly,” Neptune said as she summoned the Aqua Mirror and searched quickly for the tower. While she was doing that, Mercury activated the microphone in her headset and contacted the others.

“We’re hiding in an alley about half a block from the building you said the nexus is on,” Sailor V reported quietly. “Luna and Mars are talking fast to keep Jupiter from flying off the planet.”

“‘Handle,’” came Artemis’s voice.

“You haven’t forgotten the teleport range on that necklace of hers already, have you, Artemis?” V asked. Mercury rolled her eyes at that and nodded to Neptune, who bowed her head and envisioned the waves. The energy came to her faster this time, now that she understood what she was doing and what would happen.

“SUBMARINE REFLECTION REVELATION!”

The whirlpool-like beam of energy swirled out across the two blocks remaining between Neptune and her target, passing between and over a series of buildings that it lit up with the shimmering radiance of an underwater light. The Revelation did not hit a wide bubble of energy, but Mercury—watching through her visor—saw something man-sized and metallic pass through the narrow cloaking field in an attempt to intercept the attack, and there was a faint flash which Mercury knew had to be Draco’s body shield surging back to life. Either he could activate that barrier at will, or Neptune’s illusion-shattering power had more of a kick to it than any of them had guessed.

The latter proved to be the case, as Draco was sent flying backwards on the crest of the Revelation, to vanish through the wall of invisibility a moment before it bent and crackled under the pressure of the assault. Neptune’s eyes widened in brief surprise and then narrowed in determination as the barrier resisted her attack with considerably more success than the last one, its green surface scattering blue energy in all directions even as the assault continued. She realized at once that even if the same system was creating this cloak, its narrower area of effect made it much more energy-efficient than the bubble-field she had previously knocked down. That meant it could focus more energy on any given point without hindering its own operation.

*Very well, let’s see how it holds up when it has to reinforce a larger area...* Maintaining the Revelation, Neptune slowly pulled the Aqua Mirror back towards herself, causing the beam to swirl larger until the mouth of the energy- whirlpool had become broad enough to completely swallow a house. Rather than being deflected away, blue energy was now spreading along the face of the shield like a flood on an open plain.

The shield fell apart like a sand castle caught in a tidal wave, and the nexus shimmered into view, its peak crowned with a storm of electrical force. Neptune ceased the Revelation at once and lowered her Mirror. Mercury noticed that while her friend was not quite so severely drained as she had been after her previous use of this long-lasting attack, she was still in need of at least a brief rest.

It seemed that she was to be denied that reprieve. Through her visor, Mercury could see that the collision with the Revelation had slammed Draco into the side of the tower, hard enough to crush the organic matter behind him and leave the knight hanging from an imprint in the shape of his own armor. He could not simply fly out of the undignified position without the nexus absorbing at least some of the energy, but pulling free the old fashioned way was no great task for Draco. He kicked himself away from the tower and began to descend, flying towards the street below with his sword raised.

Mercury and Neptune winced in unison. They joined hands and began the teleport almost before Mercury completed her landing atop the roof.

When they blinked back into the world, the two Senshi were standing together in front of the building upon which the nexus had been planted. There were a number of people standing around, most of them still staring up at the massive green tower which had suddenly appeared from empty air, and at the gleaming figure that was rushing down from the alien construct. Relatively few heads turned towards the flash of blue light that had accompanied the teleport, and even fewer noticed the three Senshi and two giant cats racing up the street. At least until V launched a Crescent Beam at Draco. *Then* people looked around, put two and two together, and quickly cleared out from what they now recognized as a soon-to-be battlefield.

Draco swung wide of the Crescent Beam and returned a series of force bolts, blasting cracks into the pavement as V and the others with her dodged. Although his attacks were not striking the intended targets, Draco kept up the barrage, forcing the three Senshi and the two cats into purely defensive action and leaving them no time to shoot back.

A Deep Submerge exploded against the warrior’s right flank, triggering his shield and blowing him sideways with a great crash of breaking glass as he flew through a large window on the third floor. Neptune had enough time to make a face at the damage before Draco came flying back out and directed his empty hand at the two Water Senshi. “PULSO!”

Neptune raised her Mirror and deflected the fist-sized projectile back at its creator, but Draco had been waiting for the move and unleashed his sword’s force-lash, which blew the returned blast out of existence and then raced on towards the ground. Mercury and Neptune evaded it easily enough, leaping away in different directions as the heavy white force smacked loudly against the street, but they were both taken by surprise when Draco swung his blade sideways and the lash stayed in existence. Neptune was caught off-guard and sent rolling along the street by the crushing blow, sliding to a rough stop several feet from where she had been standing. She managed to hold on to her Mirror and raised it to ward off any additional attacks, but her other hand was covering much of the right side of her face, and her left eye was half-closed in pain.

It had been Draco’s intent to follow up the attack with something to make sure that Neptune stayed out of the rest of the fight, but he suddenly had his hands full dealing with Mercury and the glowing blue blade at the head of the Caduceus. Draco could quickly tell that Mercury was neither as quick nor as skilled with her Weapon as Uranus was with the Space Sword, but with three more Senshi and two Nekoron behind his back, she didn’t need to be either. The knight parried a two-handed overhand blow with only one hand on his own sword, and turned just far enough to extend his empty right hand towards Mercury’s allies. Spreading his fingers, Draco called out, “DISPERGO!”

The command sent a wide wave of force sweeping down the street towards the Senshi. Carrying the force of a very strong but also very brief wind, Draco knew it would only buy him a few seconds at best. He also knew that would be enough. Returning his full attention to Mercury, who he had seen pulling back from the corner of his left eye even as he launched the delaying attack at her friends, Draco quickly read her posture and surmised that her next strike would be a wide slash to drive him away and buy back the few seconds he had just earned. Rather than raise his sword to intercept the Frost Lancet, Draco let Mercury make her attack and stepped back.

Despite the similarities, Draco’s golden plate mail was not the encumbering steel of the medieval knights of Europe; it was a product of high technology and high magic, incredibly durable and yet lightweight alloys fused together by powerful enchantments which bore most of the suit’s weight, leaving the occupant with an only slightly reduced range and speed of movement. As he stepped back with both legs braced, Draco put his weight on his right foot and turned a full circle, bringing his left leg up and around in a sudden kick that Mercury would not have thought possible for a man in such massively ornamented armor.

As real as it was, Mercury’s disbelief didn’t stop Draco’s steel-clad foot from smashing into the side of her head. There was a loud crack and burst of blue energy as Mercury’s headset—visor, microphone, earpiece and all—shattered under the force of the kick. The device dematerialized into a spray of mist and trailed from Mercury’s head as she collapsed, sprawling out facedown and unconscious on the asphalt.

Violent heat exploded against Draco’s back with a thunderous report, knocking him down on one knee for a brief instant before he was able to recover. He took the blast to be a sign that the three standing Senshi disapproved of his treatment of their friends, and on that assumption murmured the command word for the force-lash before spinning around on his knee. Several car windshields and windows were left spiderwebbed or outright shattered by the move, and as his sword reached the end of its arc, Draco raised his right arm to launch another broad wave of power. The two cats had jumped high to evade the lash and were now sent tumbling backwards by the follow-up, but the Senshi braced themselves and withstood the pressure. Then Sailor V went flying sidelong into Mars, caught by the backswing of the force-lash that she had not been able to see clearly with her arms up and her eyes closed against the fake wind. The attack would have done more damage except for Jupiter, who had raised a shield that cut the sweeping strike decidedly short.

V was back on her feet a moment later with just a quick shake of her head to clear the stars, but Mars was slower to recover. Crossing his right arm under his still-extended left, Draco threw another energy-punch at the staggered pair. V put herself right in its path to shield Mars, but the end result of that bit of heroism was that instead of one Senshi being knocked flat, two of them wound up groaning in a pile together. That left Jupiter, who curled her hands into fists and glared pure murder at Draco as he went into a ready stance, waiting for her to make the next move.

Only there weren’t any moves left. She’d already thrown every attack she knew at Draco, to no effect, and she couldn’t risk trying the full power of the Aegis, not when there were still two mana nexi that she had to get rid of. And Jupiter seriously doubted that even she could punch through armor that had repeatedly managed to stand up against bullet-force impacts without suffering so much as a scratch. Around her, the Aegis sizzled with an electric reflection of her frustrated anger and spat a coiling bolt of lightning at Draco, a weak discharge that the knight’s body shield absorbed easily.

“We both know that isn’t going to work,” Draco said mildly. Jupiter could sense the man’s confidence, his certainty that he had won the fight, that she could not touch him and that the others were of no further consequence...

Jupiter’s eyes flicked briefly to her left, where V and Mars had managed to separate with some help from Artemis, but were still too dazed to lend any assistance in the fight. Then she looked past Draco, to Neptune, who was on her feet but far from steady, and also without an attack capable of getting through Draco’s defenses. Finally, Jupiter looked down at Mercury, who lay off to the right.

Since her rediscovery of her ability to sense emotions, Jupiter had lived with sudden flashes of insight into other people’s feelings, unexpected shifts in her own mood, and a faint but constant background noise created by several million feeling individuals living together in the same relatively small area. Ami’s presence had been part of it from the beginning, registering strongly when they were talking and fading away as they moved apart or fell asleep. When Draco’s metal boot had struck the side of Mercury’s head, though, Jupiter’s impression of her had winked out, and it had not returned. Too deep into unconsciousness to dream, Mercury was simply not there as far as Jupiter’s empathic sense was concerned.

Jupiter seized two of the large orbs, her fingers clenching around them so hard that her hands shook as she held them apart. The spheres glowed brightly as the rod in her tiara extended and began to gather energy from the sky.

“SUPREME...” Twin tongues of electricity surged out from the antenna and down into the two sections of the Aegis, and their connections to the other spheres flared as energy rapidly collected. Guided by the pull on the two orbs, Jupiter raised her hands until they were nearly as far above her head as she could reach, at which point she let go and allowed them to drift higher and farther apart.

“...THUNDER...” A much larger bolt of crackling energy coursed down into Jupiter’s tiara, but instead of discharging forwards, it shot up towards the Aegis into two narrow streams that passed directly through Jupiter’s palms and out the backs of her hands. It hurt incredibly, but Jupiter held the pose as each orb fired a beam of energy forwards and backwards, each line connecting with its opposite to form a narrow, meter-long electric diamond in the air.

“...JAVELIN!” There was a crackle as a sliver of intensely green light flashed into being between the long ends of the energy-diamond, and in the instant that it formed, Jupiter brought her arms down sharply. The high-energy needle shot forward with such incredible speed that it seemed to just appear in Draco’s arm, impaling his left shoulder through the front of his armor and emerging out the back with no sign of holes.

Draco did not have the breath to shout as the Javelin’s impact hurled him ten meters down the street, but as soon as he had recovered from the hit and the tumble, the knight roared in pain, for the electric spear was still jammed through his wildly convulsing arm. With a tremendous effort of will, Draco clenched his jaw shut and reached up with his working hand to seize the radiant length of energy protruding from his shoulder. He took one deep breath and then slowly pulled the Javelin out, gritting his teeth so hard it seemed a miracle that they did not break. Free of Draco’s body, the gleaming bolt disintegrated as if the flesh and steel around it had been all that held it together. The blast knocked Draco over sideways and rolled him into the other lane with a great clattering of metal, and it took a long moment for him to stagger as far as his knees.

Instead of a hole, Jupiter’s attack had left two smoking black burns on either side of Draco’s shoulder. Below those marks, his arm hung limp at his side. His sword had fallen from his fingers in the initial impact and now lay on the street, well out of reach, and the four conscious Senshi were all back on their feet, ready to continue the fight.

Injured, disarmed, and breathing heavily, Draco smiled that disturbingly admiring smile and shook his head. “Nicely done,” he said around gasps for air, looking first at Jupiter and then down at his arm. “I... will admit... I am impressed.”

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Jupiter growled.

“I believe you.” Draco reached across his body and awkwardly lifted his left arm, and the back of the gauntlet slid open to reveal a collection of small glowing buttons not too unlike those in Mercury’s Computer or the Caduceus.

The Senshi looked up as a low thrumming sound began to reverberate from the nexus, growing steadily louder with each passing second. Motes of energy appeared rapidly along the surface of the twisted tower until it was completely alight, and then it simply vanished.

“It’s... it’s gone,” Jupiter stammered, blinking in surprise. “They’re *both*...” The electrical forces spitting between the hovering pieces of the Aegis diminished to a calm glow of green light as Jupiter lowered her confused gaze from the roof to Draco. “You’re... giving up?”

“Call it a strategic withdrawal,” the knight replied, carefully lowering his left arm and forcing himself to his feet. He swayed briefly, then held forth his right hand and called out, “Return!”

The Senshi gave a collective start as Draco’s sword suddenly flew through the air to its master’s waiting hand, but he did not attempt to attack. Sheathing the blade with an ease that suggested he could wield it as well with his right hand as with his left, Draco repeated the crossed-arm bow he had originally greeted the Senshi with. “Until we meet again, ladies.”

“Don’t hurry back on our account,” V said as the armored figure vanished in a flash of red energy. As soon as Draco was completely gone, V dropped the tough act and folded her arms tightly and yet loosely around her sore torso, chanting, “Owowowowowowow,” in a low mantra of pain.

“Sometimes I wonder if getting caught by that grenade back in London didn’t turn you into some sort of masochist,” Artemis scolded. “You could have dodged that last shot of his instead of jumping right into it.”

“I could have,” V agreed in a pained voice, noting in passing that Artemis’s feline features and sharp teeth were admirably suited to scowling. “But then he would have flattened Mars. I had to help.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mars said. “You were a *big* help in that regard.”

V chuckled weakly, scratching the back of her head while keeping her other hand pressed firmly to her bruised stomach. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll try to push you out of the way next time.”

“Preferably not into a wall,” Mars replied wearily as they joined the others. Luna had transformed into her demihuman form and carefully turned Mercury over, and Neptune was kneeling next to them, holding her Mirror rather close to Mercury’s face and studying the reflection carefully. Jupiter stood a short distance away, looking down at the other three with her arms folded and the Aegis hovering behind her.

“How is she?” V asked.

“She’ll certainly have a headache when she comes to,” Neptune said, lowering her Mirror, “but nothing’s broken as far as I can tell. I’d guess that her visor absorbed most of the force of the kick before it shattered. Is that going to be a problem?” she asked Luna.

Luna shook her head. “Not for more than a day or two. There are self-repair systems or enchantments built into just about every piece of equipment you girls use, and this level of damage is well within their ability to handle.”

“Mercury will be glad to hear that,” V said. “How are you holding up, Jupiter?”

“I’m okay.” Mars privately doubted that claim, for while Jupiter looked more or less fine, she was keeping both hands tucked out of sight beneath her arms. It was plain that none of the others really believed Jupiter either, but V nodded and spoke before anyone could call Jupiter on the truth of her words.

“In that case, let’s get Saturn on the trumpet-”

“‘Horn.’”

“-and have her pick us up,” V continued, as if she hadn’t heard her feline companion’s correction. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m too beat to run all the way home while fending off the fans.” She glanced meaningfully in the direction of the crowd that had scattered at the beginning of the fight, and which was now creeping back.

Saturn wasted little time in arriving. Neptune had no sooner assured her that it was safe to leave Usagi and the others alone for a few moments than her face disappeared from the communicator display and a burst of violet energy appeared on the sidewalk. The lights that had been shining steadily since the removal of the nexus flickered briefly again even as the energy coalesced into Saturn, who looked at her friends with open concern before she turned around and cut a dimension door into the air. Luna and Neptune carried Mercury through first, Luna holding the Caduceus in one hand, and they were followed closely by V, Mars, and Artemis. Jupiter was on the door’s threshold when Saturn stopped her with a touch on the arm and a wordless look at her concealed hands. After a moment, Jupiter held out her left hand.

Great rough-edged holes had been burned into Jupiter’s glove where the lightning had passed through her hand, black-rimmed gaps that reached from her knuckles almost to her wrist. The skin beneath the glove was unmarked, but it was very, very pale, and she could not hold her hand steady. Saturn sighed and let Jupiter go through the door, stepping back to make way for the Aegis, which she glared at angrily.

With everyone else safely home, Saturn took a moment to look around at the damage the fight had left behind. Then she turned and stepped through the portal as well, willing it shut behind her.

# 

The Sciences Director was working in her office, typing busily away at her computer when someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said in clipped tones, not looking away from the monitor.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Information said as he entered the room. Sciences detected enough emotion in her associate’s normally imperturbable voice to make his apology genuine, which for him was saying quite a lot. “I would have gotten back to you sooner,” the man continued, “but it’s been one of those nights.”

“So I’ve heard. I’ve received more reports in the last hour than most of the past week. You?”

“The Senshi cut quite a path through downtown this evening,” Information said as he took a seat. “At last count, my people had confirmed in excess of five hundred calls to the police, officials at various levels of the government, and an entire host of news agencies.”

“Media and his people must be pulling their hair out in desperation by now.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” He took a plastic case out of a pocket and slid it across the desk. “There’s the files you wanted. Everything we had on electromagnetic anomalies before tonight, cross-referenced against the appearances of the Senshi and hostiles, plus all the analyses your teams have done.”

Sciences accepted the case and the disc within. “You’ve examined the data, of course.”

“Of course. Are you actually planning to build a Senshi-specific tracking device, or just considering the notion?”

“It’s just a theory at the moment. Security will likely be demanding something of the sort at our next meeting, but I need to be sure that this mobile anomaly really has something to do with the Senshi before I try to build a scanner to track it down.”

“In that case, you may want to take a look at this.” Information handed over another disc, and at Science’s inquisitive look, explained. “One of Security’s teams was fortunate enough to get in visual range of this evening’s final incident, and they recorded several things I think you’ll want to see.”

Sciences regarded the disc in her hand for a moment and then loaded it into her computer and opened the only file on it, filling her monitor with the playback of a battle between several of the Senshi and a lone figure in elaborate and archaic bodyarmor, as seen from one of the personal recorders issued to the Security teams. The man or woman who had been using this recorder had done so from a distance, making excellent use of the zoom controls and tracking the movements of the combatants with commendable skill, so it helped make up for the lack of sound.

The reactions from the lady Director were more expressive than verbal as she studied the fight. Her eyes narrowed intently when Mercury, Neptune, and Jupiter were in focus with their respective devices. Then her eyes rolled above a wry smile when the camera filled with the image of Sailor V; she could imagine some uses Media would make of that footage once he’d seen it. She winced sympathetically when Mercury was kicked in the head—regardless of what the Senshi really were, that still had to hurt—and blinked as Jupiter responded to that with a massive burst of energy from the strange spheres orbiting her.

When Saturn appeared and proceeded to cut open a hole in space, Sciences gave a start of surprise and sat forward in her chair, pausing the recording in order to take a closer look at the square-shaped impossibility.

“Good lord.”

“I thought that might get your attention.”

# 

The actual process of healing only took a few moments, but Saturn was kept busy for the better part of an hour thanks to her insistence on fussing over and scolding each of her patients in turn. She wasn’t the only one: Calypso was literally hovering over Ami, hugging her one minute and arguing with her the next; Artemis and Minako had carried on their debate from the street almost without pause; and even Haruka and Michiru had briefly traded accusing glances when each of them saw that the other had managed to get herself hurt.

Eventually, though, everyone calmed down. The advancing hour helped, as did the extensive physical exertion most of them had been through—and this included Usagi, who had taken the opportunity presented by the absence of most of the other Senshi to devour what remained of Makoto’s cake. She was snoozing on one end of the couch now, a bit of frosting dotting the corner of her mouth.

“Usagi,” Haruka said, gently shaking the girl’s shoulder. “Come on, Full Moon. Time to get up and go to bed.”

“Hmnph,” Usagi replied. “Goway.”

“Usagi,” Haruka repeated, shaking her a little less gently.

“Lemmee sleep. Thassan order.” Haruka raised an eyebrow at that.

“I’ll do it,” Luna offered.

“No, no,” Haruka declined with a wave. “I can do this. You and Rei do it all the time, so it can’t be that hard.” Luna gave Haruka a dry glance which she didn’t notice. “Where is Rei, anyways?”

“She and Michiru are upstairs,” Calypso said. “I overheard them saying something about a footbath.”

Haruka blinked and looked up at the Nereid, then at the ceiling. She took in a breath and opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head and went back to trying to move Usagi.

“Come on,” Saturn said, smiling at Calypso and Ami. “I’d better get you home before you have her doing something silly like listening at the door.”

“Would I do that?” Calypso asked innocently.

“Yes.” Saturn was not the only one to say it, and Calypso folded her arms with an insulted ‘hmmph’ and a toss of her head as Saturn proceeded to open a dimension door back to Makoto’s apartment. As soon as the door was open, Calypso’s head turned, her pouty routine falling away into an open-mouthed look of surprise. Behind her, Makoto stared wide-eyed at the dark room on the other side of the portal.

“Caly?” Ami asked. “What is it?” Makoto was already striding through the door, going straight to the nearest lamp. When the light clicked on a moment later, they could all clearly see what Calypso and Makoto had picked up from the start.

The sapling had been busy over the last two hours. It had put out roots, long creepers that had reached blindly across the room towards the other plants and buried their seeking tips deep into the pots of soil. The connection appeared to have been mutually beneficial for all parties involved; the young tree was now well over a meter tall, but Makoto’s other plants had also grown noticeably, sending fine vine-like networks of their own roots back along the thicker ones of the tree. Some of the roots were now decorated in places by tiny blossoms, and the slender trunk of the sapling was entwined within a layer of vines that climbed up into its leafy crown before erupting in blooms.

Makoto extended a trembling hand to touch the nearest of the flowers, then froze as the leaves of the plant *waved* at her, reaching towards the warmth of her presence, the light of the lamp, and the nourishing energy of the Aegis all at the same time.

*Makoto,* a tiny voice seemed to whisper.

“Makoto?”

“Wh-what?” Becoming aware of a hand on her arm, Makoto looked up and found two almost-identical faces looking at her in concern. “Ami? Caly? What...”

“You weren’t answering us,” Ami said. “Are you all right?”

Makoto looked from Ami to the plants and back again. “What do you think?” she asked with a wearily amused smile.

“Greenhouses come to mind,” Haruka said, before bending forward and closing her eyes as she breathed in the scent of one of the blossoms. “Although,” she added, some of the customary hardness fading from her features, “as far as pushy houseguests go, you could do a lot worse.”

Ami and Calypso glanced suspiciously at Haruka, but couldn’t tell what the source of her smile was—teasing them or enjoying the flowers. Ami sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “I’m too tired to deal with this right now. Would you mind, Caly?”

“You go get ready for bed,” Calypso said. “I’ll help Mako-chan figure out...” The Nereid paused and gestured with her hands as she looked at the plants. “Well, something,” she finished.

Ami smiled at her sister, then said good-night to her friends and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

“All right,” Saturn said, turning to the crowd that had stepped through the dimension door into Makoto’s living room to see and smell the strange flowers. “Everyone out. Go on.” She started using the blunt end of the Silence Glaive to prod her friends back the way they had come. “Let these three have some peace and quiet. Ami-chan has to work in the morning.”

“Okay, okay,” Artemis said, falling back. “Just watch where you point that thing.”

“Scaredy cat,” Minako teased. “She’s not even using the *sharp* end...”

“Then why aren’t you still smelling the roses?”

“I think it might be better if I stayed here tonight,” Luna said as Minako and Artemis started to argue in Michiru’s living room.

“You’ll have to sleep on the couch,” Makoto replied, making a face as she realized how silly it was to say that to a cat. Luckily, Saturn, Luna, and Calypso were the only ones still in the room; Haruka had gone to try and wake up Usagi again, and so was out of hearing.

“Okay, then,” Saturn said as she stepped back through the dimension door.

Saturn was just closing the gateway when, from behind her, Makoto, Luna, and Calypso hear Usagi yawn and ask sleepily, “Why do I smell flowers?”

 

# 

_(The scene is the balcony outside the master bedroom of the Tsukino home. Saturn is just stepping out through the door and sliding it quietly shut behind her, waving good-night to the trio settling down to sleep. Or, in Usagi’s case, already snoring. Saturn alights to the roof and settles down on a semi-comfortable spot for her turn at the night watch, laying the Silence Glaive across her lap.)_

**Saturn**   _(looking up)_ : Shhh. We’ll have to do this very quietly to keep from disturbing the others.

_(Below, the bedroom window fills with flickering light as the ginzuishou and the Phoenix Egg begin their nightly glowing session.)_

**Saturn** : This episode was another of the “we gots a big fight so we don’t need no steenkin’ moral” episodes that the author seems to be so fond of, so as usual, it falls to the cast of the post-episode moral instruction sequence to make up a lesson on the spot. Being as I am the *entire* cast of this sequence, I’ve decided to go with ‘persistence’ as tonight’s theme.

_(The two crystalline objects/entities are now emitting faint music in addition to light. The tune seems to be ‘Safety Dance’, by Men Without Hats.)_

**Saturn** : When you’re persistent, you can really accomplish things. No matter what obstacles life hands you, if you keep at whatever it is you’re doing, sooner or later you’ll succeed. Our enemies proved this tonight by finally managing to pull off a clear victory, and we tend to demonstrate the principle ourselves by fighting what always seems to be a hopeless rearguard action, only to pull off a miracle and save the world at the last second. With a lot of help from Usagi, of course.

_(The Phoenix has left its Egg and begun dancing around the room, clapping its wings together at the appropriate points in the song. The ginzuishou, meanwhile, has turned into the heart of a laser light show which for some reason includes the dancing hologram of a short man in a jester’s cap, carrying a mandolin.)_

**Saturn**   _(oblivious to the scene below)_ : The flip side of the coin is that while persistence is guaranteed to pay off, it may do so too late to do you much good. The others fought their way through a series of enemies and obstacles and only managed to come away with a draw, and *that* because Mako-chan lucked into a new attack and fried the enemy commander.  _(She sighs.)_  I guess we’ll be in for another stepping up in the training after this...

_(Finally noticing the song and dance number, Saturn opens a hole in the roof and glares down at the Phoenix Egg and the ginzuishou. The two crystals sweatdrop, there is a flicker, and everything in the room goes back to normal. Saturn continues to look down suspiciously for several very long minutes before closing the hole again. Scene fades to black with her muttering to herself.)_

06/04/02 (Revised, 22/08/02)

Lots of Weapons and powers and stuff involved in this one. Special thanks to the manga/anime character ‘Locke the Superman’ for the laser spear technique that was the direct inspiration for the formation-slash-summoning sequence of the Thunder Javelin. Although I can’t recall the names involved, the usual legal stuff and disclaimers most likely apply, yadda yadda yadda.

In future episodes, expect to see:  
-One or two of these annoyingly mysterious faces revealed;  
-A Senshi spring break beach trip; and, by popular request,  
-A cameo appearance by everyone’s favorite tuxedo-wearing rose-flinger!

 


	30. Sometimes Family Matters, But Sometimes They Just Make Life Difficult

# 

Once again, Janus and Jenna stood before the rounded window in the outer wall of the city, waiting for something to appear from the dark depths beyond. There were no soldiers this time, nor were Archon or Lilith present at the side of the Imperial twins. Lady Istar stood with them to serve as a translator during the encounter, but the only other being in the hall was Talos, who was as ever a seemingly motionless statue behind the royal persons.

They had only been waiting a few minutes before one of the robed mindwalkers of the Deep Ones appeared in the waters outside, its hands folded in that prayer-like stance.

*Your mission did not go as planned.* The watery psychic voice seemed to be that of the mindwalker which had done most of the talking during their initial meeting.

“The mission did not go as well as it might have,” Janus corrected, “but neither was it a failure. We successfully gathered a sizable reserve of energy, which even now is allowing our plans to advance at an increased pace. More importantly, we were able to acquire a considerable amount of information on the abilities and tactics of our opponents. And most importantly of all, we achieved this with a minimal loss of resources.”

*Resources which were assembled over many days of effort,* the Deep One replied in a detached tone. *Resources which you would have put to other, better uses had your original plans not suffered such severe setbacks. This one success does not change the fact that you have fallen into a fast current and are being carried farther away from your destination. Enslaving daimons will not give you the support you require to succeed, no matter how well you control them.*

*Do I detect a note of grudging envy, there?* Janus thought with an inward smile. To the best of all Atlantean knowledge, the Deep Ones were a race of psychics, and *human* mentalists had never enjoyed a particularly high success rate in any dealings with daimons. He might not be able to understand what the sentient octopoids felt, but Janus knew that the Atlantean ability to raise and control daimons weakened the Deep Ones’ own offer of support, and that made it a political concern rather than an emotional one. Politics, he could do.

“Daimons have never been our first choice as allies,” the Prince said. “However powerful they may be, it’s rather difficult to reach any lasting agreements with creatures whose only vested interest in this world is as a plaything, to be toyed with before they break it. But that having been said, it has also never been our way to ignore any potential source of support—only to exercise the appropriate caution in its use.”

*Caution is a luxury you may soon be unable to afford,* the emissary noted. *You have had time to test your strength, to use your mindless ones, daimons, and warriors against the Senshi, and in all three cases you have been stalemated. You have had time to consider our proposal and all your options; now you must give us an answer.*

Jenna took control for a moment. “There is one final thing we must ask before we give you an answer.”

The squid-like face remained implacable. *And this is?*

“That if we reach this agreement, and work together against the Senshi, no lasting harm must come to them. They oppose us now, but only out of two and a half thousand years of ignorance and suspicion. This may or may not change in the near future, but if the Senshi are killed or damaged beyond usefulness, we will have lost a powerful potential asset.”

*Easily done,* came the mindwalker’s reply. The twins both blinked; that had been too easy.

“Then you may tell your people that we agree to the terms,” Janus answered, keeping his voice calm and smooth. “Your information and assistance in... delaying the Senshi, in exchange for the safety and sanctity of your domain.”

*It is done. When is your next mission to take place?*

“In three days’ time.”

*We will be ready.* With that, the Deep One shimmered like a heat mirage and vanished. Lady Istar narrowed her gaze on the empty spot in the cold water, then looked at the twins and nodded once. With that confirmation of the creature’s departure, Janus reached across and pressed a bracelet on Jenna’s arm, teleporting the small group back to the great hall.

Draco was waiting for them. Although he now wore the robes of a Lord, garments whose color shifted from crimson to orange in much the same manner as his armor, this attire did not hide the fact that Draco was a warrior through and through. His tall, broad-shouldered physique was obvious through the fiery robes, and his dark hair was cut rather shorter than was the fashion amongst men of this rank, a deliberate choice to keep it from getting in the way when Draco wore his dragon’s head helm. He had the dashing good looks one would expect of a knight, but by far his most outstanding feature was his gaze; there were subtle shadings in Draco’s mostly brown eyes that often made them seem to glow, particularly when he was intent on something. Right now that fire was at low burn.

“Your Highness,” the Lord said, bowing with his left arm across his chest. “I trust all went well?”

“Perhaps a little too well,” Janus replied as he and Jenna passed Draco and ascended to the throne, while Talos took its place behind them.

“Your Highness?” Draco asked, a frown creasing his brow.

“Their emissary agreed to your added condition, Draco,” Jenna explained, “but it did so without any argument. It didn’t even try to point out that holding back against the Senshi would make things more difficult for us whenever we fought them.”

“That *is* peculiar,” the knight agreed. “The Deep Ones have never been satisfied to just leave their adversaries alone.”

“No, but *exploiting* those enemies for their own ends is another matter,” Janus finished. “The emissary may have agreed so readily because the Deep Ones *want* the Senshi alive and able to fight.”

“That also doesn’t sound like them,” Jenna said.

“Oh no? You heard that comment it made about controlling daimons. We know the Deep Ones can observe the city even at this distance, and if *we* were able to analyze the summoning spell that Archon’s apprentice cast *before* he spoke to her, we have to assume that the Deep Ones could do the same. In which case...”

“...in which case,” Jenna continued, understanding her brother’s point, “having the Senshi around to counter our potential army of tractable daimons would keep the Deep Ones useful to *us.* All right, I see what you mean.” The Princess paused. “You don’t *really* believe that’s why it agreed so quickly, though, do you?”

“Oh, it’s a very good theory,” Janus said with a crooked half-smile, “and it explains the creature’s behavior quickly and simply. But we both know that when it comes to the Deep Ones...”

“...nothing is ever simple.” Jenna nodded glumly. “So we’d better pay even closer to attention to them than we already were.”

“Without falling behind schedule again.” Janus glanced at Draco, who had been waiting patiently while the twins conversed. “How’s the arm?” the Prince asked, nodding at Draco’s left arm, held immobile across his chest by a smooth grey ‘sleeve’ that ran from his shoulder to his wrist.

“Most of the feeling has come back, Your Highness,” Draco replied, looking down at his disabled arm and flexing his fingers. That was about all the movement the brace allowed him. “Lord Triton believes it will be fully restored within another two or three days.”

Janus nodded. “I hope you won’t take it amiss if we decide not to include you in the next operation.”

At that, Draco chuckled. “Oh no, Your Highness. I understand completely. Although,” the knight added, his humor fading, “I would like to know who *is* to oversee the operation.”

“All things considered, I plan to send Lord Stone.”

That appeared to relieve Draco to some degree. “And what about Cestus?”

“Yes,” Janus agreed, sitting back on the throne with a sigh. “What about Cestus?” After some thought, he shook his head. “We can’t afford to have him pursuing his grudge against Jupiter right now. Until further notice, Cestus is to know *nothing* about the Aegis. Understood?”

“Of course, Your Highness.” Lady Istar bowed her head.

“Understood, my Prince.” Draco’s bow was deeper, but he came up from it wearing a frown. He hesitated only briefly before he asked, “And Lilith?”

“We’ll deal with her,” Jenna said grimly. “In the meantime, I have an industrial overhaul to see to...”

“...and I must therefore request that you take over the planning for the next mission, Lord Draco.” The twins’ shared mouth switched from one voice to the other with perfect smoothness, not wasting a breath.

“As you say, my Prince. I’ll have a preliminary battle plan for you in the morning.”

“In the morning,” Janus agreed, closing his eye.

As soon as the Prince’s eye was closed, the right side of the twins’ shared body began to flow and shift disturbingly. The effect was a little like melting wax and a bit like a heat mirage rising in waves off of a highway on a hot summer day. Everything about the body that was Janus changed: the skin softened; the muscles were redistributed; some of the bones even altered visibly, producing barely audible creaks. And those were just the changes that could be seen from the outside.

When the shifting had ceased, Jenna opened her right eye and let out a slow breath. “I hate that part,” she noted, slowly shifting her jaw and right limbs in much the same way that Draco had flexed his fingers a few moments before. When the worst of the soreness had passed, the Princess rose from the throne and took a step forward, only to stumble as her right leg refused to live up to its part of the bargain. Draco and Istar were there immediately, the Lady catching her friend and the knight offering his good arm to help them both up. Jenna looked at the pair with undisguised annoyance. “I’m not a cripple, you know.”

“Of course you’re not,” Istar replied calmly. “What you are is very stubborn, and acting entirely too much like your brother.”

“Force of habit,” Jenna murmured, pushing down her embarrassment at having to be led around like a child as she allowed Draco and Istar to help her stand and descend from the dais. Walking was very different when you were stuck in a body that was half-male and half-female, and Jenna knew it would take a little while for her to get used to walking on her own again. It always did.

As the trio made their way down the steps, Talos followed, silent except for the slow creaking of the dark armor and the heavy tread of enormous metal boots.

* * * * *

Despite having been kicked in the head the previous evening, Ami was able to get to work on Tuesday morning with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, Calypso came with her, disguised as a shirt and wholly convinced that her sister would be unable to get through the day without suffering some kind of trauma unless she was there to warn her. The Nereid’s resolve had not lessened over that day, nor on the next, nor on the day after that, but determination to keep Ami out of harm’s way didn’t interfere with Calypso’s curiosity or her sense of humor. It had only been with a great deal of arguing that Ami had managed to keep her sister from playing all manner of pranks on her co-workers, and with her humor denied, Caly had fallen back on curiosity.

*Didn’t you already do this yesterday?* Calypso asked as Ami opened a cabinet and began stacking boxes of surgical gloves inside. *And again this morning? Twice?*

*Those were blankets, beakers, and disinfectants,* Ami replied, *and this is part of my job, Caly. A hospital goes through a lot of these things, and they have to be replaced.*

*I know, but it seems like such a waste of time compared to everything that could be done during the Silver Millennium.*

*Well, it is, but there’s nothing we can do about that right now. And it’s not like Moon Kingdom technology doesn’t have its own shortcomings,* Ami added, thinking more to herself than to Calypso.

*Now don’t start that,* the Nereid chided. *A three day wait while your visor fixes itself is much more agreeable than losing it forever, isn’t it?*

*You know that isn’t what I mean.* Before the running battle on Monday night, Luna had been preparing to scan Makoto’s mind in order to make some sense of the Aegis and whatever it was they were doing to the girl, but after Draco had smashed Mercury’s visor—essentially eliminating her ability to make sense of the vast amounts of information the Caduceus was capable of collecting—Luna had chosen to delay the probe. That was a problem. It left Makoto at risk, with little definite knowledge about the Aegis other than what she had been able to puzzle out through trial and error. The delay also raised the possibility that Makoto might decide to change her mind about the entire procedure.

Ami knew firsthand that it was tricky to get used to feeling things with your mind. She and Makoto had discussed it several times, recently in company with Calypso and Luna, comparing the similarities and the differences between Ami’s Nereid-like telepathic talent and Makoto’s empathic gift. The sudden addition of whole new worlds of sensation had taken some getting used to, but Ami personally thought that they were both holding up well: apart from Ryo, she hadn’t accidentally scanned someone for almost a week; and Makoto had finally achieved a measure of equilibrium in her sleep time, leveling off at about ten hours a night. They still weren’t sure if that fatigue was because of empathic pressure or the unexplained actions of the Aegis, but it was good to see that it was no longer worsening.

But if Makoto had accepted and progressed in her own mental abilities, she still retained her fear of others reading her mind. The quick, errant flashes of insight that Ami or Calypso could pick up didn’t bother her, but the deep-searching technique Luna had described filled Makoto with dread. Better than anyone else, Ami could appreciate why that was, for she had her former life’s memories of and instinct for the many stages of telepathic contact, as well as the same general upbringing and social mindset as Makoto, a 20th century girl for whom mind-reading had been just a plot device in novels and movies until it had suddenly jumped off the page at her.

Half of the reason Luna wanted to search through Makoto’s memories was because the Aegis had already done the same thing, perhaps leaving behind clues to its own workings in the process. There were, however, parts of Makoto’s life that she did not allow even herself to see very often, memories that it had taken her years to quietly hide away in the deep corners of her mind so that she could get on with her life. The Aegis had managed to access those memories without her being aware of it, but Luna’s abilities worked differently, and Makoto would be fully conscious of anything that the probe revealed.

Agreeing to let Luna inside her mind must have taken nearly every ounce of courage Makoto could muster, and however great she knew that reserve to be, Ami could not help but worry that it might falter if they had to wait much longer.

*She’ll be fine,* Calypso said, following Ami’s line of thought without any difficulty. *Mako-chan may be afraid of her memories, but a part of her knows that the only way she’ll ever be free of that fear is to confront it.*

*Maybe,* Ami replied dubiously as she closed the cabinet and guided the push-cart out into the hall. *But that sort of thing is complicated enough to begin with, and I *know* there isn’t a term to describe the combined psychological impact of reincarnation, life with a secret identity, and the tampering of a semi-sentient collection of electromagnetic marbles.*

*I’d have to agree with you on that one,* Calypso admitted. *Still, I’m sure Mako-chan will...* She stopped speaking suddenly, and Ami frowned.

*Caly?*

“Ami?”

Ami jumped and quickly turned around. “Mother!”

Mrs. Mizuno blinked, a little startled by the sudden reaction. “Are you all right, dear?”

“Yes, I’m fine. You just surprised me, that’s all.” Although she had not done anything to provoke the situation, Calypso was still giggling in appreciation of it; Ami made mental noises for her to stop. “Did you need something?”

“Actually, I seem to have stumbled into a few moments of peace. I thought I’d use them to find you and see if you wanted a ride home.”

Ami smiled and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “I’d like that. Just let me return this cart and go sign out...” Ami fell silent as her mother shook her head and flagged down a passing orderly.

“Uematsu, is it?” Mrs. Mizuno said with a cursory glance at the man’s nametag. “Here.” She rolled the cart to him. “Take this back to storage, would you?”

“Mother!” Ami protested, but the man was already nodding and wheeling the cart away down the hall.

“Diligence is one thing, Ami, but there are times when it’s okay to take a shortcut or two. It’s the only way to do this job without burning yourself out inside six months. Besides,” Mrs. Mizuno added, raising her arm and indicating her watch, “your shift ended five minutes ago.”

“Well, yes... but that’s not the point!” Ami objected, as her mother herded her towards the elevator. “What would you say if I stole the answers to an exam as a ‘shortcut?’”

“This is a hypothetical scenario, I trust?”

“Mother.”

“Just checking,” came the murmured reply. “And to answer the question you were about to ask, my response if I caught you doing something like that would probably be highly illegal. But Ami, that’s a completely different situation.”

Ami put her hands on her hips. “How so?”

“Because education is all about bettering yourself by pushing your limits,” Doctor Mizuno answered as the elevator door slid open and they entered the car. “A job, on the other hand, is about doing what’s *required* of you; no less than that, and no more. If a task is within your capabilities, you do it as completely and as efficiently as you can and then move on to the next one; if you need help, you ask for it; and if you’re completely unsuited to a job, you stand aside and let someone else do it. Anything else just wastes time and energy that could be better spent on other tasks—in particular, the ones where you don’t *know* what’s required, and have to be able to put in all the extra effort you can to have a hope of succeeding. And even then...”

The doctor caught herself on the verge of an outburst. This was important, something Ami needed to understand if she was going to work in a hospital, but in her drive to get the point across, her voice had slipped from a neutrally lecturing tone into an emotional urgency she recognized all too well. For the most part, Mrs. Mizuno strove for a calm rationality in her work and her life, but sometimes that led people to misinterpret the restraint in her voice, leading them into thinking that whatever she was talking about wasn’t that important. When it *was* important, she came back with full heat, and the yelling started. And that never helped. So she cut herself off and took a moment to calm down. Yes, this was important, but she knew Ami could see that without being yelled at.

As a matter of fact, Ami already had the answer. It came to her from painful memories that rose briefly to the surface of her mind: the fall of the Moon Kingdom; the battle in the Arctic; a stand against Galaxia; and many other moments, less extreme perhaps, but still painful. Makoto didn’t have a monopoly on that sort of thing, after all.

“And even then,” Ami finished quietly, “sometimes it’s not enough.”

“No,” her mother replied in a very similar voice, “sometimes it’s not.” She sighed, the tension fading to weariness, and added, “That’s part of what it means to be a doctor, Ami. We don’t have the resources to give every single person the full attention they really deserve, so we have to do the most we can with what we have. Sometimes, that means making a difficult decision like risking one life to try and save another. That’s one reason why there aren’t enough doctors in the world; a lot of good, caring people who have all the other qualifications just can’t bring themselves to accept that kind of responsibility.”

They were both silent for a moment after that, Ami thinking of lost battles, her mother thinking of lost patients. The doctor recovered first, shook her head, and looked up in time to catch the introspective expression on her daughter’s face.

Like many parents, when Mizuno Rikou thought of her daughter, she inevitably pictured the child first—in this case, a sweet little blue-eyed girl who was curious enough to always ask questions and perceptive enough to find new questions in the answers. Seeing the look on Ami’s face, though, the doctor realized as if for the first time that the child she remembered had matured into an intelligent, sensitive young woman, one fast leaving childhood behind as she advanced into the rest of her life.

Rikou suddenly felt old, old and tired and somehow empty. Since she had been a schoolgirl, her entire life had revolved around her work, first in her grades, then her ambition to become a doctor, and then her determination to be not just a doctor, but the best one she possibly could. Along the way, she had lost touch with her friends; she had tried to make room for love and a family and come near to failing completely; she had rededicated herself to her work, for the sake of her dream and that wonderful little girl, only to find her daughter slipping away. Rikou would have given up anything to see Ami happy, safe, and with everything she could ever need or want, but now she wondered if she had perhaps given up too much. Her daughter would soon be moving on with her life, and once she was gone, all that would remain were fleeting contacts, insufficient memories, and the job. Rikou’s work might have satisfied her, once, but now it just did not feel like enough.

But whatever state her own life might be in, Rikou was enormously proud of Ami. She had achieved the same academic excellence as her mother, but without sacrificing her health or her social life in the process. She had a touch of the artistic temperament Rikou had by turns so admired and so regretted in her ex- husband; in Ami, that trait had resulted in an intuitive grasp of complex situations which only made her a better problem-solver, as well as moments of creativity that allowed her to fill up those little notebooks of poetry her mother wasn’t supposed to know existed. She’d made good friends, begun to shed that perennial shyness, and even snared a nice young man for herself—though in all fairness to Ryo, Rikou had to admit that she suspected the ‘snaring’ of working both ways.

*My little girl is all grown up,* Rikou thought with a mix of joy and sorrow. *And I missed it.* She sighed as the elevator slowed to a halt and opened its doors.

* * * * *

Absently stretching and flexing a lean, arm-like appendage, Proteus watched through a security camera as the two Mizunos left the registration desk and headed into the parking garage. The entity was beginning to think that it might have to extend its small network and add extra biosensors in the elevator shafts if it was ever to figure out the odd puzzle they presented. Neither had been inside its testing area within the past two days, but in the last scan, the daughter remained at zero percent infection, while her mother was at fifteen- point-six.

The only problem was that Proteus wasn’t certain how much more biomatter it could create within the hospital before the Senshi located it. After some of the news footage that had been flying around since Monday evening, it was less eager than ever for such a discovery, or the confrontation it would almost inevitably lead to.

*Not now,* Proteus thought. *Not when I am so close to completing this new body after so much effort.* The entity stretched, briefly swelling the long spinal column and three pairs of shoulders—or hips—its form possessed. Study of the remains of second-generation units had enabled Proteus to reshape its conventional biomatter from stringy green fungus into more flesh-like muscle tissues and solid bone, greatly strengthening this new form. Though still incomplete, it was nonetheless almost strong enough to carry its own weight and the awkward added mass of the half-dozen human captives in their stasis pods. It was heavily armed and well protected, and—perhaps most importantly of all—part of it functioned like a miniature factory, producing different forms of biomatter and fusing them together into whatever new shapes Proteus could devise.

Proteus was proud of that quasi-organic assembly line, but it was also a little confused by it. Every cell in the entity’s original body had been capable of self-replication on a massive scale, allowing for rapid regeneration and expansion. If new units were required, all they could simply be grown from the body and separated upon completion; if the worst occurred and all of Proteus’s body and reserves of biomatter were to be lost, all it needed to recreate itself was a single cell of basic type-one biomatter, and time.

The entity had incorporated that tremendous asset into this new form, but then something had spurred it to create this secondary means of replication as well. And it still did not understand why. Granted, the device could generate advanced biomatter somewhat more quickly and precisely than the original process of cellular fission, but it was only able to produce one or two units at a time, and not on a very large scale. The two-score ratlike units scurrying around in the nearby tunnels were proof of both the versatility and the limitations of its new system.

Shaking its head, Proteus set aside its puzzlement for the time being and turned its attention to other matters. As it body drew nearer to completion, the entity had resumed its experiments in combining human genetics and unit technology, making small adjustments to one subject as time allowed. That one, Samoru, was only hours from readiness, and Proteus wondered if it should go ahead with the test, or wait. Testing the humans in pairs gave the former unit more results to work with, and the last test, run with one male and one female, had proved an excellent reference to compare and contrast the benefits and drawbacks of each gender. Proteus, however, only had access to two unmodified women at this time, both of them on the surface; with an unknown and heavily-armed force of humans roaming the city tunnels, Proteus could not risk bringing either of them below ground to begin the enhancement process, and beginning the procedures above, by remote, would carry its own difficulties.

Idori was one of the workers taken at the call center on the very first night, and she would be the fourth test subject from that locale if Proteus used her now. Half the purpose of collecting additional humans had been to avoid using too many from one location, and that remained a priority even though Proteus had long since moved on. It could contend with the investigations of the local authorities, but if the Atlanteans heard about a series of hybrids emanating from the site where their lost watcher unit had originally been based, Proteus knew it would be in trouble.

Mariko was also connected to the call center, if only by the fact that her ex-roommate had worked there. Proteus had been able to block out the young woman’s recollection of what had happened to Nanako, but the ‘mysterious disappearance’ of her friend had frightened Mariko, and she had temporarily moved back in with her family. There were too many people in that house for Proteus to have the time to conclude an experiment with Mariko; seizing control of the entire family might have been an option, except that they had gone on a two-week vacation a few days ago, and weren’t even on the same island anymore. All Proteus could do from this distance was monitor Mariko’s movements and thought patterns, and gnash its teeth in frustration at the wait—figuratively speaking, of course, since its new body didn’t even *have* a mouth.

Eventually, the balked unit-mutant had no real choice but to accede to the whims of circumstance and begin laying plans for a solo test.

* * * * *

Ami spent most of the drive to Makoto’s apartment enjoying the chance to talk with her mother, but perhaps two-thirds of the way there, she started to worry about how she was going to keep from inviting her mother up for a few minutes. She lucked out; her mother’s beeper went off just as the car halted by the curb.

Rikou said something under her breath and gave the offending device a dark look as she pulled it from her pocket and checked the message. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry, Ami. I need to get back.”

“It’s all right.” Ami smiled and waved her own pager, which hung on the strap of the bag that held her uniform. “I’ve been beeped a few times myself this week; I’m starting to understand what a pain it can be.”

“And you still want to do this for a living?” her mother quipped as Ami got out of the car. “I’ll try to call around eight, okay?”

“Okay,” Ami agreed, closing the door. “Talk to you then.” Her mother waved before she drove away, and Ami waved back, watching the blue compact until it turned a corner and disappeared. Then she started for the apartment.

“Home already?” Makoto asked from the kitchen as Ami opened the door.

“Mother gave me a lift.” The words were no sooner out of Ami’s mouth than Makoto leaned out of the kitchen, looking worried until she saw that Mrs. Mizuno was not in the apartment. “That was my reaction,” Ami said with a sympathetic expression, closing the door and slipping off her shoes. Calypso was already in her cloud-like intermediary form, a fake shirt well on its way to becoming a human. “Has there been any change?”

“No,” Makoto replied as she returned to the kitchen. “Putting the winter blinds back on the window and keeping them closed doesn’t seem to have slowed their growth like we were hoping. I’d say we’ve got another three days before they start scraping the ceiling.”

“Three days,” Ami sighed.

“Tops,” Makoto added. Ami shook her head and glanced into the living room, at the source of their concerns.

The dryad sapling had been growing constantly since Monday night’s massive electrical disturbance. Thanks in part to the extra height of the pot, the young tree was now as tall as Makoto, its branches covered with leaves and tiny vines. The overgrowth was not limited to the tree; the bizarre network of roots it had established with Makoto’s other plants had apparently passed on the sapling’s urge to develop, and its partners were growing at a no less-accelerated rate. The girls had managed to move the pots into the back end of the room, in front of the balcony where no one would accidentally trip over them, but that had been on Monday night. The plants were twice as large now, and Ami couldn’t look at them without the image of the Makaijou flashing through her mind—in particular, the moment when the alien tree had exploded through the upper levels of Ail’s and Ann’s apartment building.

“Have you reconsidered planting it?”

“No,” Makoto said firmly, not looking up as she put the finishing touches on a pair of peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches.

“Just checking,” Ami sighed. Makoto had been dead-set against the notion of getting the sapling into the ground since the night the growth spurt started. Makoto refused to say exactly why, and Ami wasn’t ready to press her on the issue just yet, so she let the subject drop. “Aren’t you overdoing it with the snacks?” she asked, glancing at the plate of sandwiches. “It’s only a couple of hours until supper, and we *do* have practice tonight.”

“I can’t help it, Ami. I’m starving.” Makoto suited her words by raising part of one carefully-prepared sandwich and taking a large bite.

“For the fourth day in a row,” Ami said, sharing a long look and a line of thought with Calypso. Makoto noticed the exchange, drew her own conclusions, and swallowed the sticky mouthful in order to voice them.

“Sho...” She paused and swallowed a second time. “So you think the Aegis are *making* me hungry? To try and help restore all the energy I’ve burned up using them, or something like that?”

“That’s a *possibility,*” Calypso admitted dubiously, “but I’m not sure if it’s the answer. If the Aegis wanted to re-energize you, they could do it much more quickly and efficiently by just drawing energy from the environment and transferring it into your body.”

“Except that Makoto isn’t able to safely absorb large amounts of electricity when she isn’t transformed,” Ami pointed out. “That could make a recharge by the Aegis harmful.”

The Nereid tapped her chin with one finger and then nodded. “I didn’t think of that.” Calypso smiled and rolled her eyes. “But that’s hardly a surprise. We *all* know what that sort of electrical exposure would do to me.”

“Mmmm,” Makoto replied, keeping her mouth closed around another hefty bite of peanut butter and jelly-rich bread.

“Be nice,” Calypso chided.

* * * * *

Lord Stone was meditating in his quarters in preparation for the night ahead. It had been months since his last field assignment, and the previous missions had merely been reconnaissance; tonight’s task would undoubtedly involve combat, and the dusty-haired Lord wanted to be as ready as he could possibly be. After this afternoon’s briefing, however, he was finding it difficult to keep his focus.

He had not been certain why Their Highnesses would have wanted to see him until they began explaining more of the details of the events in the target city than he and most of the other Lords had been privy to. Lord Stone had not been insulted that the Prince and Princess had kept the identity of their opponents hidden, nor had he been overly surprised to learn that the Senshi of the modern world were working against them. Once he had been told these things, he understood why his liege-lord and lady wanted him to oversee the next mission.

The names of the Great Houses of the Empire had not been selected by whim or ego—not entirely, at any rate. In the ancient days of Atlantis, the first Emperor had ordered powerful magic set into motion around his most loyal retainers, bonding each of them to a specific element most suited to their natures. The enchantment had carried over into the descendants of the first generation, giving rise to families with a natural inclination towards one of the natural forces of the universe. In the case of the forebears of House Stone, the specific element had been the earth: the life-giving essence of fertile soil; the unyielding power of the mountains; the terrible fury of the earthquake.

As the leader of his House, Lord Stone was adept in several forms of earth-magic. His physical size and strength were due in part to his natural affinity for the element, as was his patience and his skill with his hands. He had the uncommon gift of being able to understand and use both science and sorcery comfortably and with skill, and while he did not have the aggressive nature or powers of, say, Lord Draco, he could certainly hold his own in direct combat. All of these were good advantages, traits which Janus and Jenna would have been drawn to for a mission on which neither Cestus nor Draco could be sent, but Lord Stone knew the real reason the twins had selected him:

There was no Senshi of the Earth.

Sages and scientists had come up with a dozen different theories to explain that curious vacancy in the ranks of the Senshi, and Stone was familiar with them all, but it did not matter which was correct, or even if they were all wrong. The fact remained that in the entire ten thousand year history of the Empire, there had never been a Senshi whose powers came from *this* planet. That was a weakness, and no one in the Imperial City was better suited to exploit it than Lord Stone.

The door to his chamber opened with a faint whisk of sound, and Stone’s granite-grey eyes opened as well as a lady in a dark green dress stepped through the portal. Her brown hair was done up about her head in an intricate mass of braids that resembled a crown, and which was adorned with a dozen small, clear stones to enhance the image. The face below that crown was the sort that gets called “expressive,” a well-nigh fluid medium for conveying emotion in every possible way. Her eyes were large and colored a rich shade of brown, flecked with green about the pupils, and the nose in between was small, straight, and just slightly upturned at the end. The mouth below that nose was small but full-lipped, ideally shaped for pouts or kisses, and the faint dimples in the cheeks around that mouth added a devastating impact to its smiles.

The Lord smiled. This was one of his other advantages; someone to fight for. As the woman walked over, he greeted her with a simple, “You’ve heard.”

“Laraea informed me,” the lady replied in a low but melodious voice. Had Lord Stone been on his feet, the young woman would not have come up to his shoulder—as it was, he could almost look her in the eye—but anyone who judged her as small and slight would be in error, for the lady was in peak physical condition. Her body was an unusual mix of delicate beauty and sculpted strength; she was muscular without being bulky, graceful without being frail, and forceful in both appearance and attitude, yet still feminine. Right now, though, the forceful aspect of her personality was in full swing. “Were you planning on telling me about the mission before you left, or after you came back?”

“I was going to speak to you before I left,” Lord Stone said honestly, trying to read the expression before him, “but I hadn’t counted on Lady Istar. How much did she tell you?”

“Not everything,” the woman said shortly. “However good her intentions, I know Laraea too well to believe that she’d ever breach a confidence, particularly an official one—but what she did tell me was still more than enough to make me worry.”

“You always worry, Gemmaline.”

“And you don’t worry enough, you big lummox!” Gemmaline retorted. “Gamaliel, it’s no secret that Draco was injured in the last mission, and anything that could do that to *him* in a battle is too dangerous for my tastes.” One of her small hands came to rest on Lord Stone’s broad shoulder. The hand was soft, but her tone was hard as she added, “I don’t want to lose any more family members.”

“Not even your big lummox of an older brother?” Lord Stone asked in an innocently teasing tone. By now he was convinced that his sister’s show of anger was just a facade to cover her concern, but Gemmaline almost proved him wrong when she lifted her hand and swatted his arm.

“No,” she said, smiling around her annoyance, “not even you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now,” Stone continued, reaching up to grasp his sister’s arm and give her a slow, light shake, “stop worrying so much. I’m not going out there to start the Ninth Galactic War. It’s just a short energy-gathering mission. Draco and Their Highnesses laid out the plan themselves, and secrecy and defense are its top priorities. And I will be being very careful on top of that.”

“But why *you?*” Gemmaline asked. “Can you just tell me that much? Why do *you* have to be the one to go?”

Lord Stone considered the question very carefully. “There are... certain aspects of the mission that Their Highnesses wished to keep confidential for the time being. They needed someone they could implicitly trust with some very sensitive information, but Draco won’t be able to lead a mission until his arm heals, Archon can’t be spared from his duties in the city, and Lilith...” He paused and made a face. “Lilith would just be a bad idea.”

“I can imagine,” Gemmaline said dryly. “What about Cestus?”

Stone shook his head. “The nexus will be set to draw upon earth-energy. If someone starts throwing large bursts of electricity around near it...”

Gemmaline winced at the conclusion to that unfinished statement. One of the most basic lessons in magic was how the different elements interacted with each other, and while lightning and earth were not especially dangerous in combination, many minerals—aspects of earth—tended to conduct free energy very readily. Around a power-absorbing and amplifying device like a mana nexus, that would be a *very* bad thing, which was one reason why the weather in Atlantean cities had always been so closely controlled; one stray lightning bolt could have wiped out an entire district. So no, Cestus could definitely not go.

“They could still have picked someone else. You’re not the only one around here who knows how to use earth magic.”

“Granted, but how many of the others are as loyal to the throne?” He asked the question without arrogance. They both knew that despite the unity imposed on all the Lords by the urgent necessity of the Rise, there remained in some quarters a feeling of resentment towards the Prince and Princess. House Imperator was descended from the original Emperor, whose line had dominated Atlantis for the first thousand years of its grand history. Subsequent generations had lost that rule and reclaimed it on several occasions, so that in the end, the family had held the Imperial Throne for some three thousand years, more by far than any other House. Imperator had performed many glorious deeds and committed as many dark acts to hold their place in Atlantean society, just as had every other House, and there were ancient grudges in plenty, minor insults and outright feuds alike. All of the old arguments had been suppressed after the Fall, but no one believed for a moment that they had been forgotten, just as no one had forgotten that it had been an Imperator on the throne at the time of the catastrophe.

If these secrets were as troubling as her brother and Lady Istar had both hinted, Gemmaline knew that Gamaliel would have been one of the few confidants the Imperial twins would have had. Like the other great families, House Stone had its share of Emperors and Empresses, but they also had a history of loyalty to the throne, regardless of its occupant. Moreover, Gamaliel, Mikael Draco, and Prince Janus had all attended the same classes at the Imperial War College. They knew one another, understood how each of the others thought, and would trust each other with their lives. If none of Janus’s advisors could be spared for this mission, Lord Stone would be a natural alternative.

With that, Lady Stone had to sigh and nod her reluctant acceptance of her brother’s explanation. He had been selected to lead the mission because he was simply the best candidate for the job. But even so...

“You’re still not convinced?”

“No. I mean, no, I’m convinced. I just...” Gemmaline looked down at the floor, holding her arms tightly across her stomach and squeezing her eyes shut. “I just have a bad feeling about tonight, Gamaliel. Since we got back, so many things have happened that I don’t understand, and now you’re going out into the middle of them, and...” Her words trailed off into a sigh, after which Lady Stone set aside any notions of dignity or reserve and gave her brother a hug. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said.

“I promise,” Stone said as he returned the embrace. Not for the first time, he was struck by the sheer ridiculousness of the difference in their physical sizes. Gemmaline could not have gotten her arms to encircle her brother’s chest for any reason, so she had them around his neck instead, and she was almost standing up straight in the process. Stone, on the other hand, could have wrapped his arms around his sister twice, and *this* while he was sitting down. If he were to stand right now, Gemmaline’s feet would have been left dangling at about the level of his knees. That had in fact been one of their standard games when they had been younger, when their mother had been the head of the family. Just a few short months ago. In another age. But no longer.

After a time, the pair separated. Her hands resting on her brother’s shoulders, Gemmaline cleared her throat. “I have... work to get back to. Some of our friends still don’t seem to have a firm grasp of the concept of rationing.”

“I’m sure you can make it clear to them. Even if you have to talk to them by hand.” They both smiled more than the feeble joke was worth, and Gemmaline began to walk away. One of her hands lingered, trailing down to her brother’s hand for a final reassuring squeeze. Then she was gone from the room, the door whispering shut behind her.

Lord Stone sat in silence and watched the sealed portal for several minutes until a small alarm began to beep, informing him that it was time to leave.

* * * * *

It was perhaps an hour after sundown, and the Senshi were training again. After some discussion with Mercury about the state of her visor, Luna had decided to hold off on the planned mental probe for one more night, and instead allowed Jupiter to take part in the physical exercises. Considering that her balance was still acting up because of the Aegis, Jupiter was not doing quite as well as she would have otherwise. Uranus was too busy with her ongoing lessons in swordplay to take advantage of Jupiter’s less-than-perfect situation, but Venus and Mars had both seized the opportunity to pay Jupiter back for a few of the bruises she had given them on previous nights. She was making them work for their revenge, though.

“OW!”

Heads quickly turned to the blanket-covered patch of ground where Usagi was sitting. She was sucking on her hand and glaring at Rooky, who stood across the blanket from her, next to the Book of Ages. Calypso had been reading the warping pages, but she stopped to watch the little drama unfolding in front of her.

Usagi looked up and took her hand out of her mouth to say, “Your stupid bird bit me, Rei.”

“Fool!” Rooky squawked. “Fool cannot read pretty Rei-di’s Book! Tries to steal pretty Rei-di’s glowing worms! Awp!”

“I was doing no such thing! I was just looking! I...” Usagi stopped and made a sound of disgust. “I’m arguing with a feather duster...”

“Fool!”

“You call me that one more time, bird-brain, and...”

“She’s in a wonderful mood tonight,” Neptune noted as Usagi and Rooky started calling each other names.

“She’s not the only one,” Pluto replied with a glance at ChibiMoon, who stood rubbing her forehead as though the squawking match was giving her a headache.

“Something they ate, maybe?”

The eldest Senshi smiled faintly and dodged the straight punch Neptune threw at her head. “More like something they *didn’t* eat. They both had one serving at dinner, then said they weren’t hungry and left the table.”

Neptune blinked and stopped in the middle of winding up for a kick, leaving herself completely open to a counter. “Usagi... wasn’t hungry?” Those concepts were almost mutually exclusive under normal circumstances, let alone since Usagi had become pregnant.

Pluto shook her head. “We were all quite surprised, but they both said they felt fine—just not hungry. Ikuko put the leftovers in the fridge, in case... is something the matter?”

Neptune was frowning. “Saturn didn’t have much to eat tonight, either.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Not nearly as odd as it is for Usagi *and* ChibiUsa to skip a meal,” the Ocean Senshi admitted. “Hotaru’s like everyone else; some days she eats more, other days, a little less. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but now...”

They looked at each other. Three separate people deciding to eat less at one meal wasn’t exactly an event of cosmic significance, but when all of those people were Senshi... and two of them Usagi and ChibiUsa...

They called a halt to the exercises. There were some curious looks when Neptune explained the reason, but it turned out that Venus hadn’t felt at all hungry at dinner, either. In fact, hours later and after over sixty solid minutes of training—many of those sparring against Jupiter—she still wasn’t hungry. Neither were Usagi, ChibiMoon, or Saturn, and ChibiMoon at least was willing to admit that her less-than-sunny mood was due to the fact that she’d *wanted* to eat supper, but hadn’t had the slightest pang of hunger to allow it. On the other hand, Jupiter had eaten more than usual, and she was *still* hungry. Venus, Saturn, Usagi, and ChibiMoon all looked at her suspiciously when she admitted that.

Mercury got her computer out and scanned her four friends, and as she compared the results, she began to nod. “I don’t see anything unusual in Jupiter, but the others have a slight anomaly in their life-signs. It’s more pronounced in Venus, but it’s present in all four of them just the same. It seems to be...” Mercury blinked, then groaned and began entering commands into her computer again.

“What?” Venus asked. “Are we sick or something?”

“No, you’re not sick.” The Mercury Computer beeped, and Mercury sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid of what?” Venus pressed.

“There’s a mana nexus somewhere in the city, but I can’t get a fix on its position with my visor broken. Neptune?” Mercury asked, looking up from the display. Neptune nodded, produced the Aqua Mirror, and began turning through a slow circuit, looking over her shoulder via the reflection.

“Am I hearing this right?” Usagi said in a slow voice. “One of those dumb *towers* is the reason I couldn’t eat supper tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Mercury replied, her face creased by a puzzled frown as she studied her computer’s display once more. “To be honest, I’m not sure why this nexus is affecting the four of you to begin with, let alone what about it is suppressing your appetites. The energy is all wrong.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said you couldn’t detect it.”

“I can’t detect the nexus itself,” Mercury explained, “or any of the radiation it’s producing. But the cloaking devices our friends use don’t hide the effects their nexi have on local energy fields, and *something* is affecting the lines of earth-energy in this region. If Mamoru-san were here and feeling weird, it would make sense, but the four of you shouldn’t be reacting at all.”

Artemis and Luna looked at each other. “Maybe not,” Artemis said slowly. “Nobody used them for centuries, so we don’t really know for certain what sort of effects exposure to mana nexi might trigger in different Senshi, do we?”

“Something like that would have been so common in the Atlantean era, it’s doubtful anyone would’ve given it a second thought after the first thousand years or so,” Luna agreed. She paused and shook her head. “We’ll have to worry about it later. Neptune, have you found anything?”

“Sorry,” Neptune apologized. “I think I need to try from a different location; being this far back from the front of the hill *and* under all these trees makes it hard to actually see anything.”

“Let me try,” Pluto offered, summoning her staff. Looking at the not-hungry Senshi, she started to ask when they had started feeling odd, but then paused and shook her head. “There’s a faster way. ChibiMoon, give me your hand.” ChibiMoon did that, and Pluto called up her time-sight. Instead of looking into the future, on this occasion she looked back, trying to see if the pink-tinted line of events held some trace of the physiological disturbance Mercury had detected.

It did. There was nothing Pluto could *see* that revealed the difference, but as she pushed back several hours, something in the *feel* of the vision changed. She needed only a minuscule fraction of a second to track down the instant when the change had occurred, and then she forced the vision away and released ChibiMoon’s hand.

“5:19:55 this afternoon,” Pluto said.

“Three *hours?!*” Uranus burst out in dismay. “You mean they’ve been running that thing all evening?”

“It seems that way,” Pluto replied calmly. “Pardon me a moment.” She lifted her gaze to the Garnet Orb, which immediately glowed with a myriad of soft, shifting lights. Staring into that apparently random collection of colors, Pluto could make out an overhead view of the city from the same moment in time that ChibiUsa had been afflicted with a lack of hunger. Nothing about the view stood out at first, but Pluto studied it closely for several hour-long instants, fixing the details of the landscape in her mind as she used the Garnet Orb to push the image back. When a small detail changed a moment later, she was aware of it.

The image zoomed in, and Pluto blinked. “The mall?”

* * * * *

*The mall,* Proteus thought in satisfaction as the escort of rat-units lowered the incubation pod into place in the service tunnels below the complex. This task complete, one of the rats made its way over to a row of pipes along the wall. From city plans, Proteus knew that these ‘pipes’ actually contained telephone wires and some fiber-optics cables, and its subordinate unit easily burned a small hole into the back of one of the protective metal sheathes, allowing a small tendril of itself access to the electronics within. The rat- unit metamorphosed, dissolving itself into a nearly liquid state so that it could pump its substance into that hole and through the meager space inside. It followed the wiring to a junction box above ground, and from there, it only needed a few minutes to locate and interlink with part of the mall’s security system.

Proteus saw no need to go to all the trouble of creating its own surveillance equipment when it could simply use what was already there, and the mall had cameras in plenty. Not all of them connected to the same stations, of course, but that was no problem; Proteus merely had other rat-units follow the first one. Inside of ten minutes, it had the entire mall wired, and with only a minuscule fraction of the biomatter it would have had to expend in creating its own system.

As soon as all was in readiness, the pod in the tunnel hatched, and the Samoru-unit emerged. Proteus had put everything it had learned into this design. Many of the non-human components had been fashioned from second-stage biomatter, animal rather than vegetable or fungal, and this more specialized construction had allowed superior musculature to be implemented. The Samoru-unit was nearly as strong as the Tetsuo-unit had been, but it was only slightly larger than the Hana-unit, and just as fast. Its exterior was much more human in appearance than its predecessors—although the smooth, featureless outer shell would still not be mistaken for human except at a distance—and its ‘flesh’ could harden into tough armor or produce an array of bony plates or spikes at a moment’s notice. Proteus had not fully removed first-generation biomatter from this design, either; the capacity for unrestricted growth and adaptation was too useful to do away with just yet, and special sub-organs within the unit held small stores of the fungoid mass, plus biochemical compounds that would greatly speed their replication.

*Now to see if all these fancy toys are worth the trouble,* the entity said to itself with a touch of irony as its progeny headed up into the main structure.

A moment later, there was a brilliant flash of light, and Proteus, nestled in its lair several dozen blocks away, swore in astonishment.

* * * * *

Saturn, ChibiMoon, and Jupiter weren’t happy when Luna told them that they were staying behind with Usagi, but she put her foot down.

“A nexus gathering earth-energy will draw electricity like a magnet,” she said to Jupiter. “You can’t be anywhere near it. And you two,” Luna continued, looking at Saturn and ChibiMoon, “aren’t going near it either. Not until we have a better idea why it’s even affecting you in the first place.”

“Then why does *she* get to go?” ChibiMoon asked indignantly, pointing at Venus.

“It’s a calculated risk. She’s the only one of you whom we know for certain can safely shut down an active nexus without tapping into its energy.”

Saturn, for her part, looked at Uranus and Neptune. They nodded firmly, and she acceded to their wishes with a minor sigh before opening the dimension door. Pluto gave her a little advice, using the Garnet Orb to show Saturn a safe place to put the other end of her little hole in the fabric of reality.

As the portal widened, Mars and Neptune both experienced a sudden inexplicable chill. Mars took it to mean that there were daimons waiting somewhere on the other side, and—after a quick warning glance to tell her four feathered followers to stay put—she was the first one through the gate. Neptune’s reaction was different; she knew instinctively that what she was feeling was not the presence of daimons, but something else that might be just as dark. Her fingers tightened around the handle of the Aqua Mirror.

“Something wrong?” Uranus asked.

“Keep your eyes open, Uranus,” Neptune said. “Something’s not right.”

“When is it ever?” The tone was wry, but the tip of the Space Sword led the way as Uranus passed through the dimension door. Neptune followed close behind her. Calypso traded a glance and a nod with her sister before Mercury stepped into the rift; once across, she turned and monitored Venus as Artemis helped her through. That left Luna and Pluto. Pluto looked calmly at Luna, who returned the gaze evenly.

“It took six of us to bring down the last two,” the Senshi of Time said.

Luna nodded, adding, “Don’t get carried away.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

They passed through the dimension door, and Saturn shut it behind them, leaving four glum Senshi to share a sigh. Jupiter’s stomach growled a moment later, and her human friends treated it *and* her to dark looks; Calypso just smiled.

“Sorry,” Jupiter apologized with a shrug.

“It’s not your fault,” Usagi mumbled grouchily, folding her arms and sitting back against the tree behind her.

* * * * *

The landing zone Pluto and Saturn had selected put the Senshi on the second-to-last level of the mall’s adjacent parking garage, far enough back from the open front to avoid notice by anyone who was standing on or near the invisible tower.

“Did they actually put it on *top* of the mall?” Mars asked.

“No,” Pluto replied. “It’s in the parking lot, up against the side of the building.”

“I see it,” Neptune added. She studied the reflections in her Mirror. “We’ll have to cross the street, the parking lot, and about half of the mall itself to reach the nexus. There’s nothing to use for cover.”

Uranus looked at Venus. “How close do you need to be to chop that thing down?”

“Probably right next to it,” Venus admitted. “And while we’re on the subject, should I hit the spires at the top first, to shut it down and buy us some time? Or should I just go for the hole in chilled water?”

“That’s ‘the whole enchilada,’” Artemis corrected.

“Burritos to you too.”

He didn’t even *try* to make sense of that one. “And to answer your original question, I’d go for the top. It may take a while to clear out whatever units they’ve got defending the place, and there’s no sense in letting them keep on collecting energy if we can help it.”

“Right.” Venus cracked her knuckles, then looked around. “Everybody ready? Great. Let’s throw this pop can away.”

“I believe that’s my cue,” Neptune said as she raised her Mirror, smiling in spite of her ongoing feeling of waiting danger. Venus was like that sometimes. “SUBMARINE REFLECTION REVELATION!”

The attack flew out over the half-empty parking lot and impacted against the narrow perimeter of the cloaking shield with a bright flash of conflicting blue and green energies. The nexus suddenly appeared, leaving Neptune with a look of surprise on her face. That had been far too easy.

The vague feeling of dread that she and Mars had both been keeping in check increased sharply, right before the air was split by a piercing screech. With that sound came an explosion of pain.

* * * * *

Calypso had gone back to her reading, sitting on empty air with the Book open across her lap. As was her habit, she traced each line with one finger as she read it, although thanks to the Book’s bizarre script, her hand was currently on a trip through a wide spiral of shifting characters.

Calypso found the Book fascinating. Since she was not restricted to the same perceptual spectrum as her sister or other humans, the Nereid could discern things about the Book that their eyes could not, countless additional details that turned each tiny character into a story in and of itself. Find the “word“ for a person’s name, and their entire life story was laid out within it; find the symbol that represented a location, and it would show every single event that had ever transpired there. Provided, of course, that you could read fast enough.

That, Calypso suspected, was one reason why the Book’s words were constantly fading in and out. If someone *could* discover everything about everything, they would be unable to be surprised. You would be unable to look forward to the good things, and there would be no way you could avoid the bad; it would be like a story that you had already read. The joy of discovery would go out of it. You could reread a good book many times and still enjoy it, and if it ever did come to bore you, you could at last put it down. Life did not work that way. Without the occasional surprise, there would be only endless tedium, a slow, unceasing crawl along a bleak road that led from beginning to end. No deviation, no rest—no sightseeing.

*What a terrible notion,* the Nereid reflected. *Perhaps...*

Her line of thought came to an abrupt halt as Calypso suddenly picked up a brief telepathic flash from Mercury. It was a jumble of impressions, an instinctive calling-out, and within it the Nereid sensed pain. Intense pain, but without physical injury. Pain of the mind.

Calypso realized that she wasn’t the only one who knew that something was wrong. The four crows had been relatively quiet for the entire training sessions, but now they were cawing in extreme agitation, even the normally reserved Thrax. The Book was reacting too, the words on its two open pages writhing and swirling into each other in a nonsensical garble.

“What in the...” Usagi began, staring at the crows.

“They’re in trouble,” Calypso said. The Book fell to the ground with a thud as the Nereid changed shape, becoming a hovering blue sphere with a brilliant sheen along its surface.

“What are you...” Usagi tried again.

*I’m going to help,* Calypso replied. *Stay here.* She shot up through the trees, ripping a few of the new spring leaves away from their branches, then executed a sudden, perfectly perpendicular turn and streaked away through the air like a bullet.

* * * * *

For once, Mizuno Rikou was not spending the night working on something. Events had conspired to throw her a break in her schedule that included a few extra hours besides the usual nine allowed for sleep, food, and the other essentials of life, and she’d opted to use that rare gift to put in a little time at the community center pool. An enjoyment of swimming was one of the many things Rikou had in common with her daughter, although she’d never been quite as devoted to it as a sport as Ami was—nor had she been as fast!—and her busy schedule seldom allowed her to get to the pool these days.

While she was in the pool, Rikou managed to forget about most of her day- to-day worries. Concerns from work drifted out of her thoughts altogether as soon as she hit the water, and even the issue of the still-unrepaired state of her childhood home only stayed with her for a few laps. Before long, Rikou wasn’t thinking of anything except herself and the water.

For no apparent reason, Mrs. Mizuno found her rare moment of utter relaxation dissolving in a sudden flash of worry about Ami. The feeling was bad enough that she climbed out of the pool and went back to the locker room, got her cellphone, and dialed Makoto’s number. The phone rang four times before the voicemail kicked in; after a brief debate, Rikou hung up without leaving a message. Then she stood there, dripping, looking at the phone in her hand as her mind tried to explain what *that* had been about.

* * * * *

Ryo was in his room, reading, when he felt a sudden chill emanate from a corner of his mind. He was used to bizarre mental and/or physical sensations hitting him from out of the blue, but this one caused the young seer more concern than most because it was coming from a part of his mind that typically radiated nothing but warmth. Somewhere, he knew, Ami—or more likely, Mercury— was in some kind of trouble.

In another corner of his being, Ryo felt a different sort of chill as a dark, malevolent presence awoke in its prison and laughed what it too could feel—if only vaguely—coming through the mindlink between its unwilling host and one of its hated enemies.

*Shut up,* Ryo told the thing.

The youma just laughed.

* * * * *

The pain was intense, and all the worse because Neptune could not tell for certain where it was coming from. The penetrating shriek had been brief, and it had not been so loud or properly-pitched that it could have triggered this, yet there had been no other indication of the cause. There had only been that sense of fear, the hideous scream, and then—the pain.

Although she was shaking all over because of the thought-crushing ache in her head, Neptune found that she could tolerate it. She had suffered worse in her life, experienced physical, emotional, and mental agonies even greater than this. Realizing this made the pain lessen, as if the memory of those past experiences—and overcoming them—were forming some kind of shield. It did not entirely block the pain, but it did lessen it to the point where Neptune could think and exercise some degree of control over her body, which had collapsed in a limp heap when the shriek struck. Neptune pushed herself up from the cold concrete floor and opened her eyes.

The first things Neptune saw were her friends, all of whom had obviously been hit by the same attack that had hit her. Mercury, Artemis, Venus, and— Neptune felt her heart skip a beat—Uranus were all down, either knocked out cold or simply disabled by the pain. Luna and Mars were on their knees, but clearly fighting off the worst of the effect as they struggled to get back up, and Pluto... Neptune felt a simultaneous flash of relief and envy when she saw that Pluto was standing in the middle of the group, her eyes closed and the heel of one hand pressed hard against the side of her head.

Reassured by the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one still able to function, Neptune looked around for the source of the attack. She saw nothing, but the sense of dread had not lessened. She *knew* that whatever had hit them was still here—somewhere.

*Invisible?* Neptune thought, glancing at her Mirror, which had fallen face-down on the floor next to her. She picked the Talisman up and held it face- out, projecting its illusion-revealing power into the parking level and thinking, *I can deal with...*

What the Mirror revealed a moment later made the blood rush from Neptune’s face. If she had been standing instead of kneeling, she would have fallen again. Only a few meters away, in the shadow of one of the support columns, there stood a... the only word her brain could offer to describe it was *thing.* It was as tall as a human, and wore dark blue robes that would have fit a human, but it was not human. Four-fingered hands were held folded before its chest, the tips of the fingers just lightly touching, and above them was a face out of a nightmare, a tentacle-ringed mouth set between two huge, milky-white eyes without pupils. Above that was the rest of the head, a bulbous, fleshy mass that disappeared into the shadows of a hood.

Neptune wanted to scream, but her throat had closed up. She wanted to crawl away and hide, but her legs refused to work. She couldn’t make her arms move, to get the Mirror’s revealing light off the thing so it would vanish; she couldn’t even pull her eyes away, or close them.

It wasn’t the ugliness of the thing making her feel this way, for she had encountered other beings just as hideous, and destroyed most of them. Nor was it the aura of cold malevolence radiating out from the creature; every monster Neptune had ever encountered had given off similar sensations, and she had long ago learned to steel herself against such psychic weaponry. It wasn’t even the fact that this thing had knocked down most of the Senshi in one shot, for that had been done often enough in the past, by opponents that were no longer an issue.

What had Neptune so terrified was a feeling deep in her soul, in the place from which her powers sprang, of recognition. The essence of who and what she was instinctively *knew* this thing, knew exactly what it was—and was horribly afraid of it.

“What... what *is* that?” Neptune heard Mars say in a tone of revulsion. “Luna?”

“I think it’s...” For Neptune, the rest of Luna’s response was lost in a rush of sound as something hit her. She couldn’t see what it was, but it felt like a flying wall, and threw her backwards into Uranus, who didn’t even respond to the impact. That lack of a reaction from her partner scared Neptune as much as her internal terror of the thing that she knew had somehow just knocked her over. Not just her, either; Neptune could see the others, and Luna and Mars had both fared the same as she herself. Even Pluto had been pushed back, although she had somehow managed to stay on her feet and not step on anyone.

She wasn’t long about responding, either. Pluto raised her staff with both hands, her left arm reaching across her body to grip the weapon just below the ornate setting of the Garnet Orb, while her right held the staff much farther down. The jewel glowed, and Pluto, standing with her left side towards the creature, lowered the staff until the radiant stone atop it was pointed directly at her target. “STASIS BOLT!”

The staff bucked like a rifle as the Garnet Orb shot a twisting bolt of deep red energy at the squid-faced entity. The attack was fast, but its target was even faster, flickering right out of existence before the Stasis Bolt could touch it. Neptune saw the dark blue robe reappear beyond Pluto, deeper within the parking garage. Pluto must have seen or sensed it as well, because she was already turning to face her opponent.

There was another rush of invisible force, and this time, Pluto was too far off balance to resist it. She was hurled into the waist-high wall surrounding the edge of this level of the garage; the impact surely bruised her, but between the wall, her own feet, and the staff, Pluto kept her footing. Then something ripped the staff from her hand so hard that she was yanked along in its wake, and had to catch herself as her weapon clattered along the concrete. Before she had even recovered from that hit, Pluto was smashed backwards along the wall by another of those invisible strikes.

A second of the robed entities, in every visual respect a twin of the first, appeared not far from where Pluto’s staff had landed, and at that point, Neptune let out a frightened whimper and covered her head with her arms. She was appalled at her own behavior, but she just couldn’t help it.

Then she heard a scream. It was not the piercing cry the two creatures had given off at the start of their attack, but neither was it the sound of a human overcome by fear or pain. It was the kind of shriek a girl might make when she was so angry that words failed her, and Neptune did not hear it with her ears. Startled by that noise, she managed to peek through the gap between her arms in spite of her fear.

A bright blue blur shot in through the gap between the outer wall and the ceiling and smashed into the newly-appeared creature’s chest. However impressive their powers, these creatures were spindly, and the impact drove this one backwards, its arms cartwheeling wildly and the hem of its robes hissing across the concrete as it struggled to regain its balance.

The blur did not allow it the time. It pursued its target and struck it hard across the left shoulder, spinning the creature halfway around. It blurred around and smashed into the disoriented being’s back, and then zipped back and flew straight at its head, forcing the thing to raise its arms to shield its ugly face. It crashed into the side of a car and was spilled back along the hood, laying there with its hood down, the entirety of its slimy, soft-looking head exposed.

In the middle of circling around to hit its enemy from above, the blue object suddenly stopped. The halt revealed the high-speed attacker’s shape to be a perfect sphere, one which shook back and forth as if caught by unseen forces from which it was struggling to break free.

The first of the squid-creatures had been standing in the same location to which it had teleported, and except for a sharp turn of its head when its companion had come under attack, it had not visibly moved since, save for its bulbous eyes. Those were fixed directly on the offensive orb, half-closed in a squint. The ball’s shaking abruptly ceased, and for a moment, the garage was silent. Then the blank eyes opened wide as the robed creature staggered backwards with a shrill shriek and clutched at its head with both four-fingered hands. A split-second later, the ball shot through the air and delivered a smashing blow to this enemy as well, driving it back into a pillar with a soft thump.

Both squid-beings abruptly vanished, and without them, the head-splitting pain diminished to a dull ache. The heavy aura of dread that had been haunting Mars and Neptune since Saturn opened the dimension door had also ended.

*Good riddance,* a familiar mental voice said disgustedly. *Filthy creatures...*

“Calypso?” Mars ventured, looking up at the hovering sphere with a pained expression. “What are you... erm...” She broke off, rubbed at her aching forehead, and then tried again. “What are you doing here?”

*What I’m doing here is saving the whole lot of you,* the Nereid replied in grim amusement. She floated down next to Mars, whose face quickly relaxed. *Better?*

“Much. Thank you.” Mars looked at the others, specifically those who were still out cold.

*It’d be best if we let them come to on their own,* Calypso said in response to the unspoken question as she moved on to Luna, and then Pluto. *They’ll be up and around in a minute or two. Probably with some nasty headaches, but nothing serious.*

“Good. We still have to take care of that nexus.” Mars glanced out at the unwholesomely green tower, its spires capped by a shifting mass of rich brown energy.

*One thing at a time,* Calypso said as she moved towards Neptune. Halfway there, the Nereid paused and resumed her human form, looking down at Neptune with a concerned frown on her face. Neptune was huddled against Uranus, looking very small and frightened. “Neptune?” Calypso asked, floating down next to her and touching her on the arm. “Michiru, it’s okay. They’re gone.”

“I... I couldn’t move,” Neptune said softly. “When I saw them, I just... I froze...”

“It’s okay,” Calypso said. She settled on the ground next to Neptune, both hands resting comfortingly on her friend’s shoulders. “It happens.”

Neptune shook her head. “You don’t understand. I’ve been afraid before, Calypso. *Me.*” She pressed one hand to her chest. “Kaioh Michiru. Sometimes it’s my fear, and I can deal with it. Sometimes it’s something I think Larissa was afraid of, and I can deal with that, too. But this time... it felt like...”

“Like what?” the Nereid pressed gently.

“*Neptune* was the one that was afraid,” the Senshi said, closing her eyes. “That’s something I’ve only felt a few times, and *this* time... it was so bad... it was worse than anything...”

Calypso sighed and gathered Neptune into a hug, stroking her hair and patting her soothingly on the back. At the same time, the Nereid looked over her friend’s shoulder at the others.

Pluto was openly sympathetic, but Mars was even more than that, for she remembered occasions when something inside of her had felt as Neptune had just described, when something had appeared that was so powerful, so dangerous, so purely *evil,* that even the core of a Senshi’s essence was shaken. Luna’s face was grim, and she met Calypso’s questioning gaze with a short nod. The Nereid’s eyes closed after that, and she sighed a second time, as if Luna had just read *her* mind and given her an unpleasant answer to an unspoken question.

“Unnhhh,” someone groaned. It was Mercury, and although she was still laying on the floor with her eyes closed, her face had assumed an expression of pain. “Ugh... why... urk... does my head feel like...”

“Easy,” Mars said, kneeling and holding out a restraining hand as Mercury began to rise. “You might want to take a minute before you try to sit up.”

Mercury opened an eye, instantly shut it, and then reopened it very slowly. “Mars? What... what happened?”

Sitting with her arms around Neptune, Calypso almost smirked at Mercury. “You got mindblasted by a couple of unfriendly mentalists, that’s what happened.”

“Calypso?!” Mercury blurted, opening both eyes and sitting up straight to stare at her sister. “What are... ohhhh...” Mercury closed her eyes, put her hands to her temples, and leaned forward until her head was almost between her knees. “Gaaaah...”

“Mars did *warn* you against trying that,” Calypso said sweetly.

“Shut up, Caly,” Mercury said in a low tone, as she turned sideways, laying down on the cold concrete with her head touching her curled-up knees. “Oh, kamis... that hurts. Mars, could you hand me my computer? I’d like to make sure nothing’s broken...”

“Are they *all* going to wake up feeling like that?” Pluto asked.

“Oh, no,” Calypso answered. “Only Mercury. Telepaths always take this kind of abuse worse than those with closed minds. That is, when they’re as foolish as my sister and leave their defenses down...”

“Knock it off, Caly,” Mercury repeated.

“...which is something that never would have happened if she’d just stop arguing with me all the time and practice with her mental abilities a little more,” the Nereid continued relentlessly.

“Caly,” Mercury pleaded. It came out almost in an Usagi-class whine. “Please, just let me suffer in silence.” Calypso did not reply either verbally or psychically, but Mercury sighed in relief. “Thank you.”

Not five seconds later, the mana nexus exploded. Mercury groaned and turned over where she lay, swearing into the concrete.

* * * * *

Lord Stone could hardly believe what was going on.

He had been waiting here for the Senshi for over three hours, and for that entire time, the Lord had literally stood his watch, only breaking from his post every half-hour to walk a circuit of the roof on which he stood. He had the patience of a mountain and the utmost trust in any plan Draco, Janus, and Jenna had all collaborated on, but Lord Stone was also at some unease because of the unseen presence of the Deep Ones. Only one of the creatures had appeared to him when he arrived, informing him that it and its companions were ready, but saying nothing of their numbers or strategy.

*We are here. We are prepared to assist you.* That had been all the emissary said before vanishing, leaving Lord Stone to shake his head in helpless disapproval. Having one-half of your defensive troops off working by their own rules was no way to conduct an operation, but while Draco had included some suggestions on how the creatures were to fit into the overall battle plan, whether or not they were following that plan was beyond Stone’s ability to determine.

The damned deliberately mysterious behavior of his ‘allies’ wasn’t the only thing that had bothered Lord Stone. For some reason, he found that Gemmaline’s plea for caution kept coming back to him. He had been teasing her when he said that she worried too much, but they both knew that a lot of the time, Gemmaline’s concerns proved true. Of course, she was also wrong a lot of the time, but Lord Stone had a nagging feeling that his sister was right about tonight, that something was going to go very wrong.

When the Senshi had arrived at last and begun their assault on the nexus, Draco’s plan had unfolded perfectly. The too-sudden collapse of the deliberately weakened cloaking shield had left the Senshi momentarily confused, a perfect frame of mind for the Deep Ones to attack and overpower. The emissary had reappeared and informed Lord Stone that its companions had six Senshi and two Nekoron subdued, and were taking steps to suppress the remaining resistance, yet even with that knowledge—that this non-Nereid Mercury had been fully overwhelmed, and that even Athena was being neutralized—Lord Stone could not shake his suspicions.

For all of his—or his sister’s—concern that something was going to go wrong, Stone had been taken totally by surprise when the Nereid appeared. One of the first things the Atlanteans had done upon their return was to try and seek out their old allies, only to discover that in their long absence, the other races of the solar system had apparently been exterminated. Mercury and Venus had been obliterated, and the Lunar, Martian, and Jovian colonies had been reduced to a few useless piles of rock, with no clues as to the time or cause of the destruction. That had been as far out as the Lords had dared to search, with the city’s reserves so low and so much work needing to be done, but they had investigated Earth as well, on the chance that some of the old races had survived here. All they found were humans, a few scattered hints of dragons— which was really worse news than better—and then finally the Deep Ones.

For all intents and purposes, the other peoples were lost, including the Nereids—so then where in the Abyss had this one come from? The Deep Ones clearly hadn’t expected its presence any more than Stone had; the emissary’s reaction had been to actually turn its head towards the Nereid’s furious approach and assault, a gesture that, for a member of this supremely self- controlled race, was an indication of the most extreme shock.

Considering that reaction, Lord Stone wasn’t too surprised when the emissary indicated that its companions had been forced to withdraw. The Deep Ones had potent telepathic abilities, but those of the Nereids were stronger. The Deep Ones were armed with psychokinetic attacks that could crush even the strongest humans or blow apart buildings; Nereids lacked such powers, at least to the extent of affecting matter outside their own bodies, but their control over their bodies was absolute, overpowering even the Deep Ones’ best efforts to smash them or scatter their molecules. Physically, the slender mentalists of the squid-like race were no match for the Nereids at all, not even one who remained in her human guise, and while the Deep Ones hated the Nereids, the Nereids hated the Deep Ones even more, being grossly offended by the sadistic uses to which the creatures put their powers, and outraged beyond words at their eagerness to exercise those abilities on creatures that couldn’t fight back. Humans in particular.

Lord Stone had allowed himself to take a moment to wonder how Laraea Istar would react when she heard that one of her distant—by now VERY distant—kinsmen was still alive. And that was when the top of the mana nexus exploded above him.

As he ducked to shield his face against the glare and heat of the fireball, Stone expected to be incinerated on the spot; an influx of that much fire magic into the nexus would trigger a blast sufficient to flash-burn everything within half a kilometer. And yet nothing happened. Cautiously, the Lord looked back up, and then he understood. At least, he understood why he was still alive.

The nexus had not been struck by a magical fireball, nor by a bolt of lightning. Instead, something had caused the spires at its focal point to be pulled widely apart, shattering the delicate balance of forces and killing the nexus. Its connection to Atlantis severed, the energy remaining within the nexus had to be released somehow; it could not be returned to the earth in the same manner that it had been drawn out, and so it exploded its way to freedom. Lord Stone could see the golden-brown shockwave radiating outwards through the air, trailing a bizarre rain of dust-like energy over much of the city. The Lord smiled wryly, picturing the uncontrollable plant growth this region was likely to experience in the next few days thanks to that enriching rain, and then he tried to figure out what had just happened. Because whatever it was, it was still happening.

Lord Stone had never seen anything quite like it. The nexus was shifting around on its base, slowly rocking one way, then another. The sound it made was not the rumble or grating of repositioning building stone, but a peculiar slow ripping that had many elements of creaking and popping. Every few seconds, something would produce a bubbling liquid sound, and this would usually be accompanied by a small but very real rippling along the outer surface. Some of those ripples were very short, and others rose clear to the shattered peak, pulling the bent and twisted wreckage of the apex further apart.

*Human.* Lord Stone turned to the Deep One, which had resumed its impassive stance. *This is not part of the plan.*

“No,” Lord Stone agreed, “it is not. The mission ended the moment the nexus was disabled. You may remain or depart, as...” *As you wish*, the Lord had intended to say, but he was interrupted as a green shape moved suddenly towards the Deep One. A unit!

Stone was not particularly given to the notion of shouting a warning, but it was hardly necessary. The unit slammed into an invisible barrier of force, hung in the air for a moment, and then was hurled violently away from its intended target. Flames ignited over its entire body, and the burning wreckage struck the nexus. It hung there for a moment, burning in itself and blackening the biomatter around it, before it was encased within a pocket of the stuff, which pressed down on it tightly as it was drawn into the body of the twisting tower. Stone knew that the fire would shortly consume all of the available air within that pocket and die, as the unit already had.

Out of the corner of his left eye, Stone saw movement. He turned, chanting a single word of magic, and slammed his fist into the midsection of the unit—another first-generation unit—that had tried to attack him from behind. A small spark of brownish energy went off as tanned flesh struck green biomatter, and the unit was thrown clear across the roof. Lord Stone used the brief moment to send the auto-destruct command to all of the remaining units, then gathered a sphere of solid-looking grey energy between his hands as the downed unit metamorphosed its way into a standing position to attack again.

Detecting the energy and recognizing an attack, the unit attempted to evade; Stone faked a throw to trick his not-very-bright opponent into a rush, then released the spell when his target was in too close and moving too quickly to dodge. The grey orb struck the unit in the torso and carried it back the way it had come, spreading itself out along the organic automaton’s body and turning the greenish substance a solid grey. When the totally-grey unit hit the roof a second later, its leg split off with a sharp snap, and the rest of the body toppled, shattering into grey dust on impact.

Stone was already looking around. No units in sight, and no sign of the Deep One. Whether it had departed thinking that it had been betrayed, Stone could only speculate. He doubted it, though; the creatures understood the situation, that the Atlanteans could not afford to alienate any allies at this point. Besides, had the creature believed that treachery was behind the brief ambush, it would have attacked him for certain.

That settled, Stone checked the bracer on his left arm, and more specifically, the display mounted within it. Of the twenty units he had been assigned, twelve had acknowledged the destruct command and dissolved themselves. That left six—and the nexus itself, he added, hearing a weird growl unlike anything in his experience. It was deep, loud, and very uncomfortably *behind* him.

Turning about, Lord Stone released a breath. “This would be Gemmaline’s bad feeling,” he said to himself as his eyes traced the lines of the thing now towering above him.

* * * * *

Proteus was not too surprised when its capture attempts failed. From the look of him, the Atlantean could probably tear one of the feeble first- generation units apart with just his bare hands, and he radiated strong magic on top of that. The other creature, whatever it had been, had given off much lower readings in both mass and magical radiation, and seemed an easy capture right up until the instant it halted the unit, threw it aside, and set it afire, all of this while producing not the least trace of any energy that Proteus was able to detect.

*Interesting. Not human, not a unit, not a daimon. Cephalopod? No such species recorded in any available reference.*

Ah well. The attempt had been unsuccessful, but shed some light on the unusual being. Proteus made a note to be alert for similar biosigns in the future, then turned its attention to the matter at hand.

When the flash had gone off above the Samoru-unit, Proteus had been stunned to see a mana nexus shimmer into view only a few dozen meters from its chosen—and now hastily abandoned—test site. Ordinary humans, it could handle, and the entity wanted to face the Senshi again, to further its tests and gather more data, but it would *not* risk discovery of another hybrid unit by the Atlanteans.

Yet, as it withdrew the Samoru-unit for a later date, Proteus had not been able to resist sending several rat-units to the surface, to see what could be gained from observing the other units that it could sense in the area. One of the rats had, quite accidentally, come into contact with one of the other units, and the result had been an instantaneous fusion between the two, with the rat-unit’s more advanced biomatter entering into and spreading through the body of the other almost like a virus. In seconds, Proteus had control of the unit, and began to eye the nexus, thinking of what it could do with that much biomatter. It seized several other units, then threw most of them into the nexus, leaving two to attempt to take the Atlantean and his most unusual companion. With unfortunate results.

The explosion of the nexus had been unanticipated, but Proteus’s understanding of these devices was limited to how to build them, and a few guesses at their actual workings. Regardless, the takeover attempt had been successful, and the hasty reconfiguration plan Proteus had put together was proceeding well. The Atlantean would almost certainly try to stop it, if his people’s previous response to a ‘malfunctioning’ nexus had been any indication, and the Senshi—whom Proteus knew must be responsible for the burst of energy that had so suddenly revealed the nexus in the first place—would *definitely* try to stop it.

This, as far as Proteus was concerned, was all well and good.

* * * * *

“Okay,” Mars said slowly. “I know I said it already, but I’ll ask again: what *is* that?”

She, Luna, and Pluto had been the first to the wall, seeking the source of the explosion, and perhaps a clue to its cause. Calypso and a subdued Neptune had joined them, and then Mercury had managed to stagger up and over as well, replacing her sister at the wall as Calypso moved back to tend to the others.

What those looking over the low wall were seeing bore a faint resemblance to the development of a chrysalis, but compressed into a few short moments. The nexus was turning into... into... into a thing that looked a bit like an insect, but wasn’t. Parts of it were covered by large and darkening plates, while others were still green and stringy like all the primitive units the Senshi had been fighting since New Year’s Eve. It had six bulges that might be intended to become legs, a vague head which bore horns and big red eyes, and a many- segmented tail. The thing was alien and repellent to behold, but most of all, it was *big.* It was some four stories tall and thicker than the nexus had been in most places, except for its neck and developing tail.

“It’s trouble,” Pluto said, her eyes flickering briefly to the glowing Garnet Orb. “I think we’d better call Saturn and...” She stopped, frowning at an image. “Now that’s something I didn’t expect.”

“What?”

“Look there.” Pluto pointed with the head of her staff to a disturbance in the parking lot, ripples of energy pulsing out from a glowing spot on the concrete. With a sound like a gunshot, a great circular crack appeared around an area that encompassed a hundred or so parking spaces; cars in that area shuddered on their shocks as a large lump of dark grey stone rose up in the center of the effect, dragging the disc of tar—and more than a few of the cars parked on top of it—towards itself with a great slithering rumble. As more of the parking lot was stripped away, the general lump got bigger, and when one of the cars touched it, it absorbed that as well. And then another one.

The end result of this grand theft auto and destruction of private property was a thick chunk of greyish stone five meters high and about five thick, covered with black pavement and decorated in places by bits of metal—and what looked like upholstery on its low, lumpish head. There was another loud crack as heavy stone pillars burst from either side, forming what were most definitely arms, with massive shoulders that seemed to squeeze in on the creature’s head. It was almost amusing to see two clusters of headlights emerge from the otherwise featureless front of that rocky skull and click on.

“That’s an elemental, isn’t it?” Mercury asked.

“An earth elemental, yes, although it’s absorbed a lot of additional materials to supplement its core. But if it’s assembling here, then the summoner must... there.” Luna pointed to the figure her sharp eyes had spotted, a small- seeming man who stood atop the roof of the mall, not far from what had been the nexus. “Mars should be able to burn that other thing now that it’s no longer a nexus, but if we want to get rid of the elemental short of calling Saturn, we’ll have to take out its master.”

“Hold that thought for just a moment, Luna,” Pluto said, raising a hand. “You may want to see what happens next.”

Luna was about to ask what Pluto meant by that when a deep cracking drew her attention back to the parking lot. The elemental, fully formed, had taken a step—towards the massive green bug. The elemental’s legs were thick and stumpy, but this now appeared to be because they were buried to the knee in the gravel and dirt. The otherworldly creature waded forward like a man slogging through thick mud, the ground giving way before its legs and then sinking back into place behind. Speed was not even in it—from the look of things, a person could walk faster than the stone behemoth could ‘run’—but the elemental’s movements conveyed a sense of patience, tremendous physical power, and unyielding determination.

At the moment, all of those qualities appeared to be fixed firmly on the towering insectoid, along with the light of the elemental’s bright eyes.

“I think that we’ve been here before,” Neptune said faintly.

“I think you’re right,” Mars agreed, remembering her encounter with the fire elemental that had known who she was. The elemental that had been sent to destroy a violently active mana nexus.

As it slowly advanced on its target, the pavement-skinned and upholstery-haired elemental raised its left arm. The vaguely-shaped hand warped and shifted, exposing a metallic gleam in the center of the palm, and Luna let out a yowl of feline surprise as a streaming jet of flames suddenly roared forth from the elemental’s hand.

If Luna was surprised, the mammoth bug was outraged at its fiery bath. It let out a deep, hissing roar and fell back from the flames, with two of its legs and a section of its underbelly on fire. The creature’s long neck arced around and opened its mandibles to spray the burning areas with a yellowish liquid. The substance hardened on contact with the body, instantly smothering the flames, and after a moment the stuff shattered, leaving the damaged areas able to move freely again. Then the giant insectoid snarled and turned its congealing spittle against the approaching elemental, which was too big and slow to get out of the way, and was soaked from head to foot—or knee—in an ongoing blast of the stuff. In seconds, the elemental had been halted within a transparent yellow shell, and the enormous unit-mutant ceased its attack.

No sooner had the spray ended than the elemental shattered its prison, with no apparent effort beyond a flexing of its rocky shoulders. Its outstretched hand again sent forth a wave of fire, although this time the attack was met by a focused spray of the fast-hardening slime. The billowing flames proved more effective, washing around the edges of the insect’s defensive attack to lick at its flammable body, but the jet of fire ended abruptly, which gave the unit time to spray itself once more. As soon as the flames had been extinguished, the bug shattered its glittering salve and then backed away from the lumbering elemental, faster than the stone creature could follow.

Pluto lowered her staff and unleashed a Stasis Bolt at the retreating insect. One of the massive legs suddenly went rock-hard and immobile, and the rest of the creature’s body toppled over with a screech and a loud crash. The green mutant tugged uselessly at its time-frozen limb, then simply snapped the paralyzed section off at the lowest possible joint and continued on its way, moving more slowly but growing a new leg as it went.

A second Stasis Bolt caught the enormous bug across its carapaced back. This time, the creature didn’t even struggle; it just released the disabled portion and continued on, regenerating as it went and leaving a large piece of soft green and hardened brown biomatter hovering five or six meters in the air, lines of reddish energy flowing around it.

“Damn,” Pluto murmured. “Mars, I’m going to need your help.”

“Hang on a minute,” Luna began.

“No time,” Pluto replied, launching into the March of Time. She quickened herself and then repeated the technique, aiming at Mars. The two of them conversed for about ten accelerated seconds before they both took off, leaping over the low barrier on their way to the street. The others saw them zip across the parking lot, ignoring the elemental in favor of getting around in front of the transformed nexus. A fireball exploded in the monster’s face, and it fell back with an angry shriek.

“We should help them,” Mercury said.

“You’re in no shape to fight just now,” Calypso replied. She was hovering next to Venus, who was beginning to groan her way back to consciousness. “Pluto and Mars know what they’re doing, so just let them do it.”

Mercury wanted to glare at Calypso, but straining her eyes that way did unfortunate things to the throbbing pain in her head. Closing her eyes, Mercury had some highly unflattering thoughts about her sister.

“I love you, too,” Calypso said.

* * * * *

The March of Time had worn off as soon as they started using their attacks, but at this point, Mars and Pluto hardly needed the extra speed. Their opponent was so big that they could hardly *not* hit it, and that size made its responses unavoidably slow. True, a normal person probably wouldn’t have been able to avoid the hissing sprays of fast-hardening goo, or the massive blows from those armored green legs, but the two Senshi were another matter. Mars had learned how to avoid attacks from smaller and faster opponents, and Pluto... was just Pluto.

A pod-like growth along the giant insect’s armored spine flipped open, revealing row upon row of glistening points, and Mars leapt out of the way as a volley of high-velocity spikes no larger than her finger came shooting out of the creature’s body. She ducked a second wave, then burned up the third round with a Fire Soul, which flew on to explode against the pod.

Screeching as its weapon was destroyed, the unit raised its right foreleg for a sweeping blow at the source of the damaging flames, only to be pulled up short as that limb was struck by a paralyzing bolt of dark red energy. The long neck swung around in search of the other enemy, but Pluto was ready for it, and the monster took a Dead Scream right in the face. The impact caused a large part of the creature’s ugly face to darken and sag and then fall to dust, but the great hole was quickly filled by fresh green biomatter. The same thing was happening to the other wounds, as the mutant replaced those segments of itself that had been sacrificed after Pluto’s Stasis Bolt froze them.

Realizing that Fire Soul wasn’t doing enough damage, Mars briefly considered her options, then drew out an ofuda and jumped at the nearest part of the giant insect. “Evil spirits, be GONE!”

Her ward slapped against the spongy green body... and did absolutely nothing. Mars was stunned. Even *daimons* had been at least momentarily affected by her prayers, and units were nowhere near that powerful...

She jumped clear more on instinct than conscious effort as a blow from one of the monster’s remaining legs crushed the roof and windows of a nearby car.

*Is it because of the size of this thing?* Mars wondered as she used another Fire Soul to char the leg up to the lower of its two joints. *Is it just too large for my wards to affect?*

“Your plan isn’t working too well!” she called out as Pluto dashed by.

“Just keep it distracted for a few more seconds!” Pluto returned, jumping and spinning to fire off a Dead Scream in mid-air. The attack blasted out a part of the insectoid’s stomach, and when it roared and lowered its head to discharge another constricting spray, Mars shot flames in its face again. Staggered and without the use of two and a half of its limbs, the beast fell back, trying to preserve its balance.

A huge grey hand clapped down on the unit’s shoulder, and another snaked across its wounded stomach. The elemental had finally caught up to its target.

Initially, Mars thought that the stone entity was merely trying to crush the giant unit, an act she guessed would prove rather futile, since all that the unit had to do was sever its trapped sections, scurry away, and regenerate. On the heels of that thought, she wondered *why* the unit wasn’t doing so, why it was instead snarling and flailing with its remaining limbs as if trying to shake itself free.

Then she saw the greyish tinge spreading across the green body. Wherever the biomatter was in contact with the elemental’s rocky form, its color was fading to that dull grey. It was even more than that, Mars realized, as she spotted the cracks that were beginning to form in those regions of solid grey. The elemental was not just gripping the unit; it was turning it to stone with nothing more than a touch, and pulverizing its handiwork.

“You saw this?”

A few feet away, Pluto nodded. “But we’re not quite done yet. When the middle of the unit is completely petrified, the upper and lower portions are going to break free and get away from the elemental again.” Stepping away from Mars, she added, “You get the top, I’ll handle the bottom.”

“Right.” Pluto began firing a series of Stasis Bolts at the unit’s lower body, and Mars drew out another ofuda. “FIRE SOUL BIRD!”

It was so easy. Stuck in the middle of being squeezed in half by the elemental, the giant unit could do little to avoid the incoming attacks. The blazing firebird swept down over it from head to toe, igniting every portion of the flammable green biomatter and causing several of the toughened brown plates to crack and burst apart. When Mars’s attack touched the ground, it transformed into a rising pillar of flame, burning away Pluto’s Stasis Bolts and consuming the lower portion of the unit’s body in a raging inferno that lasted only a few seconds.

When the magical fires died, their energy spent, all that remained of the tower-sized bug were dwindling heaps of ash and a large piece of stone pressed between the elemental’s arms and torso. The only visible damage to the elemental itself were some sooty burns along its lower extremities, and the tiny tongues of flame dancing among its singed and blackened ‘hair.’

Ignoring its purely cosmetic damage, the elemental flexed its arms and shattered the petrified remnants of the unit against its chest. It looked down and around, sweeping the battlefield with its headlight eyes in an apparent search for any remaining pieces of its foe. Only now did the two Senshi see that the snapped-off sections the unit had left behind were no longer present; instead, smaller piles of dust and grit covered the ground over which they had stood—or floated—testament to the elemental’s thoroughness.

Seeming to have satisfied itself that the unit was fully destroyed, the elemental turned its attention to the Senshi. It did not advance on them or raise its hands, but at some fifty times their size, the otherworldly being was threatening just standing there. Pluto tightened her grip on her staff, and Mars readied herself to move.

“Enough,” a deep, unfamiliar voice said from just overhead. It added a word which meant nothing to the Senshi, but which caused the elemental to sink down into the pavement with a slithering rumble. The shape went out of the stone and tar body, and the eyes switched off, leaving a pile of torn-up pavement and the smashed wreckage of a few cars laying in the middle of the parking lot. Something in Mars’s mind told her that the creature was truly gone, and she looked up at the source of the voice.

A tall, powerfully-built man with brown hair was stood on the roof of the mall, looking down at them both with a deep frown. The stranger wore plain grey pants, a loose-fitting white shirt, and thick brown boots; the only visible armor he wore were elbow-length brown gauntlets and a stiff leather vest which included a heavy pad over the left shoulder. There were a great many silver markings worked into the backs of the gloves and the front of the vest, and he had a metallic-looking bracer on his left forearm, over the glove.

“Hello, Athena,” he said politely, facing Pluto. “You look well.”

“Thank you,” Pluto said flatly. The stranger’s only reaction to the harsh tone was a small nod; then he turned to Mars.

“What did you do?”

“What do you mean, ‘what did I do?’” Mars returned.

“To the nexus—or whatever it had become. What did you attack it with at the end?”

Mars frowned. She wasn’t always the most sensitive person by nature, but years of dealing with visitors to the shrine had honed her instinct for what other people were thinking or feeling when they said something, particularly when they were trying to hide it. He hid it well, but she still had the distinct impression that this huge man was nervous.

*About my attack?* “It’s just one of my powers,” she said cautiously, trying to get a reaction. When the stranger relaxed, Mars tensed. He’d been expecting... he’d been *afraid* that she’d say it was something else...

“You were worried it was the Phoenix, weren’t you?” Pluto asked suddenly.

“I take it that means you’ve seen it,” the man replied after a long pause. “And *that* means that you either have it already, or you’re going to go get it as soon as I leave.”

“Something like that,” Pluto said. She smiled, and not in a friendly manner. “Sorry if that makes things more difficult for you...”

“Stone. Lord Gamaliel Stone. And in a way, this actually makes things a little easier.” Folding his arms, Stone looked down at the two Senshi. At length, he said, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me the Egg, would you?” It wasn’t much of a question, and the flat looks Mars and Pluto gave him made the answer plain. Stone nodded. “I thought as much. Very well, then; keep it. But for Heaven’s sake, whatever you do, DON’T let it near any sort of free energy. *Especially* not fire.”

Stone’s voice was deadly serious, and somehow, that made Mars and Pluto take him at his word.

“All right,” Mars agreed. “We won’t. Now, since you seem to be in such a chatty mood, would you mind explaining to us just what you people are doing with these”—she tilted her head towards the remains of the nexus—“things?”

“Perhaps another time,” Stone apologized. He disappeared in a haze of brown and grey light. Mars and Pluto didn’t bother trying to hit him on the way out.

“I don’t suppose you can track him?”

“It doesn’t seem so, no. Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Mars sighed. “And as much as I hate to admit it, you get used to it after a while.” She glanced at the wreckage in the parking lot and shook her head. “Come on. The sooner we get back to the others, the sooner you and Saturn can try to save some poor soul’s auto insurance.”

Pluto eyed the shattered cars doubtfully.

* * * * *

People who are experiencing frustration or depression sometimes try to take their minds off of their problems by going out and doing something stupid or dangerous, in the hopes that the embarrassment or peril of the situation will distract them from their other problems. Some people gorge themselves on ice cream, while others go out and take up bungee jumping. It can only be hoped that no one has attempted both at the same time.

The term ‘people’ can with only minor tinkering be applied to dragons, and a high-speed plunge into the perpetual storm that is Jupiter qualifies as stupid AND dangerous without any adjustment whatsoever. As for frustrated and depressed, those words would quite accurately describe Alexandra’s emotional state as she drifted along in the uppermost reaches of the gas giant’s atmosphere and contemplated a sharp dive into the world-sized hurricanes raging below. It was not a question of concern over her own safety which held Alexandra back; it was the distinct possibility that even Jupiter’s acidic clouds, shrieking winds, massive thunderbolts, and crushing air pressure would not be enough to take her mind off her other problems.

From the moment she realized that the intruder in her lair was a real human, Alexandra had known that word of the encounter would eventually spread throughout the entire planetary system. Dragons liked to talk—even gossip—as much as the next sentient species, and something as remarkable as a human from Earth walking around on Ganymede would have been the talk of the locals for the next season all on its own. But, just like a human, Alexandra’s intruder seemed not to have been satisfied with that; the loss of the Aegis would be talked about for years to come—*Jovian* years—and the storm the Senshi had kick-started during her departure had insured that every being on the moon knew instantly that something was up.

Even that disturbance was a pittance when compared to the upheaval that the return of the Senshi had caused in draconic society. After the storm had passed, Alexandra had been called before a conclave of the elders to explain what exactly had been going on to raise such a violent tempest out of season. Slowly, reluctantly, she had described the encounter in her lair, the contest of wits and the subsequent battle. Nobody interrupted her or questioned her words; indeed, from the expressions on some faces, Alexandra suspected that her humiliatingly quick defeat was neither as impossible nor as unique as she had originally feared. During that meeting, there had been some fifty elder dragons arrayed in the wide crater where the conclaves were held, the least of them twice as large and as powerful as Alexandra herself, yet by the time she was done speaking, she was convinced that they were ALL nervous.

She had been dismissed shortly afterwards, and the conclave had been going on ever since, as the elders tried to decide what to do, and the story—carried by elders who went apart from the meeting in order to hunt and think—had spread to every moon. Alexandra doubted that there was a dragon anywhere in the solar system that hadn’t heard of her shame by now. The elders didn’t overly concern her, given the chagrin she had noticed at the conclave, and the younger drakes were like children everywhere; they might taunt and tease, but they had no real idea what had actually happened, and that made their posturing as empty as their skulls. Besides, if by some astonishing twist of fate it actually came to a challenge, Alexandra knew she could handle any five of those pups.

It was the dragons her own age that had her worried. Regardless of the circumstances, Alexandra had been beaten. She had lost to a human AND lost her family’s greatest heirloom at the same time. That implied weakness, and it was a rare dragon that wouldn’t have some reaction to a thing like that. Her friends had taken to regarding her with a certain pity, and her more distant peers with scorn. Her rivals wouldn’t hesitate to try and wring some advantage from it; one or two of them might even be considering a challenge. As for her family...

Alexandra lifted her eyes from their study of the storms below as she felt a familiar presence approach. A moment later, another thunder dragon emerged from the clouds, a male who was easily half again as large as she, and who moved through the shifting updrafts with the skill of long experience. His triple-horned crest was longer and fuller than hers, except for the left horn, which was only about two-thirds as long as it ought to be and ended in a jagged hollow rather than a shining tip. Closer, it would be obvious that his metal-green scales had lost some of their luster at the edges, a sign of age in this breed and therefore a warning to be respectful, but Alexandra hardly needed the reminder. This was the one elder she did *not* want to meet right now.

“Hello, Father,” she said, bowing her head respectfully as the thunder dragon commonly known as Tyrus approached. Though they were still too far away to converse normally, magic easily made up the difference.

“Daughter.” Tyrus returned the formal neck-bowing greeting, but did not immediately rise from it. Instead, he considered the shifting tops of the clouds below. “Contemplating another reckless dive into the storms, I see.”

“I wasn’t going to go down that far, Father,” Alexandra said with a twinge of annoyance. After all, she wasn’t a foolish hatchling anymore.

“I seem to recall you saying that once before,” Tyrus said with a hint of parental amusement. “You came home with your sails in tatters and your hide etched from acid rain. Your mother was in a taking for most of the next quarter-season.”

“How is the conclave going?” Alexandra asked, changing the subject as her sire coasted into normal speaking range.

“Slowly,” Tyrus replied. He flew past Alexandra and banked into a different current for a moment, swinging back around until he was flying in the same corridor, a quarter of a kilometer or so to her right. “Marruk and several of the other sulphurs called for a flight to Earth, to hunt down the Senshi before they cause us any more problems, and the carbons shouted them down in favor of staying put and well out of the way. Draxus actually put forward the idea of establishing peaceful contact, but he got hungry and left before he could make any serious motions in that direction, and nobody else took it up. Marruk and one of the carbons—Kholath, I think—were still posturing and rumbling at each other when I left.” Electricity crackled out of Tyrus’ nostrils as he huffed in amusement. “You know; the usual.”

Alexandra shook her head, leaning her body to the left and tipping her wings back as the wind shifted. “Honestly, Father, there are times when I can’t tell which is worse: a conclave of you elders; or a flight of young drakes out looking for trouble.”

Tyrus twisted his neck to the right in the draconic equivalent of a shrug as he climbed alongside his daughter. “We all have our little failings.”

The comment had been neutral, but Alexandra winced. “You’re disappointed in me for losing,” she said dejectedly.

“Nonsense,” Tyrus snorted, shooting out two more crackling plumes of energy. “Everyone gets beaten at some time or another.”

“I didn’t just get beaten, Father!” Alexandra burst out in frustration. “I lost the Aegis! To a HUMAN!”

“You lost to a Senshi,” Tyrus corrected.

“Is there a difference?” Alexandra asked bitterly.

“Oh, yes. A very great difference. When you spoke to this Jupiter, did she seem afraid of you?”

“Not... precisely,” the younger thunder dragon admitted. “She seemed surprised at first, and a little nervous, but not really afraid. Not even when we were fighting.”

“A fight that she didn’t start,” Tyrus pointed out. “A fight which she *could* have avoided completely by teleporting around you and going right to the Aegis. From what you described at conclave, the Weapon’s reaction supported Jupiter’s claim that the Aegis belongs to her, regardless of who holds it. That being the case, she could have simply taken it, and you would have been bound by draconic law to let her and the Weapon go. Instead, she greeted you respectfully, made her challenge, and gave you a fair chance to prove your own claim to the Aegis. She showed you courage, honor, and mercy; would you have expected such behavior from a human?”

“There are *dragons* I wouldn’t expect that from,” Alexandra muttered. The wind carried her words away before her father could hear them, but he nodded anyway, taking the apparently grudging silence as her reply.

“So, instead of having to suffer the disgrace of the Aegis being stolen out from under your nose, you have instead a defeat in honorable combat. And without any permanent damage to anything except your pride, I might add; more powerful dragons than you have fared a lot worse against the Senshi in the past.”

“Well... there is that.” Alexandra’s mood brightened a little, but then she sighed. “Father... she knew Mother’s name...”

“Mmmm,” Tyrus rumbled. “Your mother never mentioned having shared her name with her human friend, but I think I can see why she might have. Before they met, your mother felt the same as you and most others of our kind do about humans; afterwards, she always had a certain fondness for them. Anyone who could bring about that kind of a change in someone as stubborn as Alexia must have been very remarkable in her own right. As for this reincarnation business...” The elder’s voice trailed off into a long, considering pause before he shook his head. “To be honest, I’m not really sure what to make of it, but it makes my scales itch. I’ll say this much for humans; they always seem to find ways to keep life interesting.”

“My life was interesting enough before all this.”

This time, Tyrus’s snort was less amused than it was exasperated. “Are you going to mope about this for the next whole season, Alexandra?”

“Well, what else *can* I do?”

“You *could* go reclaim your honor,” her father replied.

“Father, the only way I could do *that* would be to get the Aegis back, and...” The Jovian winds and not-so distant cracks of thunder were suddenly the only sounds in the sky, and it stayed that way for a very long moment as the two dragons soared along, Alexandra staring wide-eyed at her father.

“The Senshi defeated you in honorable combat,” Tyrus said patiently, “and she didn’t extract any sort of pledge from you, even though she would have been well within her rights to do so. Since the conclave hasn’t reached even a tentative decision yet, there’s nothing under draconic law to stop you from going to Earth if you want to. And even if we vote while you’re away and decide to forbid all travel to the planet, you won’t know about that decision until you get back, will you? No one will be able to hold you to account for violating a decision you weren’t properly informed of, particularly not when a point of honor is in question.”

“You sneaky old lizard,” Alexandra said slowly.

“I’ll take that to mean that you like the idea,” Tyrus said with a toothy grin. He banked away to avoid the halfhearted tail-slap of annoyance his daughter launched at him, then drifted back in, his expression and demeanor sobering. “Alexandra,” he said seriously, “when you do go, remember that there *are* conventions in draconic law that apply fully even on Earth.”

“I’m aware of the rules, Father.”

“Yes, but you’ve never been to Earth before, have you? In point of fact, who was the last dragon you’d spoken to who had? And when was that?”

“Mizuryuko,” Alexandra replied after a moment’s thought.

“A water dragon, I take it?”

“She has a brother who lives somewhere along the east of the Asian continent, and she started worrying about him after the humans rediscovered fission and blew up a couple of cities in the area.”

“That was close to five of our years ago,” Tyrus reminded his daughter. ”Almost sixty human years. A lot has changed since then.” The elder dragon spoke a word, and an eight-sided green crystal small enough to fit neatly into a dragon’s front paw appeared in the air before them.

“What’s this?” Alexandra asked, studying the flat faces of the green diamond as it drifted along just ahead of them.

“I took the liberty of collecting some information from the archives before I came to find you. The memory crystal contains all the official reports from the conclave on Earth for the last fifty Earth years; everything from cultural and political data on the humans to the territories and lineages of the dragons.” Tyrus glanced at the crystal himself. “Naturally, it doesn’t make mention of the Senshi even once, but I suppose that only makes sense. There aren’t nearly as many of us living on Earth as there used to be.”

Alexandra reached out and plucked the stone from the air with one hand, holding it for a moment to acclimate its magic to her own. That done, she dismissed the crystal and eyed her father curiously. “How’d you know I’d be going?”

“Your mother would have, in a Saturnian second. And speaking of your mother...”

“I know, Father.” Alexandra sighed. “I give you my word, when I leave Earth, the human will be in the same health she was when I arrived.”

“Good. Alexia would never forgive either of us if the girl was killed.” A pause even dragons might find uncomfortable followed that statement.

“Are Tyranthus and Auroria still looking for a good site for their nest?” Alexandra asked abruptly.

“They are.” Tyrus chuckled. “And quite frankly, your brother’s starting to look a little frustrated with the whole business. The last time I saw him, he asked me why your mother and I had to raise him to be so flaming traditional. Why do you ask?”

“Would they... I mean, do you think... would either of them be insulted if I... offered to let them use my nest?” Tyrus gave his daughter an odd look, and Alexandra began to talk. “I don’t know how long I’ll need to take care of things on Earth, do I? Their nesting could be over by the time I get back, and I really should give them *something*... and besides, it was Mother’s nest first. She always wanted one of us to use it someday, and Tyranthus *is* the oldest... and honestly, it’s not like *I’m* going to be raising a family any time soon...”

“I’m sure your brother and his mate would be honored,” Tyrus interrupted smoothly. “If you like, I’ll go find them for you.”

“Thank you, Father.” Alexandra flapped her wings more vigorously and climbed away from her sire, towards the clearer Jovian sky above and the dark space beyond.

Tyrus watched her go with a paternally proud smile, and just a hint of regret on his broad, scaly features. “Just like her mother,” he said to himself, with a sound that started out as a chuckle and ended as a sigh. Then he also began to ascend, heading in a different direction.

* * * * *

Neither of the two thunder dragons happened to see the creature that rose slowly from the storms below after they had separated. It was another dragon, noticeably shorter and leaner in the body than Alexandra, and the reason it had gone unnoticed was immediately obvious, for its hide held a yellowish-orange hue very similar to some of the swirling clouds. This dragon’s scales had a softer, slicker appearance than those of the departing thunders, and its crest was limited to two short, worn-looking horns that protruded almost straight out to the sides of its skull. Those horns were a dirty shade of white, as were the dragon’s claws and teeth, but neither they nor any other part of the creature’s body showed any immediate signs of having been damaged by prolonged exposure to the acidic vapors.

The sulphur dragon, Hessh by name, watched with interest as Alexandra and Tyrus went their separate ways. That had been a most enlightening conversation; Hessh had never suspected that thunders, with their fixation on pride and honor and all that rubbish, could be so straightforwardly sneaky. Like most sulphurs, Hessh was something of an adept at shiftiness and manipulating the letter of the law to escape the grasp of the law, and he was very impressed with Tyrus’s maneuverings. He was also very grateful, since it gave him information he could use to solve a problem that had been plaguing him for ages.

Hessh waited patiently among the clouds until he was sure that the thunder dragons were well on their way to their respective destinations, and then he too began to climb up through the stormy atmosphere.

Several hours later, a weary Hessh was flying along the surface of the moon of Io, his home. Around him was the cold void of space, filled with the faint tingle of Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field, and below him raced an orange-yellow ocean of sulphuric ash, the leftover ejecta of Io’s numerous volcanoes, piled hundreds of meters deep and blown up again endlessly over the moon’s billions of years of life. This place was home to dozens of sulphur dragon clans. They nested far below the ash, down on the ever-shifting true surface of Io, and spent their days navigating through the dust-sea, reveling in the feel of electrified sulphur and bizarre acids sliding around their slick bodies as they half-swam, half-tunneled along in search of the acidic jellies that also called this moon home.

As Hessh soared along now, he could make out a number of his fellows flying through the plume of a nearby volcano, frolicking in the superheated sulphur being spewed up from the core of the moon. Although he could have done with a good hot bath himself after the hurried flight back from Jupiter, Hessh pressed on towards a shapeless smudge of black on the horizon. At this distance, Hessh’s eyes could just catch hints of a dull red glow among the darkness, and beyond them, an elevated shape. It took him nearly an hour to get close enough for that shape to resolve into the broad, smoking cone of the volcano that was his destination.

This volcano was not like most others on Io. It was surrounded by a cracked and broken plain of once-molten stone, and above it hung the thick, well-nigh perpetual black cloud created by the mountain’s own violent activity. Rather than blasting high and dispersing into space or as a wide rain of sulphur, that cloud spread out low over the surface, forming a warm, dark pocket of actual-atmosphere. Once he got that far, Hessh had to land and continue on foot, for the unnatural volcanic cloud was rife with electrical activity that occasionally blew smoking craters into the black rock, and generally made flight a hazard. As if being randomly shot at wasn’t bad enough, Hessh knew that he had a fair chance of running into a river of lava, flowing down from the volcano along some unpredictable course. Or perhaps it would be a rain of those accursed lava bombs, hot masses of molten stone that flew out through the sky before falling to the ground, crushing and burning whatever they hit.

After navigating his own personal hell for another half an hour, Hessh finally reached the base of the volcano. There was a large cave here, its dark interior lit vaguely by the lake of lava that fronted it and was fed from within by a continuous stream of molten stone. Hessh stopped well back from the mouth of the cave.

“Great one!” he called out in a slightly quavering voice. “It is your miserable servant, Hessh! I have news!”

After a pause, a voice that was deep even by draconic standards rumbled out from the cave. “Speak, worm. What is this news?”

“It is of your enemies, O Lord of Destruction! The family of Alexia!” The stone beneath him shook, and Hessh glanced nervously towards the cone. On past occasions, mention of that name or the names associated with it had been enough to trigger spontaneous eruptions, from which the sulphur dragon had little choice but to flee as fast as his claws could carry him. Today, it appeared that the volcano’s lord was in a calmer mood, and Hessh hurried to continue. “Alexandra travels to Earth, mighty master! She goes to reclaim her honor and her inheritance from the human who defeated her!”

There was another deep rumble in the cave. “You listen to too many rumors, Hessh.”

“Of a certainty, great one,” Hessh said humbly. “But this is no rumor!” He quickly related the gist of the conversation Alexandra and Tyrus had shared, then finished with, “I flew here as fast as my meager wings could carry me, lord, to inform you.”

There was a long pause, during which Hessh waited anxiously and sweated under his scales. Then he heard a low, rumbling sound, a noise he mistook for the beginnings of another tremor until it grew into deep, thunderous laughter.

“T-the news is good, master?” Hessh ventured cautiously.

“The news is excellent, Hessh!” the powerful voice roared gleefully. “It is most excellent indeed! The old bitch’s daughter has finally made her mistake!”

Hessh felt a rush of excitement at those words, but he hid it and asked, “Mistake, great master?”

“She’s put herself in the open! Alexandra’s no match for me without the Aegis, and now she’s headed away from her family and those fools in the conclave! There’ll be no one for her to hide behind when she reaches Earth! Perfect!”

The voice had been growing louder as it spoke, and Hessh could make out a large shadow moving within the cave, blocking the glow of the lava pits within.

A long, thick snout emerged from the darkness first, a muzzle tipped with short, thick spikes above the smoke-trailing nostrils, and armored by heavy red scales that darkened to black around the dragon’s powerful jaw, looking almost like lips. The eyes were large and dark, a black lit from within by a deep orange glow, and the brow above them was ridged with more of the short spikes. A crest of six long black horns rose from the back of the beast’s massive head, the shortest two near the base of the jaw and the others sprouting almost directly above, forming the arms of an intimidating ‘V’ when the dragon looked down at something—such as Hessh, who was cowering before the much larger dragon in undisguised fear.

“I can’t catch her in space,” the magma dragon rumbled to himself, “not with the head start she has, but it’ll take more than oceans and human cities to hide her from me. And when I find her...” The black-lined mouth creased in a deadly smile as the rest of the body emerged from the cave. The dragon was enormous, fully twice as long in the body as Hessh, and far more heavily built. His armor was heavy and deep red, except around his black claws and the bases of the row of dark spikes running down his powerful neck and broad back; here, the scales started with the same black hue as the deadly spikes, and only gradually faded to the same red as the rest of the body. His spike-topped tail ended in a point not unlike a spearhead, hard and spreading out behind the tip, and his wings were tipped with wicked talons.

“Do you go to hunt, Lord Pyrogar?”

“I go for revenge,” the magma dragon corrected with a flat look that had Hessh curling his head beneath his forelimbs and wings. “And then perhaps for some light entertainment, afterwards. I’ve heard that humans can be... amusing at times.” Pyrogar bowed his head to the surface of the lava lake and drank several mouthfuls of the stuff as though it were lukewarm water. When he raised his dripping maw from the molten stone, the dragon ran a thick black tongue along the edges of his mouth and teeth, then spat a mass of half-cooled lava and slate back into the bubbling lake. “That should keep me until I reach Earth,” Pyrogar said with a contented sigh. He chuckled once. “How thoughtful of Alexandra to fly to one of the few other planets where I can get a good drink before I kill her.”

The magma dragon walked away from his cave and made his way up the nearby slope of the volcano, climbing along a well-worn path that shortly brought him to a wide ledge. Here, the massive beast spread his wings and launched himself into the air, to fly away through the storm without a care for the lightning or any parting words to Hessh. The sulphur dragon was just as glad for that, since Pyrogar’s idea of a dismissal tended to involve fire.

*And speaking of which,* Hessh thought, uncurling himself, *I’d better get moving before His High Flaming Furiousness starts to think that I’m trying to sneak a look inside his lair.* Walking as quickly as he could, Hessh left the volcano, considering what he’d just done.

Pyrogar had lived on Io for over a thousand years, longer than the dragons of Hessh’s generation had been alive, and he had been a terror to the sulphur dragons that entire time. He was the largest, toughest, and most violent member of a breed noted for being all of those things, and to those already formidable traits he added a lust for power, a streak of pure viciousness, and a particularly chilling tendency towards cannibalism. Working for such a monster was unpleasant in the extreme, to say the least, but there were some benefits. For one, as long as Hessh kept his master well-informed of events on the other moons, neither he nor any member of his immediate family would end up as Pyrogar’s latest meal. Any number of female sulphurs were suitably appreciative of a male who could guarantee safety for their potential offspring, and that in turn made Hessh the utter envy of his rivals. Of course, Hessh knew that the day he failed to live up to his end of this devil’s bargain, Pyrogar would kill him and probably half his family as well, but he’d held this job for over a century now, which was a century longer than he *would* have lived had he turned the ‘offer’ down.

And now, after all these seasons, it appeared as though there was one other benefit, one that Hessh had never before dared to dream possible: he might just have gotten rid of Pyrogar for good.

The brutal magma dragon was not what one could call the talkative type, but over the years of their association, Hessh had picked up a few scraps of information about his evil employer. Pyrogar was not fond of any other dragons, but he had a special hatred for the female thunder dragon Alexia, who had apparently slain his father centuries before. It was not a sense of filial devotion that fueled Pyrogar’s thirst for revenge, since, had his father lived, the two of them would surely have ended up trying to kill each other in a battle for dominance. No, the reason Pyrogar had always wanted to kill Alexia was because she’d taken away his chance to fight his father and prove his superiority; the reason he had never tried to follow through on that grudge was because of the Aegis, the powerful and unpredictable human-made weapon that Alexia had acquired not all that long after killing Pyrogar’s father. Between that strange device and her own powers, Alexia was simply too strong for Pyrogar to challenge with any degree of certainty.

When Alexia had gotten herself killed destroying a rogue comet, Pyrogar had transferred his hatred to her family, and most particularly to her eldest daughter, who had inherited the Aegis. While Pyrogar was confident of his ability to kill Alexandra even with the Aegis, he knew better than to try and hunt her down where she could get quick reinforcements from her family or the conclave of dragon elders. But, as Pyrogar himself had just said, now that Alexandra no longer possessed the Aegis *and* was on her way to Earth, far out of the range of any support...

Hessh supposed it was just vaguely possible that Pyrogar might have underestimated Alexandra. Thunder dragons could cross interplanetary space rather quickly, so Alexandra *could* reach Earth, reclaim the Aegis, and be ready to fight Pyrogar when he arrived. It was far more likely that Pyrogar would catch her and kill her before that happened, but even if he was bigger and stronger, thunder dragons were no pushovers themselves; killing Alexandra would take a certain measure of effort on Pyrogar’s part, and might just leave him weak enough for something else to pick off. The dragons of Earth, possibly, or maybe even the humans, although Hessh had his doubts about that. He was much more confident that a stone dragon would take offense at Pyrogar’s intrusion. Or better yet, a water dragon; Earth was a planet of oceans, the natural habitat of the serpentine water dragons, and there was ancient enmity between that aquatic breed and the fiery magmas.

Knowing Pyrogar’s strength as well as he did, Hessh did not dismiss the notion that the brutal magma might just be able to take on a water dragon when he himself was only at partial strength. On the off chance that this happened, or that Pyrogar killed Alexandra with no trouble at all and came directly home, Hessh decided that he had better take some additional steps. This was the first opportunity there had ever been to get rid of Pyrogar, and there were dragons all over Io who would gladly lend a claw to that effort, if properly approached.

* * * * *

Saturn was yawning as she stepped through the dimension door and into the foyer. She closed the portal and reverted to Hotaru, then yawned again as she switched off the lights and started up the stairs.

*What a night,* she thought sourly, replaying in her mind her performance as an auto mechanic. The restoration of the ruined vehicles had taken about ten minutes in real time, but she and Pluto had worked beneath one of Pluto’s domes of accelerated time. How much time that totaled up to be, Hotaru wasn’t completely sure, but it had felt like hours, and she was ready to crash.

*I may never do another jigsaw puzzle as long as I live,* she said to herself as she reached the top of the stairs and headed for the master bedroom, to collect her goodnight hugs and kisses.

What Hotaru found instead was an unhappy scene. Michiru was sitting up in bed, her knees pulled up to her chin and a miserable, frightened expression fixed on her face. Haruka sat next to her, talking quietly and not looking any happier. Hotaru ducked back into the hall before either of them looked up and saw her.

“...wasn’t your fault,” Haruka was saying. “You can’t help the way you feel. Based on what Luna, Ami, and Calypso said, I think you have plenty of cause to be afraid of these ‘Deep Ones.’”

“I froze, Haruka,” Michiru replied. “I put everyone at risk.”

“No more than *I* did by blacking out when those freaks blasted us.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“And neither was what happened to you. You were surprised, you were confused, and you were up against something that could get inside your head and use that against you. Not to mention that they were god-awful ugly bastards to boot. I can’t think of anybody who wouldn’t have been scared in the same situation.”

“That doesn’t excuse what I did,” Michiru insisted.

“Maybe not, but you know how Usagi and the rest of those creampuffs are; they forgave you the second it happened. They’ll be rallying around to help you the next time we run into those things, and if you freeze up again, they’ll forgive you again.” Haruka’s voice softened as she added, “And so will I, Michi.” There was a light rustle; Hotaru guessed a hug was being exchanged. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” Michiru replied quietly.

“Good. Now how about we get some sleep?”

“But Haruka...”

“I know.” There was the faint sound of a kiss. “The dreams. I’ll be right here, Michi. I’ll always be right here.” Silence. Then, in a less understanding tone of voice, Haruka added, “And it seems like I’m not the only one.”

“Ara?”

“I know you’re there, you little voyeur,” Haruka called out.

Blushing, Hotaru turned around and stood in the doorway, her head bowed and her hands behind her back. She looked up and meekly asked, “How’d you know?”

“Sixth sense,” Haruka quipped. “I suppose you heard all of that?”

Hotaru nodded. “Most of it.”

Haruka sighed and slid over a bit, gesturing as she did so for Hotaru to scramble up and join them. Hotaru transformed her clothes to pajamas and did that, and they settled down as a family to sleep, Hotaru snuggled in little-girl fashion next to Michiru, Michiru with her head pillowed on Haruka’s shoulder, and Haruka reaching for the lamp.

“Thank you,” Michiru said softly. “Thank you both.”

“We love you,” Hotaru said. “It’s the least we can do. Right, Haruka-papa?”

“Yeah. The least.” About to switch the light off, Haruka paused and looked suspiciously around the room.

“Is something wrong?” Michiru asked.

“Just making sure Calypso didn’t decide to sneak in here, too,” Haruka replied, before she turned off the lamp.

# 

_(It’s just as late in the Tsukino house as it is at Michiru’s, but a light is on in the kitchen. Usagi and ChibiUsa are sitting at the table, eating their way through a large but shrinking pile of food; Setsuna and Luna—in housecat form— are standing by at the counter, watching to make sure that they don’t overdo it.)_

**Luna** : No matter how many times I see this...

**Setsuna** : I know what you mean.  _(She glances at the screen)_  Did you want this one?

**Luna**   _(pulling her eyes from the feeding frenzy)_ : I suppose I might as well get my turn over with.  _(She assumes her instructive pose.)_  The central theme of this episode is family, and how it—or they—can impact on a person’s life in good ways and bad ways. As just one example, Calypso rushes in to help Ami when she gets into trouble, but then after the immediate danger has passed, she takes the time to get on her case for being careless. Hotaru shows another example; first she eavesdrops on a private conversation, but then she and Haruka pull together to comfort Michiru.

**Setsuna** : And there are numerous other examples that we can’t mention, since we’re not supposed to know about the people or creatures involved.

ChibiUsa: Hmm-phmmm-mmm, eph-mmmm phmm-mmuph hmmph.  _(Luna and Setsuna look at her, confused, and she swallows her food and repeats herself.)_  I said, in which case, it’s right up your alley.

**Setsuna** : True enough. But then I wouldn’t tell you anyway, would I?

**ChibiUsa** : Rrrrmph.

**Setsuna** : Don’t talk with your mouth full.

_(Fade to black)_

26/05/02 (Revised 22/08/02)

So, score one for the Nereid, and keep watching the sky for dragons...

I’d like to take a moment (one of the few I have to spare) to ask any of my readers who happen to have my address in their email address books to please remove said address. I’m a little nervous after a near brush with one of those *blankety-blank* email viruses, and I’d like to avoid the problem in the future.

In future episodes:  
-Somewhat neglected story components get a new lease on life; and  
-Here there be dragons.


	31. Chancy Encounters, and Calypso Saves The Day - And Her Sister - Again

# 

Hotaru was the first one to wake up that morning, and she had quite a time figuring out how to get out of the waterbed without disturbing Haruka and Michiru. In the end, she managed success by a combination of creeping along an inch at a time and using her powers to keep the liquid-filled mattress from shifting around. That done, Hotaru headed for the bathroom to splash some water on her face, so she could wake up enough to go have breakfast.

Standing in front of the sink, Hotaru frowned at her reflection, which wasn’t much more than a pair of dark eyes below dark, bed-frazzled hair.

*The major drawback to being young all the time,* she reflected sourly, *is that I have to be short, too.* She solved that problem easily enough, growing up to about fifteen years of age—her ‘real’ age, or close enough to it—and over five feet in height, rather than somewhere between three and four. Then she turned on the cold water.

When she stood up a moment later to study her dampened face in the mirror, Hotaru frowned once more. A white streak had appeared in her hair the last time she’d aged herself, and it was back again. She gave the dangling white lock an annoyed flick with one water-dripping finger.

“Been experimenting with hair dyes?” Haruka asked from the door.

“You’re supposed to still be asleep,” Hotaru replied.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Haruka said, scratching at the front of her right shoulder through her nightshirt. “Seriously, though, what’s with the hair?”

“Destiny, I suppose. It keeps showing up whenever I make myself older recently.” Smiling, Hotaru half-turned and struck a pose with her hands on her hips, tilting her head at an angle that would show off the streak of white in her otherwise black hair. “Do you think the boys will like it?”

“You’re adorable. Now go hog your own washroom.” Haruka indicated the door on the far side of the bedroom with one thumb. Hotaru stuck out her tongue and then proceeded past her ‘papa,’ stopping just outside the bathroom door to look at Michiru, who was still asleep.

“Are you coming downstairs for breakfast?” Hotaru asked, glancing over her shoulder at Haruka. “Or...?”

“I think it’d be better if I stayed here,” Haruka replied, also looking at Michiru. “After last night, I don’t want her to wake up alone.”

Hotaru gently touched Haruka’s arm and then walked across the room as silently as she could. On her way down the hall and then the stairs, she thought about last night’s battle with the Deep Ones, and its effect on Michiru.

According to Luna, Ami, and Calypso, the Deep Ones were native to Earth’s oceans, a particularly nasty form of life that had been in existence long before humans. A race of powerful psychics and skilled magic-users who were also believed to possess extensive knowledge of biological engineering, the Deep Ones were not at all hesitant about using their abilities to exterminate other beings that trespassed into their undersea domains. They had only assaulted human settlements once in recorded history, early during the Atlantean era, but that one time had been a massive, bloody purge that claimed thousands of lives in the span of a single evening. Any number of legends about horrible monsters of the deep sea might have been the result of their handiwork as well.

As for the soul-deep terror Michiru had experienced at the mere sight of the creatures—it was apparently not an uncommon reaction among the Senshi of Neptune. Ami had mentioned something about the power and awareness of previous Senshi being passed on to their inheritors, a natural condition that the Nereids had taken advantage of in the birth-ritual for each new Mercury. If that was true, if Michiru was on some unconscious level in possession of the experiences of not only Larissa but every other Senshi of Neptune who had ever lived, then her fear of the Deep Ones made an unpleasant kind of sense. More than one of her ancient Atlantean predecessors had disappeared while investigating reports of monsters in the oceans of Earth, and most had never been seen again. The few that had been found afterwards were so horrifically scarred in both body and mind that for most, a quick death was the only humane option. It was entirely likely that the trail of such atrocities led back to the beginning, to the age before Atlantis, when the first generations of Senshi appeared and walked the Earth, in a time now forgotten.

Faced with a fear built up over hundreds of lifetimes, it was no wonder that Michiru could not stand the sight of the Deep Ones. Hotaru could understand that; she had her own demons to worry about, daimons and other horrors she knew only from dreams, but which must surely exist somewhere. The difference was, Saturn was able—and more than able—to fight back on an even footing with such monsters. They were as afraid of her as she was of them. Neptune had no such assurance.

“So then we’ll give her one,” Hotaru murmured. She nodded to herself, deciding that once she’d settled the growling beast which had replaced her stomach, and then grabbed a shower, she’d see about getting Michiru breakfast in bed. The white lock drew her attention with a bounce, and Hotaru turned it gleaming black with a slight frown and a mild application of her energies, then smiled and headed on down to the kitchen.

Upstairs, Haruka emerged from the washroom and returned to the bed. She spent a long moment standing at the bedside and watching Michiru’s sleeping face, half-hidden by her long aquamarine hair. She was so peaceful, so beautiful that just looking at her made Haruka’s heart ache. She tried to understand what she had ever done to earn the love of someone so special—in two lifetimes, no less—and could not come up with an answer.

A glimmer of blue light caught Haruka’s attention, pulling her eyes away from their study of Michiru’s face and settling them instead on the sun-lit glow of the Phoenix-under-water-under-glass, which sat on the vanity. *That* got a decidedly chilly look from the Senshi of the Sky. If not for the fact that it had belonged to Michiru’s grandmother and was therefore well-nigh priceless to her partner, Haruka would have smashed the damned thing and scattered the remains the same day it had come out of storage. And this had been before last night, when the latest enemy commander let it slip to Mars and Pluto that he and his were on the lookout for the Phoenix. If that didn’t somehow involve Usagi’s little New Year’s gift, this blue look-alike, and the yellow one that Mika girl apparently had, Haruka would sell her sword.

To say that Haruka was angry about having such danger-magnets so close to so many people she cared about was an understatement. She had been entertaining some notions of what she would like to do to Balance if she ever got her hands on him, and after last night, kicking his ass was about the most restrained thing on her list.

Any and all thoughts of viricide went out of Haruka’s mind as Michiru stirred in her sleep. A frown creased her flawless face, and Michiru reached out towards the place where she knew Haruka ought to be, her hand moving forward in fitful, skittering motions. Not finding what she sought, Michiru’s expression became strained, and an uneasy sound escaped her.

“No,” Haruka whispered. She picked up the seeking hand and held it to her heart as she got back into the bed and slipped her other arm around Michiru, pulling them both close. “I’m here, Michi. Don’t be afraid. I’m here, and they can’t get you.”

Still asleep, Michiru murmured wordlessly and relaxed. A few moments later, her mouth turned up in a tiny smile, and Haruka knew that the moment of fear had passed, that Michiru was dreaming peacefully again.

For her part, Haruka was content to lie there and watch that perfect face.

# 

Waking up with a headache that put such complicated and vertical tasks as sitting up in bed well beyond her means, Minako was tempted to follow Usagi’s example and snooze away the morning. It was the middle of spring break, she didn’t have anywhere that she urgently needed to be, and her parents were surely both at work by this time, so nobody was around to chase her out of bed on general principle. Smiling, Minako rolled over onto her side and tried to go back to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, she had discovered the critical flaw in her otherwise brilliant plan; the throbbing in her brain would not allow her to doze off. Grumbling and groaning, Minako forced herself to rise and face what was already promising to be a bad day. Sitting there with bleary eyes and a mountain of blankets wrapped around her, she yawned.

When her eyes opened again, a mug of steaming tea was hovering in front of them. Minako looked at the mug for a long moment before following the hand and arm holding it up to the face responsible.

“Don’t talk,” Artemis ordered. “Drink.”

“Ummnhg,” Minako replied, reaching out to accept the mug. Artemis considered the sleepy reaction and wisely held on to the handle as Minako drank. When the rim of the mug went down and her head came up, she took in a long breath through her nose and perked right up.

“Feel better?”

“Much, thank you.” Minako pulled her hair back from her face and rubbed her neck above the collar of her pajamas before she slowly stretched, turning her head through a slow half-circle and then in the other direction, wincing several times along the way. “Tell me something, Artemis. How can my head still... erm... hurt as bad today as it did... ack... when I woke up last night?”

“By design, probably,” Artemis said, setting the mug down on a low chest, amidst a row of assorted plushies. “I don’t know if ‘sadism’ or ’thoroughness’ is the more accurate term for it, but the Deep Ones would definitely want to make sure that anyone they set out to hurt kept on hurting for as long as possible.”

“Terrific. I suppose that explains why I feel like a stiff this morning, too.”

“It’s ‘feel as stiff as a board.’ A stiff’s a dead body.”

“That would work too.” Minako tilted her head back, and there was a slight pop in her neck. “Ow.”

“Here,” Artemis said, moving around behind her and sitting down on the mattress. “Let me do something before you hurt yourself.”

“Huh?” Minako half-turned to look at Artemis as he pulled the blankets down from around her shoulders.

“Sit up straight,” he answered, putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her about. He lightly poked her back, just between the shoulders, and Minako flinched as something that was already sore protested this additional abuse. “Hold still,” Artemis said. His next touch was higher than the first, towards the base of her neck, and raised just as much complaint.

“While you—urk—break me in half? I don’t think so.”

“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

Despite the uncomfortable prodding, Minako snorted in amusement. “Famous first words.”

“’Last words,’” Artemis corrected, as he started to massage her shoulders.

“No, first words. There’s an old American TV show where—erm—the lead actor says that in the opening credits. Something from the mid or late 80’s...”

“Bit before your time, then, isn’t it?”

“I was—ugh—little,” Minako replied. “And you know what they... hm... say about foreign TV: it takes five years for... mmmm... anything to get across the ocean.” There was a pause as Minako realized that her neck, shoulders, and upper back were feeling a lot better. Even her headache had diminished. Minako smiled and let out a relaxed sigh.

Then it happened. One of Artemis’s fingers slipped across the collar of her pajama top and—just for an instant—brushed the skin of her neck. The touch was warm and light and not at all unpleasant, but Minako flinched away, suddenly feeling extremely uncomfortable.

“Artemis, stop. Stop.” She pulled away from him and turned about where she sat, in the process twisting the blankets up into a protective cocoon again.

To his credit, Artemis had recognized the reaction for what it was, and immediately pulled his hands back. Now, he met Minako’s gaze and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. My fault.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, with an uneasy smile of her own. “Um... listen... I appreciate the help with my back and all, but... ah...”

“Say no more,” Artemis replied, raising one hand, which he glanced at and quickly lowered. They sat there for a moment, Minako with the blankets curled around her shoulders, Artemis drumming his hands against his thighs, and both of them looking away at other parts of the room. “Ahem,” Artemis continued, clearing his throat. “I’ll just... go downstairs. You know. Breakfast.”

“Breakfast.” Minako nodded. “Right. Food is... good.”

“Is toast okay? And cereal?”

“That’d be fine. In twenty minutes?”

“Twenty minutes,” Artemis agreed, getting to his feet and backing towards the door. He turned to leave, then turned back. “Eh... did you want to keep the tea, or...?”

“That’s okay. You can just leave it.”

“Okay.” Artemis hesitated on the verge of saying something else, closed his mouth, and reopened it. “Twenty minutes, then.”

“Twenty minutes.”

Artemis nodded and left the room. He was well down the hall before he started hitting himself in the head and calling himself an idiot, among other names in Japanese, English, Lunari, and his native Nekoron.

Back in the bedroom, Minako was doing pretty much the same thing to herself, albeit in fewer tongues.

# 

The meeting which took place at Hikawa that morning was smaller than usual. Luna arrived first and alone, and spent the better part of a half hour talking to Rei before Saturn showed up via Dimension Door. She’d made a quick detour to pick up Makoto, and as the two of them stepped out of the overgrown and flower-scented apartment and into Rei’s room, Saturn said that Haruka and Michiru would not be joining them for this meeting. Luna accepted that and in turn explained that Usagi and Setsuna both had appointments scheduled at the hospital. ChibiUsa had gone along to keep them company—and to help keep an eye on Usagi, just in case—so none of *them* would be coming, either.

Ami was already excused, of course, which left Luna and the three Senshi awaiting Minako and Artemis. It was another twenty minutes before Minako finally arrived, without Artemis, whom she claimed had taken off to get a cat’s eye view of the city before she’d received the message about the impromptu meeting, and not returned by the time she left the house. Unlike with Saturn, Luna did not seem inclined to accept this story at face value. Perhaps this was because she knew Artemis, but it might also have been because Minako was not quite her normal smiling self today. They could all see something strained in her expression, but none of them brought it up.

For a time, they discussed what had happened last night, and what if anything they could do now that they knew their opponents were interested in Usagi’s Phoenix, or that they were working with the Deep Ones. Rei felt profoundly uncomfortable for a lot of it, because the answers to these and all their other problems were somewhere inside the Book of Ages, but she had yet to get much of anything useful out of the leather-bound text. She was relieved when Minako turned the topic of discussion to last night’s mana nexus, and demanded to know why something playing around with earth-energy would have affected her, Hotaru, Usagi, and ChibiUsa.

“It would have had to be something all four of us have in common,” Hotaru said, startling them all. She was in her teenage form for once, having admitted earlier on that it wasn’t as much fun being small if ChibiUsa and Michiru weren’t around, but she’d been so quiet up to that point that the other three girls had hardly noticed the difference. “Something about our respective powers that would have left them and us open to a strong earth-elemental influence. I understand why that would work for Minako, since her powers are based on metals, which are minerals that mostly come from the earth, but I couldn’t see how that would explain what happened to Usagi-chan and ChibiUsa, or myself. Our abilities come from other sources altogether, one of which is mainly positive energy, while the other is mainly negative.” Realizing how the others were regarding her, Hotaru blushed and looked down at the tabletop in embarrassment, lamely adding, “Um... that was... just a guess...”

“Maybe so,” Luna said, looking at Hotaru thoughtfully. “But it’s also more or less what I came up with last night, at least with regards to Minako. I couldn’t figure out why you or Usagi were being affected, either, at least until I stopped to consider that Minako’s reaction was a sympathetic one, rather than direct.”

“Come again?” Minako asked, confused.

“There are some very real mystical and material links between the elements of metal and earth,” Luna explained, “but they’re not the same thing. Think about what happened to Makoto on Monday night, or what happened to Setsuna when we had to confront that temporal nexus in the park, or how Ami, Michiru, and Haruka reacted to the one in January. In each case, they knew that the nexus was active, probably right from the very second it switched on. You didn’t react that way last night because your connection to the nexus was different, and provoked a different reaction.”

“Uh-huh,” Minako said, nodding. Her eyes were starting to glaze over.

“So it would have affected the rest of us for a similar reason?” Hotaru ventured. “Because our powers have some sort of secondary link to earth?”

Luna nodded. “None of you can directly manipulate earth, not the way that Rei can influence fires or that Makoto draws on lightning, but you *can* alter what’s there. Usagi and ChibiUsa can take energy and use it to purify or augment something that already exists, even to the point of creating new energy or matter, and you can do the opposite, manipulating any existing element right down to its destruction, if you so choose.”

Hotaru frowned. “I should have thought of that.”

“I think you had more personal matters to concern yourself with last night,” Luna said gently, reaching out to pat Hotaru’s hand with one paw. Hotaru gave her a small smile of gratitude.

“How *is* Michiru this morning?” Makoto asked.

“Tired, mostly. We got her to eat a little breakfast and have a bath earlier, but she went back to bed afterwards.” Hotaru looked around at her friends. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but... Haruka-papa told me to tell all of you that if you had any plans for dropping by in a massive cheerfest... well...”

“...she’d kick our butts out the front door so fast, we’d hit ourselves on the way in?” Minako finished.

“Something like that.”

“Okay, no problem.” Minako grinned. “Of course, you realize that Calypso will probably take that as a challenge.”

“That’s okay,” Hotaru replied. “I think Haruka-papa was more worried about Michiru-mama having too many people to deal with at one time. Just one or two shouldn’t be a problem.” She looked around. “Where *is* Calypso, anyway?”

“You have to ask?” Makoto said, smiling faintly. “*I* may have balance problems and a potentially intelligent tree growing in my apartment, but after last night, I don’t think Calypso trusts Ami-chan to tie her own shoes without help.”

Hotaru laughed at that. The sound was no longer the high-pitched giggle of a small child, but the more refined chuckle of a young woman, and it took the others as much by surprise as Hotaru’s peculiarly astute analysis of the mana nexus had.

“How old are you, Hotaru?” Rei asked suddenly.

Hotaru blinked. “Nani?”

Rei blushed; she hadn’t completely meant to say that aloud, but now that it was out, she forged ahead. “What I mean is, you’re six one minute, and sixteen the next. When you think of yourself, which is the real you? I’d like to know... if you don’t mind...”

“I don’t mind,” Hotaru replied. She rolled her eyes roguishly, looking a lot like Haruka as she added, “And I can understand why you’d ask. But to be completely honest with you, Rei-chan... I’m not sure anymore. I know that I should be fifteen, but I *also* know that I should only be two or so, and that I *was* twenty-five once... and then there’s Saturn.” She looked down at her hands. “When I thought that all I could do was hurt things, or that I could only heal at the cost of exhausting myself... that was hard. Being a little girl again helped me cope with it; I could always run to Michiru and feel safe. Now that I know what I can *really* do, it’s not my powers that frighten me so much as the responsibility I have to deal with. I get the choice of which side of Saturn to reveal—the hand that heals, or the hand that harms—and sometimes I still need help to deal with that.” Hotaru closed her fists and looked up. “Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Rei said. “It does.” She recalled her prophetic dreams, and how many times she would have given almost anything to be able to give them up, and go back to being an innocent child. Makoto didn’t say anything, but put one of her hands over Hotaru’s smaller one and gave her a smile.

“I always figured you were doing it on purpose,” Minako put in, idly twirling a lock of her hair around one finger. “Setting the rest of us up by acting all wide-eyed and innocent, just so you could come along with something Michiru might have said and watch us all flounder.”

“Well,” Hotaru said, drawing the word out with a slow, impish grin, “there is *that* part of it, too...”

“See?” Minako said, slapping the table with one hand and pointing at Hotaru with the other. “How dishonest is that? She’s evil, I tell you! Evil!”

“You’re in no shape to talk,” Makoto muttered.

“Are you incinerating that I’ve ever been anything less than totally honest?” Minako asked in tones of shock.

Rei and Makoto traded an amused glance and began citing examples. Between some of the situations they named and Minako’s varyingly outraged, embarrassed, or good-humored reactions, it wasn’t long before Hotaru was laughing again.

It had a nice sound to it.

# 

Hospitals and their employees tend to be very busy even when there are no real emergencies in progress, so it was extraordinarily convenient that Setsuna’s appointment with Doctor Mizuno had happened to coincide with Usagi’s monthly checkup. It wouldn’t have been quite so fortuitous if Mizuno-san hadn’t pulled a string or two and had Ami assist her with Setsuna’s physical exam. If not for that, ChibiUsa would have had to decide whether to stay with Setsuna or go with Usagi—a choice she would rather not make.

Setsuna’s examination took longer than she or Ami would have thought, seeing as how the minor injuries she’d suffered in the attack on the mall the week before were well and truly healed. Ami suspected that her mother was being deliberately thorough, wrapping herself in professionalism so as to avoid making any further mistakes dealing with her patient. Ultimately, though, there were only so many times you could ask a healthy person to stretch this, bend that way, or breathe like so, and at last the doctor sighed.

“As far as I can tell, Setsuna, you’re in perfect health.”

“Doctors always seem to be disappointed when they say that to me,” Setsuna replied, rebuttoning her violet blouse.

“On some level, I suppose we are,” Mrs. Mizuno admitted, smiling faintly at Setsuna’s lightly teasing tone. “We like to feel needed and important as much as the next person, but healthy people spoil that for us. Not that I want you to feel unwell,” she added, her smile fading. “I mean...” She hesitated, clearly at a loss for words. “About last Wednesday... I just... I wanted to say again that I’m sorry.”

“You already did,” Setsuna replied.

“Yes, but... I should have... I...” Ami could not remember the last time she had seen her mother at such a loss for words, and from the look on her face, Rikou couldn’t remember, either. “I should have been... more careful... about what I said. It might have come as less of a shock if I hadn’t just blurted it out.”

“Maybe,” Setsuna said. She reached out and took the older woman’s hand. “I don’t think that there was an easy way for me to find out that I had a baby. I do know that I still would have wanted to be told.” Setsuna’s face—and her grip—became fierce as she added, “Easy or difficult, you told me one of the most important things about myself that I could have ever learned. *Thank you.* I won’t forget it.”

For a moment, Ami thought her mother was going to say something, but instead she met the intense look with a slow nod and wordlessly clasped her hands around Setsuna’s. Then the moment passed, and both women went back to normal.

“Well, as I said, there’s nothing wrong with you as far as I can tell. You didn’t suffer any breaks, and the bruising has obviously healed.”

“Does that mean I can stop moping around the house and go back to work?” Setsuna asked.

“There’s no physical reason why not, but I still want you to talk to Kikukoe-san before you jump back into your job. I’m sure Ikuko-san does as well. Have you made an appointment yet?”

“I called a few days ago,” Setsuna replied. “I have a meeting with her next Thursday.”

“In that case, I advise you to get lots of sleep in the interim.”

“Oh?”

“You may think you have some idea of what to expect after your sessions with Mayazaki-san earlier this year,” Rikou replied clinically, “but Kikukoe-san isn’t much like him. She’s very good at getting people to talk about their problems, but her approach tends towards the emotional equivalent of high-impact aerobics. The first couple of sessions—and you *will* have several sessions, if I know Kikukoe-san—will most likely leave you feeling as if you’d just climbed a mountain.”

“I see.” Setsuna was beginning to look faintly worried, but also curious. Her mouth quirked slightly, and she added, “Are you speaking from observation, or firsthand experience?”

“Don’t tease my mother, Meiou-san,” Ami warned, “or I will have to hurt you.”

“It’s okay, Ami.” Rikou smiled. “As it happens, I do have regular sessions with Kikukoe-san, about once a month. Twice if anything major comes up. Anything more than that would probably force me to take several sick days each month to recover.” A puzzled frown appeared on Mizuno-san’s normally unruffled face. “Psychiatry isn’t supposed to work quite like that, as far as I understand it, but for some reason Kikukoe-san’s approach gets excellent results.”

“She sounds... interesting,” Setsuna said.

“That’s one word for it.” The doctor shook her head. “But this is hardly the time or place for me to be discussing the professional behavior of a colleague.” She glanced at the door. “Since the Tsukino ladies haven’t come back down as yet, I think we can safely say that they’re still on fourth with Miko-san. Ami can help you find them.”

Setsuna and Ami both nodded, and Doctor Mizuno left the room. Ami held Setsuna’s coat and purse until she had finished straightening her clothes, and then they exited as well.

“So we’ve established that I’m okay,” Setsuna said in a quiet voice as they walked down the hall towards the elevator. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than I did last night,” Ami replied. “Or when I woke up this morning.”

“Bad?”

“Imagine a migraine headache in your entire body, and you’ll have a close idea.”

“The headache I can understand,” Setsuna said. “But why would the rest of you hurt?”

*Residual psychokinetic energy,* Calypso put in silently. *A particular specialty of the Deep Ones. They fine-tune most of their psychic assaults to leave a small but persistent trace energy in their victim’s nervous system. It builds up with every subsequent attack, increasing their effectiveness and the amount of pain they cause. I’m just glad Elder Lynara was so thorough in her medical studies; it would have taken days for that filth to cycle out of Ami’s system on its own.*

Setsuna frowned and tried to focus her thoughts on a question. After all, when in Rome... *Are the rest of us in any danger from that?*

*I did what I could for the others last night,* Calypso replied, *but I’ll check them again tonight to make sure they’re clear. And you were never affected anyway.*

*?* Setsuna’s response was more a wordless impulse of surprised curiosity than a coherent thought, but Calypso picked it up anyway.

*You get a lot of benefits from being the Senshi of Time, Setsuna. One of the big ones is that your body generates its own temporal field, which you can manipulate more or less at will. The field’s part of what gives you your ability to see time, but it has a lot of other uses, too, and it gets much stronger when you transform. When you’re attacked, the field focuses to slow down incoming matter and energy, and if you’re hurt, it accelerates the natural healing process. The Deep Ones could only hit you with a fraction of their full power, and the bit that did get through was already cycled out of your system by the time we went back to Hikawa.*

*I did not know that,* Setsuna said.

*I could tell you some more, if you want.*

*Maybe later,* came Setsuna’s reply. *Talking this way takes a little too much concentration for me to feel comfortable walking around at the same time.*

*You’re doing just fine,* Ami assured her as they reached the elevators. She pressed the up button and stepped back to wait.

*Perhaps I am,* Setsuna said, *but I can’t help feeling that my face must look like I’m hearing voices.* Calypso giggled, while Ami merely sighed and rolled her eyes. The elevator arrived a moment later, and the two Senshi stepped aboard, heading up to the fourth floor.

They had not even fully reached third when Ami felt Calypso shiver in agitation. “Caly?” she asked out loud. “What is it?”

*We’re being watched.*

# 

Proteus was in the middle of testing its new secondary armaments when the sensors in the hospital elevator shaft scanned the two occupants of the car. One segment of the entity’s consciousness watched intently as a barrage of reddish energy bolts fired out from along the segmented armor of its back, scorching and scoring the far wall of the chamber with very satisfactory results. Another portion of Proteus’s mind took note of the passengers in the elevator, and the data that the sensor was returning.

*Subject #117, Mizuno Ami. Infection level remains at 0%. Biosignature is slightly atypical against data compiled from previous scans. Six percent increase in latent energy levels.*

This was not an unusual reading. Whenever Proteus scanned a living being, it took note of a variety of factors, ranging from simple measurements of heat and body mass to considerably more complex analyses of magical forces. A slight change in any one of those sources could alter the final collective reading, and an increase such as this one generally meant that the being in question was just having a good day. Proteus adjusted its data to account for the new reading, and moved on to the second person in the elevator.

Its mind promptly exploded.

*TEMPORAL ENERGY FIELD DETECTED. BIOSIGNATURE CORRESPONDS TO SUBJECT #001, IDENTITY: LADY ATHENA OF HOUSE NELARA, SENSHI OF PLUTO. SYSTEM OVERRIDE ENGAGED, MAXIMUM PRIORITY PROTOCOL. CONTAIN AND CAPTURE SUBJECT BY ANY MEANS AVAILABLE. LIMIT OFFENSIVE ACTIONS TO NONLETHAL FORCE. COMMENCING SUB-UNIT REPROGRAMMING AND REDEPLOYMENT.*

Proteus had time to experience shock and surprise before this program -hardwired into its being at the time of its creation and forgotten during its climb to sentience—rose up from the most primitive levels of the entity’s awareness and began to seize control of it once more.

The override program took stock of the available resources and began making adjustments that would allow it to pursue its primary objective with maximum efficiency. Numerous sub-functions were rewritten or entirely terminated, so that the awareness-fragments monitoring them could be rerouted to observe, analyze, and record events in the target area. This action had several immediate consequences:

In the tunnels beneath Tokyo and in several locations on the surface, rat-like creatures came to an abrupt and total halt, frozen into immobility as the mind directing their movements was withdrawn. This would result in the destruction of at least a dozen of the rat-units, courtesy of some indifferent cars and a few hungry and soon-to-be-disappointed cats;

In the city of Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, a young woman named Yamada Mariko let out a strangled scream and began to claw frantically at the base of her neck, before abruptly collapsing. In spite of his shock, Mariko’s older brother managed to catch her before she hit the ground, but he immediately had a struggle on his hands, as his sister’s body thrashed in the grip of what looked like a violent seizure;

At various places across Tokyo, nearly two dozen men and women from different walks of life displayed behavior identical to that of the girl in Sapporo, sending those of their family and friends on hand to witness the frightening events rushing for the nearest phones;

Within Proteus’s lair, around its nearly-completed and now totally-disabled new body, seven large pods shook and sloshed for a brief instant before settling back into silent immobility;

And in the park, a man fell off of a bench with a howl of agony, seconds before his body expanded into something that looked human, but was nonetheless sufficiently inhuman to make everyone who saw it turn and run for their lives. At the same time, a woman in a special observation room in the third floor of the Juuban Ward hospital miraculously woke from her weeks-long coma, seconds before her body was enveloped in green. Screams issued from beyond her room as the building itself seemed to come to life, plaster and wires exploding away ahead of throbbing, expanding sacs of slime-dripping horror.

None of these changes meant much to the smart-stupid awareness of the control program, but to Proteus, they represented an absolute disaster. Fighting to hold on to its sentience and quite possibly its very existence in the face of the relentless advance of the unthinking program, Proteus roared in frustrated rage.

# 

After four years of life as a Senshi, Ami had learned a number of useful lessons. One of these was that elevators and other enclosed spaces were NOT her friends when it came to battles, and that they tended to get used as traps a great deal for this very reason. Another lesson had been how to *not* react to ambushes with the few seconds of disoriented surprise that would otherwise make them successful—and so when the elevator shuddered all around them in the wake of Calypso’s warning, Ami was already well into her transformation. Setsuna quickly followed suit, her natural speed and reflexes making up for her inability to remember any similar lessons.

“We need to get out of here,” Mercury said, a little needlessly, as the light of the metamorphosis faded. She paused and pressed her earring, sighing in relief as her visor shimmered into existence and activated, finally recovered from the damage Draco had inflicted earlier in the week. Calling up the Caduceus and locking her computer into position, she glanced at Pluto and then looked meaningfully at the ceiling.

“Got it,” Pluto replied, raising her staff and thrusting it at one corner of the car. Crimson energy flashed as the Garnet Orb struck the plastic ceiling, and the emergency hatch blew open. The two Senshi started to move, but stopped short as a sparkling mist flowed down from Mercury’s fuku and gathered around their feet.

*You go first, Mercury,* Calypso said. Her nebulous body was solidifying into a narrow square platform beneath their boots as she added, *I’ll follow with Pluto.*

“Good thinking,” Mercury agreed, summoning the Wingboots and the Frost Lancet in rapid succession and then shooting up through the opening in the roof. Pluto saw a flicker of movement across the dark elevator shaft, but whatever it was, it was far too slow. Mercury flew past it and whirled around in midair, inverting herself and reaching down with her Weapon to slash at her attacker. In the wake of the cut, something green and organic-looking fell through the hatch and landed at Pluto’s feet, crumbling into dust.

*Units,* Calypso said, shimmering a small gap into herself so that the debris would fall through to the floor as she and Pluto ascended. *That would explain it.*

“Explain what?” Pluto asked as she cleared the car.

*What I sensed a moment ago was an active scanner of some kind, but I wasn’t sure if it was an automated system or something that had a living mind behind it. Units are a bit of each, and also neither. It’s a little hard to... LEFT AND DOWN!*

Pluto turned immediately, spinning her staff and driving the Garnet Orb at a coiling shadow. “STASIS BOLT!” Again, the Talisman unleashed a burst of temporal energy on impact, this time leaving a dull red glow around its target, a now-paralyzed length of biomatter.

“Are you okay, Calypso?”

*You didn’t hit me,* the Nereid assured her passenger. *Now hold on; I’m going to get us clear of this.* She suited her actions to her words and sped up, lifting Pluto up to the fourth floor and then going one level higher for good measure. Mercury had already righted herself and joined them, looking down at the disabled elevator with open anger as her devices did their work.

“It’s all over the third floor,” she said in clipped tones. “Scattered clusters of biomatter and at least one unit... a lot of the patients are showing aberrant readings... damn it, why didn’t I see any of this before?”

“Worry later,” Pluto advised, as the elevator began to disappear beneath a growing mat of green. She took aim with her staff, gave Calypso enough time to shapeshift herself out of the line of fire, and then launched a Dead Scream into the expanding biomatter, killing it and doing a certain amount of collateral damage to the elevator and the surrounding shaft. “Can we deal with this ourselves, or do we get Usagi out first and then come back with reinforcements?”

“There are no traces of biomatter anywhere except on the third floor,” Mercury replied. “If we move fast, we might be able to contain it, but I’m not sure how...” Her words trailed off as she looked sidelong at Pluto and the Garnet Orb.

*She’s got a plan,* Calypso said to Pluto.

# 

“What the hell is going on?!” Security shouted. “What tripped all the alarms?!”

“Multiple energy discharges have been picked up in the hospital, sir...”

“IN the hospital?!”

“...and we have reports of a major disturbance on the third floor, but the monitors in that area just went down, so we’re unable to confirm...”

The Director swore and picked up the phone on his desk, hitting one of the speed-dial buttons. As soon as someone picked up, he started speaking. “Scramble Alpha and Beta Teams and put all sections on full alert. We’ve got intruders.”

# 

The life of a shapechanger is frequently not an easy one. In many ways, such a being suffers the same difficulties as a child whose parents come from two different ethnic backgrounds. Such a child has access to all the richness of culture and history that produced their parents, but must also deal with the often widely-different values of two worlds, and try to reconcile these ways within themselves—a task which seldom has any guarantee of success. Doubt, suspicion, and intolerance will all too often follow this child throughout life, assailing them from outside and from within because they are perceived, by others and by themselves, as not being wholly one thing or another.

For a being that is able to transform between two distinct physiologies, these problems take on a whole new intensity. A child of mixed heritage can have a pretty rough time dealing with two different ways of life, but whatever their differences, at least both cultures are *human* ways of life. When you’re able to change your very *species* with little more than a thought, mere cultural differences tend to take a back seat to concerns of basic biology.

When Artemis had left the Aino residence that morning, he’d immediately gone cat, in part because he wouldn’t draw nearly so much attention running around the city in this form, and in part because he’d hoped that resuming his feline form would help him shake off the very human difficulties that had been tailing him since that scene in Minako’s room.

No such luck. Oh, his feline body certainly didn’t have the same physiological reactions to Minako that his human form did, and that gave Artemis at least a little relief, but there were other things that made it just as difficult to be a cat around the girl. Like being able to pick up her scent from across a room, several minutes after she’d left it. Or recalling what a wonderfully soft and warm cushion she could be. Or knowing how useful her hands were for scratching where he could never properly reach, or just for rubbing his stomach.

As long as he’d believed himself to be just a cat—a handsome, intelligent, alien cat, to be certain—none of this had caused Artemis the least amount of concern, but since the reawakening of his shapechanging abilities, the knowledge had been distracting. To say the very least. It wasn’t helping matters that Minako had grown up to be a near-perfect physical and mental reflection of Ishtar, who had been widely held to be the ideal of Venusian beauty, or that they’d gotten so close over the last four years. This whole buddy act Minako had concocted to tease her friends at school was only exacerbating the situation by putting them in close proximity, with Artemis in his human body.

It really, really, REALLY didn’t help matters that he hadn’t had sex in the last thousand years. To hell with the nine hundred and ninety-odd years of stasis; however you get there, once you’ve accepted the fact that you’re ten centuries into the future, it starts to creep in just how MUCH time that truly is.

Artemis had wandered into the park with some vague notion of throwing himself into the lake to cool off, when he’d happened across an even quicker solution: the threat of imminent death.

The creature that came tearing down the park path was immediately recognizable as one of the half-human units, although like its predecessors, there were marked differences in its appearance. The first of these mutations had been a bizarre hodgepodge of man and vegetable (or fungus), whereas the next two, from what he’d been told, had a much more ‘finished’ look about them, a smoothness of shape and operation that had been lacking in the original.

This new hybrid seemed to be yet another refinement, combining traits from the previous versions. By its size and shape, Artemis guessed it to be another ‘male’ unit, although its form was decidedly slimmed down compared to the last one. Its skin was different as well. Where its predecessors had been covered with the plant-like biomatter of first-generation units, this hybrid seemed to have been fashioned at least partly from the animal-like tissues used in the second generation. Green biomatter was present, stretched web-like over joints and along the limbs almost like some kind of clothing, but most of the flesh was a leathery brown. There were raised segments of whitish bone running along the forelegs and the backs of the arms, and the chest and shoulders bore plates of the same substance, seemingly fused into the green ‘jacket’ and the brown skin beneath. Short spikes adorned these sections, and the fingers ended in claws. There still wasn’t much of a face beyond the sunken red pods that served as the eyes, but for whatever reason, the hybrid had hair, a long tangle of greenish-black vines that reminded Artemis of badly-kept dreadlocks.

Artemis had time to wonder if the person trapped inside this thing had been sporting that particular hairstyle, and then he was too busy jumping out of the hybrid’s way to worry about it. Fortunately, the creature did not seem to consider cats worth worrying about. In point of fact, it wasn’t shooting or slashing at anyone. It just bulldozed its way over and through whatever got in its path as it headed out of the park.

As soon as the thing was past, Artemis ducked behind a tree and transformed. That done, he ran in search of a payphone, digging into his pockets and praying that he had enough yen on him to make a call. Now would not be a great time to have to go on a hunt for other people’s loose change.

# 

Mercury’s plan had been fairly simple.

From what the Caduceus had shown her, the units were concentrated in the third floor’s central corridor, and spreading outwards. Neutralizing the central mass would greatly slow the progress of this infection, but the more aggressive procedures weren’t an option. Too many people would have gotten hurt. Unable to see a way to immediately excise the source of the problem, Mercury opted for slowing it as long as possible—an operation for which she and Pluto were rather ideally suited.

They had teleported out of the elevator shaft and down to the stairwell on the other side of the building, well away from the built-up mass of biomatter that had already attacked them. Mercury opened the door, using a blast of Shabon Spray Freezing to make sure it stayed that way, and to put the nearest of the shapeless clusters of biomatter on ice before they could attack. After that, she’d relied mainly on the Frost Lancet to slice up anything that got close, while behind her, Pluto had bowed her head and gathered energy into the Garnet Orb. Thirty seconds later, at a silent signal from Calypso, Mercury dodged sharply to the left, allowing Pluto to unleash an impressively large Stasis Bolt down the length of the hall.

When they had blinked away the afterimage of the attack, the two Senshi found so many things paralyzed by that dull crimson glow that it momentarily appeared as if the very air had been affected. The residual ice of Mercury’s attack had totally ceased melting and was now harder than steel, and all the biomatter in sight was similarly immobile. It wasn’t dead by any means, but neither was it going to be causing them problems any time soon. Any actual units in the area had just lost three-fifths of their support, and without the energy of those sections to help power them, the expansion of the remaining clusters was going to be greatly slowed.

With the central corridor secured, Mercury’s plan had called for her and Pluto to move inwards, stopping at each junction so that the Senshi of Time could send another paralytic attack surging down the side halls. Mercury led the way, relying on her visor, timely warnings from Calypso, and judicious use of the Frost Lancet to help her locate and hold back any counterattacks from the biomatter so that Pluto had enough time to strike. Some people were getting caught up in the Stasis Bolts, of course, but at least none of them were hurt in the process. From their training exercises, Mercury knew that all Pluto had to do to release a person caught in her immobilizing power was touch them with the Orb, but they had both reluctantly agreed that stopping to free everyone accidentally sent into stasis would take up too much time.

In hindsight, though, leaving those people in stasis might very well have been a good thing. The two Senshi had successfully worked their way through about half of the floor when they were jumped by six people in hospital gowns. Mercury had been expecting this since seeing the strange readings coming from a number of the people on this level, but neither the data from the Caduceus nor her previous experience with those under the control of monsters had fully prepared Mercury for the plague-like blotches of green covering the faces and arms of these unfortunates. It distracted her long enough for three of the zombified individuals to get close, throwing themselves straight at her. Mercury could easily have fought them off with the Frost Lancet, but instead she switched the icy blade off and used the Wingboots to levitate herself until she was laying on air, her back against the ceiling.

Her far less agile attackers collapsed in a pile below her and struggled to rise. Mercury put them down again as quickly and cleanly as possible, lowering herself within reach and using three carefully-controlled whacks with the butt of the Caduceus to club the trio into unconsciousness. The ones that had gone shambling after Pluto went down even faster, their ungainly motion making them easy targets for the blurring ends of her staff.

Pluto was just putting down the last of the six infected patients when ten people in black and grey came around the far corner. Their clothing was clearly body armor of some kind, several steps up from police riot gear, if not quite as flashy as something Batman might wear. Each suit included a face-concealing helmet with a wide silver visor across the front and a cluster of black plastic and red lights over the left ear. The padding, whatever it was made of, looked solid enough to offer some good defense, but clearly wasn’t overly restrictive of movement. The speed at which the three leading figures were able to point their guns at the two Senshi was proof enough of that.

The guns got Mercury’s and Pluto’s *undivided* attention, although at first only for their sheer novelty value. As a rule, the Senshi simply did not encounter such weapons. For one thing, there are not many guns of any kind in general circulation in Japan, and for another, the offensive powers of most of the supernatural entities that the Senshi had to deal with made conventional ammunition look tame by comparison.

Upon closer inspection, however, it become obvious that the word ’conventional’ did not apply to these particular weapons. Although small enough to be carried one-handed, the guns were heavily built, with thick blocks of electronic components where the chamber would have been in a normal gun, and a squared-off cartridge of some kind hung below the rectangular barrel. The whole effect vaguely reminded Mercury of the submachineguns that were so heavily cliched in action movies, but considering the oddly-shaped bore, she seriously doubted that these weapons were designed to use bullets. The recoil of firing one shell *that* wide would have snapped a normal person’s wrist.

Whoever they were, the new arrivals took one look at the two armed Senshi and the six apparently harmless people scattered around them in various stages of unconsciousness, and then opened fire. Their weapons hummed noticeably before the air was split by high-pitched electrical whining and repeated bursts of... *something.* Mercury was a little too busy dodging the first volley and swooping around behind the corner to pay attention to what her visor and her sister were both trying to tell her about the projectiles, but from the lack of exploding plaster, she guessed that they didn’t have the same impact force as bullets. That hypothesis was given extra weight when Pluto backed into her field of view a moment later, twirling her staff in front of her body to deflect the incoming shots—a feat that Mercury doubted even Pluto could have managed against a storm of lead.

As Pluto continued to step back, the Garnet Orb began to glow, transforming the staff into a crimson blur, and when she had cleared the corner and brought her weapon into line with the walls on either side, the Senshi of Time called out, “STASIS FIELD!” A new wall shimmered into existence, a molecule-thick sheet of immobilized air that thoroughly plugged the end of the corridor.

That done, Pluto lowered her staff and looked at Mercury. “Did I miss something?”

“If so, you’re not the only one,” Mercury replied. She had turned her attention to the dozen or so small, bullet-sized darts that littered the floor. The Caduceus had detected several bursts of electrical energy in this area; were those bulky handguns some kind of tazer? “I have no idea who those people are.”

*I think I do,* Calypso put in. *They feel a great deal like the watchers I warned you about at Hinamatsuri, although I’m not entirely sure if they’re the same ones or not. I can’t quite read them.*

Pluto blinked. “What do you mean?”

*I mean I can sense their thoughts, but I can’t really understand them. Something’s interfering with me, and it’s NOT this instant wall of yours.*

“I think it’s their armor,” Mercury said, checking her visor. “It’s some kind of kevlar derivative, but it looks like a layer of electrical wiring has been worked into the material. Each of them is generating an appreciable electromagnetic field; not very intense, but it *would* be enough to confuse Caly.”

*Thanks,* the Nereid said dryly.

“Sorry,” Mercury apologized absently, as the Caduceus continued to scan. There were other matters that needed her immediate attention, but she just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a good look at these strangers and their gear. Her curiosity turned out to be a good thing once again, because some of that gear was giving off radio waves, and something else was answering on the same frequency. Mercury went looking for the source of that other signal, and quickly tracked it back to one of ten more dark-armored figures who were on their way up one of the side stairwells.

“Whoever they are,” Mercury said, “they’ve got friends.”

“Then maybe we’d better call our own.”

*And here you were, thinking telepathy was difficult,* Calypso teased Pluto, as Mercury flipped open her communicator. *There’s hope for you -WATCH OUT/LOOK UP/BEHIND!*

In her haste to warn them, Calypso had compressed several related concepts into one burst of psychic speech. It most definitely startled Mercury and Pluto, but it did get them looking in exactly the right direction to see the cause for the Nereid’s garbled alarm.

It was a woman, and her body was encased within a layer of the greenish biomatter of the units. Compared to the last three such half-breeds the Senshi had run into, this one was almost attractive. In terms of color and texture, the biomatter covering her was closer to one of Makoto’s houseplants than the unwholesome, mildewy appearance the other units all seemed to share. The stuff had been fitted to the woman like a second skin, revealing as much about her body as it hid, and leaving her face and most of her hair exposed. A single line of gold snaked along the outer edge of each arm and leg like a vein or a piece of jewelry, coiling at the wrists and ankles and extending down to small red clusters set over her palms and heels. Five other ‘veins’ gripped her head like fingers, curving around the skull to terminate at the exposed skin of her forehead and cheeks. The woman’s face was pretty, and her eyes were a pleasant shade of brown, but her expression was dreadful, devoid of any trace of thought or feeling.

She wasn’t alone, either. Another five patients and two members of the hospital staff were standing around the unit in a defensive cluster, their faces and arms speckled with green. Pluto immediately lowered her staff to its firing position, but at the same moment, the unit seized one of her apparent slaves and held her fingers over the unresisting woman’s throat.

Pluto froze. The first of these hybrids had been able to tear through concrete just by taking a step, and although this one was smaller and slighter than the rampaging man-weed that had nearly run the girls down on its way to the mall, it didn’t take all that much strength to break a person’s neck.

“Weapons,” the unit said in a voice as flat as her expression. “Here. Now.” The Senshi hesitated, and the hybrid tightened her grip. The hostage did not even struggle, but the color of her face was beginning to change around the spots of green. “Now.”

*Do it,* Mercury’s voice said inside Pluto’s mind. Pluto glanced briefly at her arm, which Mercury was touching, and then did as she was instructed. Mercury followed suit, carefully setting down the Caduceus and giving it a hard push. Despite its shape, the winged Weapon slid quite smoothly across the floor, to lie next to Pluto’s staff in front of the captured humans. The unit relaxed her grip just enough for her most immediate prisoner to breathe normally again, and then the entire group started forward at a walk.

*We need a new plan,* Pluto sent.

*Already done,* came the reply. *Don’t look, but Caly rode the Caduceus over there. She’s going to blast the unit psychically and pry her fingers away from that woman’s throat before the mental shock wears off. We’ve got to put down as many of the others as we can before the unit recovers.*

*I might be able to use a Stasis Bolt,* Pluto returned uneasily, *but not on all of them at once.* Her thoughts briefly skirted the role of power-reservoir that the Garnet Orb played in her attacks. She only absolutely *needed* the Talisman for her most powerful techniques, but using it buffed up the others considerably.

*Okay then,* Mercury said. *You take the three on the left, I’ll get the three on the right. Be ready for the unit.*

*Right.* Knowing that she would have to use a slightly different approach without her staff, Pluto cleared her mind of everything except the goal she wished to achieve, and the power she was going to use. Lacking long-term memories, she had to rely on her more recent training, pure instinct, and -if what Luna and Ami had said last night was correct—guidance from deep within, beyond consciousness and instinct alike.

Pluto had been keeping her eyes fixed on the unit this whole time, but she could clearly see the blue-tinted cloud of sparkling energy billowing up in the background. *She* didn’t hear or feel a thing from Calypso, but the unit must have, because she suddenly staggered, her eyes going wide in the first real expression they’d seen on her previously blank face. As soon as that happened, Pluto moved.

She held her hands in front of her chest, slightly apart, and focused on the empty air between them. On the floor, the Garnet Orb pulsed once in a sympathetic reaction as the seemingly empty space began to fill with dark red energy, first forming a speck, then expanding rapidly into a sphere. Pluto turned her left side towards her targets and lowered her hands to her right hip, pulling her hands further away and curling her fingers so that the sphere stretched and then divided, infusing her hands with its energy. Then, calling out “STASIS BOLT!” she snapped her arms forwards, the left stretched out fully, the right half-folded against her body, and her palms held flat towards her targets. Two threads of energy burst from her hands and spiraled together in the air, forming the completed attack.

Pluto could see immediately the difference that using the Garnet Orb made with this attack. The Stasis Bolt was barely half the size of the ones she routinely unleashed while wielding her Talisman—enough to freeze one person in Time, perhaps, but certainly not to take on three at once. Grimacing, Pluto summoned up her strength and poured more energy into the assault, thrusting her hands farther forward and sending a surge of power racing down the coiled ends of the Stasis Bolt. When it struck home, the attack froze its first target and then broke around the man’s body like a wave, sweeping over and past him to snare those who stood beyond.

This did not include the unit, unfortunately, who by now had recovered from Calypso’s attack. Even without any hostages or cannon fodder to assist her against three-to-one odds, the transformed woman charged in anyway. Pluto wasn’t really surprised, but she’d used up too much of her energy boosting the Stasis Bolt to risk another attack so soon. Given the close quarters and the fact that her staff was lying down the hall, there was little Pluto could do except meet the attack with her bare hands and hope for the best. She spared a moment to wonder if the temporal field that Calypso had mentioned in the elevator would help her out at all, and then the unit was on her.

The hybrid came in with her right hand drawn back for a massive blow. Unwilling to risk a block until she had a better idea of her opponent’s strength, Pluto dodged the punch instead, then seized the unit’s arm and hauled her forward in an over-the-hip throw. The hybrid went stumbling down the hall but managed to keep her footing, and she retaliated with a sweeping backhand blow. Pluto evaded a second time, stepping around behind the unit’s arm and then once again grabbing her enemy and throwing her—this time, straight at the wall.

The unit was facing the wall when she hit, so Pluto got a good look at her back. The five veins that gripped the woman’s head were actually the offshoots of a single line of gold than ran down her back, and to either side of this spinal reinforcement were odd clusters of biomatter that started just behind the woman’s ears and extended past her shoulder blades. The coin-sized growths were a brilliant shade of violet, by far the brightest color any of the units had yet shown, and as their owner struck the wall, they quivered strangely.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but as she saw that faint trembling in the biomatter, Pluto realized that the air around her smelled... good. It wasn’t a strong fragrance, or one that she recognized exactly, it was just... good. The image her mind conjured up to accommodate the elusive odor was a summer picnic in a field of flowers, with fresh-baked bread and a fine wine close at hand, and someone special to share it all with, someone like... like...

Pluto abruptly backed away from the unit, shaking her head and trying not to breathe in any more of whatever it had just pumped out, but that was a losing battle. Once again she began to think of a summer day, when the air was just warm and humid enough to be pleasantly lazy, the kind of day when all you wanted to do was sit in the shade and rest your head on someone’s shoulder... someone... like...

Again, the picture fell apart, and Pluto withdrew another step, this time squeezing her eyes tightly shut. And it happened again. Whether by chance or design, the unit’s silent, invisible scent was making Pluto think longingly of the kind of quiet, peaceful days any sensible person would want to spend alone with that important *other* in their lives. It was a singularly ineffective tactic against Pluto, because she didn’t *have* anyone like that. She might have started daydreaming about someone she knew of now, except that she knew she had been married—happily, from what the avatar of Life had said—so she should be spending a day like that with *him,* only she couldn’t remember *his* face...

Yet again, Pluto shook her head and backed away, this time stumbling and falling to her knees. Vertigo gave her a moment of peculiar clarity, enough to realize that the unit was advancing towards her, and that Mercury was out cold on the floor, apparently overwhelmed by the unit’s entrancing odor. As her vision blurred, Pluto also noted that the stuff was making her feel happy... and stupid... and sleepy...

*No you don’t!* Pluto was trying to remember whose voice that was when she dimly sensed something large go flying past her and down the hall. Whatever it was, the object left a rush of cold, damp air in its wake. While not quite as good as a splash of water or a slap in the face, the chill moisture was enough to interfere with the unit’s smell and the mental pictures it had been inspiring. A few moments later, Pluto was able to get up and look around.

For a moment, what she saw refused to make sense. There was no sign of the unit or Calypso, and Mercury lay facedown on the floor less than an arm’s length away from Pluto. Beyond her stood the three people Pluto had put into stasis, and next to them lay four more unconscious humans—the ‘rescued’ prisoner, and the other three Mercury had said she’d deal with. There was not a trace of ice on them, nor was there anywhere near enough vapor in the air for Mercury to have used one of her attacks to disable the small group. They didn’t bear any visible bruises, either, something Pluto found highly improbable considering the speed with which they must have been put down. She knew that Calypso could have knocked out the unit’s hostage easily enough, but then what...

Calypso. The unit. The chemically-induced haze in Pluto’s mind had cleared up enough for her to start thinking rationally again, and she quickly moved to Mercury and rolled her over. There was a happy little smile and a faint blush on the younger girl’s face, evidence that the effects of the unit’s gas were fairly consistent from person to person, and Pluto felt a stab of envy at the sight. Even *Mercury* had someone to dream about.

*Not NOW,* Pluto scolded herself, trampling down the feeling and giving Mercury a shake. “Mercury, wake up.”

“Mmmm... Ryo?”

“Guess again,” Pluto said. “Come on, Mercury.”

“What...?” Mercury murmured, opening her eyes and blinking blearily up through her visor. “Pluto? Ergh... what... wait,” she added, looking around, “where’s the unit?”

“Gone,” Pluto replied. As Mercury considered the reply, her eyes widened slightly, then narrowed down to slits.

In a flat voice that said she already knew the answer, Mercury asked, “Where’s Calypso?”

# 

The meeting had well and truly devolved into a round of gossip. Rei found it rather appropriate that Hotaru, who spent so much time in the body of an elementary-level student, seemed to have the same avid interest in rumormongering as Minako did. This was not to suggest that Rei herself didn’t enjoy it; it was just that these two were operating on a whole different level. Minako knew *everything* about *every* relationship that had been going on in her high school, up to and including how most of them were developing during the break, and Hotaru was absolutely devouring the details.

As she watched the two of them, Rei had to admit that she often felt intimidated by this small, beautiful, and almost insanely powerful girl. The images of the Messiah and the Silence still haunted her darker dreams from time to time, conflicting and meshing with visions of the innocent baby, the laughing child, and the dark-eyed, pure-hearted soldier who wielded so many powers. Healing. Shapeshifting. Undetectability. Teleportation. Holes in the fabric of reality. The strength to shield or shatter entire planets. Abilities that in combination would create an absolute nightmare for anything caught on the wrong side, and all of them concentrated within a single being.

Saturn was a tough act to follow if ever there was one, and all the more so for Rei because she didn’t fully understand her. They seldom spent any time together that wasn’t somehow Senshi-related, and when they did, ChibiUsa or Michiru were usually there to monopolize Hotaru’s time. Hence that earlier, potentially embarrassing question about her age. If Rei knew for sure how old Hotaru wanted to be, she’d at least have an idea of how to address her, which was more than she’d had when she woke up this morning. But that idea had been a bust.

Hearing Hotaru laugh had helped, though. It was a pleasant reminder that there was another girl underneath all the mystery and power that was Saturn. A complicated girl, maybe, but still a very human one.

Their communicators beeped, interrupting Rei’s thoughts and Minako’s ongoing monologue. Makoto, who had been observing the whole scene with open amusement, was the first to answer the call.

“Mercury?” Makoto asked in surprise, her smile vanishing instantly at the sight of her friend in Senshi form, visor and all, and looking decidedly unhappy about something. “What...”

“Units have attacked the hospital.” Rei felt her stomach fall into her toes. “Usagi’s safe for now,” Mercury continued. “Pluto and I have contained part of the problem... and Calypso is... ‘helping’”—the girls couldn’t understand why that word came out from between clenched teeth—“but we’re having problems with people who are being controlled by these things, and there are soldiers of some kind running around as well...”

“Soldiers?” Minako interrupted. “From where?”

“I don’t know,” Mercury answered. “They didn’t stop to introduce themselves before the shooting started.”

“SHOOTING?!” Rei half-shouted.

“Nobody got hurt!” Mercury snapped. “They’re using some sort of souped-up stun guns, and... oh, never mind. Just get here, FAST!”

“We can be there inside of a minute if you can give me a safe place to open a Door,” Hotaru replied, shifting into Saturn in the middle of the sentence.

“There are too many people moving around inside the building for that to be safe,” Mercury said. Behind her visor, her eyes looked upwards. “But my scans show that the roof is clear, including the helipad. The units have already gotten into one of the elevators,” she added, “so you’ll have to come down via the stairs. Usagi’s on the fourth floor, and we’re on the third. Try not to scare too many of the patients on your way in.”

“Right.” Saturn closed her communicator and looked around the room. “Rei-chan, do you mind?”

The ring of the phone cut Rei off before she had a chance to reply. Glowering at the device for a moment, she nodded for Saturn to go ahead and set up a Dimension Door, then stepped over and answered the phone. “Moshimoshi?”

“Rei!”

“Artemis? This isn’t...”

“Rei, listen to me. I’m at the park. Get down here, and if any of the others are still there with you, bring them; I just had a run-in with one of those mutant units.”

“Another one?” Rei blurted out. The remark drew the attention of the others, who had by now all transformed, and Rei silently mouthed the word ’unit’ as they looked at her.

“Yeah, and... wait, what do you mean, ‘another one?’” Practically dancing with impatience, Rei explained Mercury’s call for help. She was answered by a low, frustrated growl. “It figures,” Artemis said sourly. “This one was going in the general direction of the hospital, the last I saw of it.”

“We’ll keep our eyes open for it,” Rei promised before hanging up. She transformed, and then summed up Artemis’s warning as the five of them headed through Saturn’s Door.

“Was he okay?” Venus asked quickly.

“He sounded okay,” Mars replied.

“Good.” More quietly, Venus added, “I can’t let the big goofball out of my sight for five minutes when there’s a monster on the loose, without him getting himself hurt.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Luna said, her half-human, half-feline head surveying their surroundings. She, Mars, and Venus were standing next to the helipad; Saturn had closed the Dimension Door and gone over to open the door to the rear stairwell; and Jupiter was off to one side, her arms folded as she looked down at the streets, the Aegis circling about her in a series of slow orbits. Luna frowned at that, and Mars, noticing the reaction, felt the empty place where her stomach had been clench. She knew what had Luna concerned, and the solution was obvious, but...

Gathering her resolve, Mars said, “I’ll make sure she stays up here, Luna.” When Luna and Venus both looked at her, she made a face. They just HAD to make it harder than it already was. “We have at least one unit out here to worry about, and neither of us can really use our powers inside without risking a lot of damage, can we? If something goes wrong, there are a lot of people in there who might be too sick to move out of the way.”

“That’s very true,” Luna agreed. She glanced over at Saturn, who had the door open and was waiting just inside for them. “Venus, let’s get going.” Venus nodded and, after sparing Mars a reassuring smile, headed for the stairs. Luna paused and rested one of her clawed hands on Mars’s shoulder. “I’ll keep her out of trouble, Rei.”

“I know. Now go, before I change my mind.” Holding tight to her determination, Mars very deliberately turned and walked over to join Jupiter, while Luna hurried to catch up with Venus and Saturn.

The stairs were oddly empty, considering that there was an emergency in the building, but then again, it was likely that most of the people aware of the situation were smack in the middle of it. When the small group reached the fourth floor, Luna stopped on the landing and became human. She appeared in a light grey dress this time, with a blue-black coat folded over one arm and a small, stylish purse in her other hand. Gesturing for Saturn and Venus to continue on, Luna quietly opened the door and slipped inside, looking cautiously about as she went.

“What I want to know,” Venus said as she and Saturn headed down again, “is where she keeps coming up with those clothes. I mean, is that what her fur turns into, or is it something else?”

“I think she must have access to a subspace pocket,” Saturn answered. “Clothes are one thing—I know *I* can make or alter them pretty easily—but she has to be keeping that knife somewhere secure. And she couldn’t have just created Usagi’s brooch or the henshin wands, or any of the other things she’s handed out in the past, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Good point.” *Subspace pocket?* Venus repeated silently, wondering if Saturn had just seen too much sci-fi, or if she actually knew what she was talking about. Venus dismissed the problem as they reached the third floor and found a more pressing matter waiting for them.

The door was jammed wide open, its hinges and frame locked in the edges of a broken carpet of ice which seemed to extend the length of the hallway beyond. There were thick patches of ice hanging from the walls and ceiling, and the fading threads of a bluish white mist hung in the air. Beyond the arctic decor, the place was simply a mess, littered with bits of plaster and tile, smashed glass, and the odd overturned gurney. The largest concentrations of ice encased unmoving masses of green, fungal matter, some of which were glowing a dull red even through the crystalline facets of their prisons. Something down the hall and off to one side or the other was making a racket; Venus and Saturn could pick out people yelling, the periodic buzz of Generic Energy Blasts, and every now and then a crash.

“Sounds like we got here just in time,” Venus observed.

“Shall we?” Saturn asked.

“Just a sec.” Venus raised her fingertips to her tiara and shifted into Sailor V, then summoned her stylized Love-V-Chain and converted it into its sword form, swinging it experimentally through the air. “Okay,” she said. “All set. Let’s... eh?” V stopped and looked down over the banister at the sudden sound of running footsteps on the staircase. There was a small crowd on its way UP, and from the sound of things, they were taking the stairs two at a time. “Now what?”

Ten figures in mostly-black body armor came around the corner and halted. There was a split-second delay as both sides stared at each other, and then the unknown soldiers raised some curious-looking guns, and fired. To V, the precise unity of their reactions clearly said that these G.I. Joe Blacks were well-trained, and viewed the Senshi as a threat—and they were very quick on the draw.

Saturn was faster. Even as V was gathering herself to try and jump out of the way, Saturn called out, “SILENT WALL!” cutting off the third-floor landing behind a curved barrier of dark energy. The electrified darts the black-garbed squad fired an instant later struck the outer edge of the Wall and bounced off, their charges dissipating on contact with only the tiniest bursts of light.

Unfortunately, Saturn’s timing meant that V ended up crashing headfirst into the *inner* edge of the Wall. This collision didn’t have any greater an effect on the barrier than did the impacts of the darts on the other side, but it did leave a dazed and groaning Sailor V sprawled out on the floor. Saturn had the decency to blush and murmur an apology for accidentally felling her ally, but she did so with her face split by a broad grin, while her shoulders bobbed with suppressed mirth. V was understandably less amused, and laying there on her side with one hand to her bruised head, she half-rolled over and glared up at Saturn to make that point abundantly clear.

Whatever V may have been about to say flew from her mind when an angry scream echoed down the frozen hall. She and Saturn spun to look, and saw a blur of movement as something... make that *two* somethings... or rather, something and *someone*... went flying across the corridor just a short distance down from where they were standing. Literally flying; the combatants were a good foot off the floor, and they tumbled around on empty air as they struggled with each other. One was a hybrid unit, sleek and female, and the other was Calypso. The two Senshi were quite certain about that, because it simply couldn’t have been anyone else.

The Nereid’s current form had clearly been ‘inspired’ by her sister’s Senshi state, but Calypso had taken a few liberties. For one thing, her fuku covered her entire body. There were legs below the skirt, and close-fitted sleeves which tucked neatly beneath the tops of the elbow-length gloves. Calypso’s neck and head were covered by the same white fabric, almost like she was wearing a hood, except that her hair seemed unimpeded by the stuff. The ribbons of the blue bow on Calypso’s back were just as long and full as those on her sister’s uniform, and the ubiquitous sailor-style collar was still in place. The only other real difference was the silvery mask that covered the front of Calypso’s head, hiding her entire face from the ears forward behind smooth, featureless metal. Or perhaps ice. Whatever the case, the mask was fused to the material of Calypso’s full-body fuku, and it included a visor exactly like Mercury’s, the blue shading of which matched and hid the color of Calypso’s eyes. Small wings like those on the Caduceus swept back from the corners of the visor, flanking the sides of the Nereid’s head, and a recreation of the sign of Mercury shone over her forehead.

The bizarre spectacle flew out of sight down the side corridor, leaving a couple of confused Senshi to stare into the space where it had been.

“Was that...?” Saturn asked slowly.

“I think it was,” V replied in the same tone. She immediately scrambled to her feet and ran down the hall after Saturn, both of them wondering just what in the world was going on.

Blocked by the Silent Wall, the Security squad doubled back to the second floor and cut across to another staircase. Their passage had the unavoidable effect of startling a number of people, and like the Senshi, all of these people asked themselves what exactly it was that they were seeing.

One person came up with an answer to that question, and a pair of eyes that had been glaring icy disapproval at the passing troopers became uneasy, before casting a worried glance at the ceiling.

# 

ChibiUsa stood before the vending machines with an intense expression that suggested the fate of the world might depend upon which drink and/or snack she chose. In actuality, she was simply delaying the choice as long as possible so that she didn’t have to watch the ultrasound. If it had been anyone other than Usagi in there, the procedure wouldn’t have bothered ChibiUsa in the slightest, but ‘uncomfortable’ barely began to describe what she felt about the idea of seeing an image of herself up on that screen.

Finally deciding that she wasn’t hungry, ChibiUsa settled for a can of orange pop. She was on her way back to the examination room when she noticed someone hanging around in the hall nearby. It took ChibiUsa a moment to recognize Luna’s human form, and when she did, she frowned and hurried over to meet her.

“What are you doing here?” ChibiUsa asked quietly.

“Keeping watch,” Luna replied, taking a seat in the small waiting area and picking up a magazine. Pretending to read the medical journal, Luna quickly filled ChibiUsa in on the situation downstairs, then asked, “Has there been any sign of activity up here?”

“Not that I’d noticed,” ChibiUsa said, looking uneasily at the floor beneath her shoes. *Actually, that would explain the thumping I thought I heard a few minutes ago...* She glanced down the hall, and sure enough, there were three people standing near the elevators, shaking their heads in frustration at the hold-up.

“Which room is Usagi in?” Luna asked.

ChibiUsa pointed it out. “Luna, Miko-san already did most of the tests, and the ultrasound started just a minute ago. Once that’s done...”

“Make an issue of the elevators being out,” Luna advised. “Even if she wasn’t pregnant, Usagi wouldn’t walk down four flights of stairs without a convincing reason and a lot of pushing.”

“Good thinking,” ChibiUsa agreed. She made no move to reenter the room, however, earning an odd glance from Luna.

“Is something the matter?”

“No,” ChibiUsa replied slowly. “It’s just that... er... I’d rather wait out here until the ultrasound’s done.”

Luna considered that, then smiled sympathetically. “A bit like looking at baby pictures of yourself, is it?”

“Trust me, Luna. Baby pictures have got *nothing* on this.”

# 

Neither Jupiter nor Mars said a word as they stood on the hospital roof, watching the streets below for a sign of the unit Artemis had spotted. Mars was struggling to keep herself from abandoning this task, marching down those stairs, finding the odango-atama, and dragging her out of this building. Jupiter was holding down the nausea that came from sensing the mass of twisted biomatter inside the building. She was also thinking about the image of Mercury’s face, framed by her visor, and what it meant for her, now that the device was restored and there was no further reason for Luna to delay the mind-probe she had proposed. On the one hand, Jupiter badly wanted to know what the Aegis were doing to her, but to have someone else inside her mind again, even Luna...

It was a blessing for both of them when the unit came close enough to set off Mars’s danger sense and Jupiter’s empathic connection to plants. At least this way they had something else to occupy their thoughts.

Even with the built-in magical mechanism that allowed the Senshi to make superhuman leaps and then land without breaking their legs—or a pair of stiletto heels—Mars wasn’t keen on the idea of jumping off the top of the hospital. She immediately looked around for the fire escape, noting with bleak amusement what a fine irony it would make if she started throwing fireballs from the thing. Then, hearing an electric buzz, she looked over at Jupiter, and blinked.

The Senshi of Thunder had her hand around one of the four large Aegis-orbs, and six of the lesser spheres were hovering in a circular pattern just above the level of the roof, generating a softly humming disc of electric green energy between them. The disc did not sink or even so much as quiver when Jupiter stepped up onto it, although Mars faintly thought she heard the electric hum drop lower in pitch and grow ever so slightly in volume.

Jupiter looked at her. “Are you coming?”

Mars glanced uneasily at the ‘platform’ before walking towards it. She fully trusted Jupiter, but given what she knew about the Aegis—both from reading the Book of Ages and from her firsthand experiences—Mars still half-expected to get shocked as her foot came down atop the disc. This did not happen; the only reaction was another shift in the sound the disc was making.

“Hold on,” Jupiter said, reaching out with her empty hand and catching Mars by the elbow.

The world lurched around Mars as the disc moved, and she automatically grabbed her friend’s arm as they went buzzing neatly across the roof and over the side of the building. Once it was two or three meters out, the disc’s sound changed again, and it began to descend, taking the two Senshi towards ground level at about the same speed as an elevator. Mars was wide-eyed the entire way down; she trusted Jupiter, but the Aegis were another story, and Mars wasn’t sure her heart started beating again until they reached the surface.

“Neat trick,” Mars managed to say as the disc beneath their feet winked out of existence.

“Thanks,” Jupiter said, smiling as she released the orb from her hand. “It worked better than I expected.” The implications of that earned her a wide-eyed stare from Mars, but Jupiter was already studying their surroundings, and frowning at what she saw.

They’d landed in the parking zone that adjoined the rear entrance to the ER, startling a couple of paramedics who appeared to have been taking their lunch break. Aside from those two and their ambulance, the lot was currently empty, but Jupiter knew it was still a bad place for a fight. It would turn into a disaster the instant another ambulance pulled up, and the concrete-encased block of not-so-quietly humming machinery standing off to one side might as well have had a giant target painted over it. Mars recognized the problems as well, and they moved out at once, in the hopes of intercepting the unit before it could reach this troublesome area.

“How do you want to handle this?” Jupiter asked as they ran down the street, drawing the usual mix of flinches, stares, and double-takes. “Should we try to take care of it ourselves, or just hold it until Saturn can arrive to separate the bio-junk from the person inside?”

“How long could you keep it caged with the Aegis?”

Jupiter made a face. “Not long. Maybe a minute—two, tops—but I don’t think I’d be much use for a while afterwards. What about you? Could you stun it with your ofudas?”

Now it was Mars’s turn to frown. “I don’t know. My ofudas don’t have much of an effect on a normal person unless they’ve been infected with some form of negative energy, and they don’t seem to work on units at all.”

“Well, let’s give it a try. If it doesn’t work, we’ve really only got one option left.”

“Yeah,” Mars agreed. “I guess so.” Actually, there *was* one other possibility, but she was reluctant to bring it up, mainly because she wasn’t certain if it would work or not.

When the unit ran into view a moment later, it was greeted head-on by a bolt of flaming lightning. An attack like that would have destroyed several first-generation units, but like its three predecessors, this creature was tougher than the average half-living automaton. While the green sections of its body were burning fitfully, the more animal flesh withstood the heat better; its leathery surface had only been lightly blackened, and the bony armor was even less damaged. Jupiter’s half of the combination attack was more effective than Mars’s flames, exploding in the mutant’s face and blowing it back the way it had come.

Laying on its back on the sidewalk, the unit looked down over its body and spread its fingers to reveal the red palm-blasters that Pluto had described in the last two hybrids. Mars was about to jump clear when she felt the air around her tingle as Jupiter took hold of the Aegis again. The unit’s two-handed counterattack streaked down the sidewalk and slammed ineffectually against the sizzling barrier that had snapped into existence between four of the hovering orbs. No sooner had the energy bursts hit than several more of the orbs flashed and fired tiny pulses of energy back at the unit, which scrambled out of the way as the blasts stitched the sidewalk.

*Careful, Jupiter,* Mars thought. She took her own advice and tracked the movements of the unit for a moment before letting fly with a second Fire Soul. Mars’s attacks were not the most precise by nature, but she’d worked hard to make up for that, and although her cautious aim sent the bulk of the fireball crackling past the unit and up into the sky, she scored a glancing hit to its left shoulder. The mutant’s response was a scattering of energy blasts, fired at random as it fell forward in the street and swept its undamaged arm towards the Senshi. Landing on its burnt shoulder, the unit bent sharply at the waist, curled its legs up and over its head, and rolled backwards, twisting through a remarkable display of flexibility to get back on its feet.

A collection of pink-bodied, green-tailed comets zipped past Mars to take up positions around the unit, which lashed out with its claws and a pair of whips that had unexpectedly emerged from its shoulders. The Aegis adjusted course in mid-flight, tiny targets made even harder to hit by reason of their speed and impossibly smooth maneuvering, and then a bolt of lightning flew from Jupiter’s tiara, passing through several of the nearby spheres and branching out to hit those that surrounded the unit before flashing down into the creature from several directions. As the ugly body stiffened and jerked about under the second-long shock, Mars rushed at it.

“Jupiter!” she called out, producing an ofuda and raising it high enough for her friend to see. The Aegis immediately shoved themselves out of Mars’s way, signaling Jupiter’s understanding. Mars drove her hand down towards the unit an instant later, focusing her energy and calling out, “Evil spirits, be GONE!” as she thrust the ward against the creature’s armored chest in a two-fingered strike.

At the moment of impact, Mars and the unit both froze.

# 

When Mars touched the hybrid Samoru-unit, the word “ERROR” blew through the control program’s limited awareness with all the force of a derailing bullet train. Suddenly deprived of the program’s guidance, the biomatter clusters in the hospital went berserk, lashing out at everything and anything nearby, including each other.

In the middle of this confusion, Proteus struck back at the usurper of its body, its efforts fueled by a powerful new emotion: hatred.

# 

Mars stood there, staring at the unit. She was aware of Jupiter calling to her, asking what was wrong, but she could not find the voice with which to reply, just as she could not muster the strength to pull back her arm.

When her hand and the ofuda had touched the hybrid’s bony chest plate, Mars had suddenly found herself confronted by the image of a man. He was translucent, a ghost that occupied the same space as the unit—a living ghost, unless she missed her guess. This had to be the image of the person trapped inside the hybrid, and Mars could not pull her eyes away from the awful expression into which the poor soul’s face was twisted. He was a prisoner within his own body, enslaved and *altered* into this horrible shape, and to judge by his features, he was fully aware of everything that had been done to him, everything that was still being done. And he could do nothing to stop it.

There was anger in that expression, but it was frustrated, buried beneath pains both current and remembered, and by fear of whoever or whatever had done this.

There was also a faint trace of hope. It had appeared just a moment after Mars touched the un... after she had touched the man. He was aware that Mars was responsible for whatever had stopped his stolen body, and she got the impression that he was looking back at her, reading her face in turn. The hope was a question, and Mars did her best to answer it.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I can see you.”

The look of hope flared, and the question changed.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

The hope dimmed.

“We can still help you,” Mars said. “A friend of mine can heal you. You just have to hold on...”

Despair. Weariness. He had been fighting this as hard as he could, since the beginning, to no avail. As soon as Mars withdrew, he would be trapped again.

“Don’t give up!” Mars snapped. “Fight! Hold on!”

Refusal. He didn’t believe there was anything more he could do. He was drawing back in on himself, giving up again, this time with the shattered remnants of that brief hope and all the bitterness that accompanied them crushing his spirit even further. In desperation, Mars focused her thoughts and her powers and pushed with her mind, trying to share her own strength.

The image of the man looked up in shock—and the arms of the unit moved, grabbing hold of Mars’s outstretched arm, trapping her.

“Mars!”

“Stay back, Jupiter! Don’t do anything!” Mars wasn’t sure if Jupiter listened to her or not, but the unit was not suddenly torn away from her by gauntleted fists or a bolt of lightning.

She understood what had happened. The energy had gotten through, and it had done exactly what she intended, giving the man the strength to overcome the control that had stolen his body. But if she could do that so easily, she could clearly do more. They both knew it now.

“Let me go,” Mars said in a controlled tone.

Refusal. A silent plea.

“I can’t do any more than that without hurting you!”

Anguish.

“Please, you just have to hold on...”

Denial. Desperation. Mars watched in horror as one of the whip-tendrils on the unit’s back rose up, its tip lengthening into a spear-like point and hardening into what looked like the same bone covering other parts of the biomatter. The weapon did not aim at Mars, but at the unit’s head.

“NO! You can’t do that!”

The ghostly face was resigned, but strangely at peace.

“STOP IT! If you just wait...”

The unit’s head shook from side to side. He had this chance to be free; he would not waste it waiting. He could not afford to. The nightmare was too close, the chances that he would lose himself to it again too high. The image of the man looked at Mars. There was no anger directed at her; rather, there was thankfulness, and some sympathy. He seemed to understand why she was so unwilling to risk another person’s life. So he would free himself.

Mars was the Soldier of Fire, and her guardian planet was the star of War. At the core of her being, she understood that Fire and War both required sacrifices: a flame needed fuel to burn; a war could not be fought without something being lost in the process, be it one’s own life or the life of an enemy, and the innocence that was taken away forever when you killed. This man was now faced with a chance to slay an enemy that would otherwise overpower him, and he was seizing that opportunity, even if its cost was his own life.

Just as she would have done. Just as she had done in the past, both distant and recent, and just as she might do again some day, giving up her own life to destroy what threatened her friends and family.

“I’m sorry,” Mars said, clenching the hand of her trapped arm into a fist. “But I can’t let you do that... not when there’s a chance that you might live.” The unit looked down as Mars’s hand glowed first red, then bright white, and when it looked up at her face and found that her eyes were full of the same fire, its hands involuntarily let go. Mars pushed forward, touching the tips of her luminous fingers to the ofuda on the unit’s chest. “MARS CLEANSING FLAME!”

For Mars, Time seemed to slow to a crawl the moment she unleashed her power. The kanji on the ofuda flared with a brilliant white light that began in the center of each symbol and spread out in all directions with the speed of molasses. Where that light crossed from incandescent ink to unmarked paper, it became scarlet flame, burning away the bulk of the ward and leaving only the radiant characters limned down the unit’s chest. As those flames spread out along the unit’s skin and *inwards,* into its very being, Mars saw a slow-forming look of surprise on the nebulous human face, coupled with gratitude and then wiped away by mounting pain. The skin of biomatter twisted in places, bulged outwards, and then split apart as gouts of red and white fire blossomed from within the hybrid, giving rise to great fiery rifts in the brown and grey surface.

Mars stood there, her arm still extended and her face set, watching as her power took effect, and the faceless man-shape became a form of fire. The now-pure white symbols of her destroyed ward continued to shine above the mass of fire that was the chest, but everywhere else was a shifting mass of color, sometimes red, sometimes orange, sometimes white. The strange overlay of the human within the unit had vanished behind the inferno, making it impossible for Mars to be sure he was even still alive. She’d used this attack exactly twice before, and on both instances, it had consumed its targets utterly—but those had been daimons, and they had screamed. There was no scream this time.

She hoped that was a good sign.

A short distance away, Jupiter stared aghast at the pillar of fire that held a person somewhere inside of it, a person who her empathic sense informed her was in fantastic pain from the flames licking through every fiber of his being. She’d witnessed this sort of thing before, but dear god, had *everyone* they’d ever changed back from a monster or cleansed of dark energy had to endure THAT in the process? And if *not,* did that mean that Mars’s attack was actually doing more harm than good? Jupiter’d had no idea that Mars could use her new trick to reverse transformations, and judging from her friend’s seesawing emotional state, *she* wasn’t fully confident of the procedure, either...

The kanji-of-light flared brightly and suddenly blew apart, scattering in all directions. The fire did likewise, as if the symbols had been the only thing holding it all together.

A man in his mid-to-late twenties stood in the middle of the street, facing Mars with wide eyes in a pale, shaken face. His arms were at his sides, fingers twitching, and every muscle in his body appeared to have been stretched taut. There was not the least trace of ash nor the slightest burn on him or his clothes, but his pallor revealed how much the Cleansing Flame had taken out of him.

“Really... should have listened... to you,” he croaked, just before his legs gave out. Mars caught him and eased him to the ground.

“It’s okay,” she said, managing a reassuring smile. “I’ve got you.”

“Thanks,” the man whispered.

“How do you feel?”

“Like hell,” he replied with a raspy chuckle. “Thirsty... tired... but I’m me... no more voice...”

“Voice?”

In spite of his condition, the man mustered enough strength to clench his teeth. “Proteus.” There was fear in that one word, and hatred, and the effort of speaking it seemed to exhaust whatever reserves the Cleansing Flame had left the man. His slipped into unconsciousness between one breath and the next, his eyes closing and his head lolling to one side. Mars hastily checked his pulse and breathing, finding them to be weak but steady.

“He’s okay,” she said aloud, half to convince Jupiter, who had come up beside her, and half to convince herself. “Just exhausted.”

“Did you know it was going to do that?” Jupiter asked.

“I... had a feeling it might,” Mars replied. Cleansing Flame had obliterated two daimons, attacking them physically and spiritually, but humans were very rarely all good or all bad, and units—so far as Mars understood them—were neither. Even in combination, the two were nowhere near as steeped in negative energy as a daimon, so the final effect of her attack had not been as extreme. Or so she’d hoped when she unleashed it.

“But you didn’t know for sure,” Jupiter said, this time making a statement rather than asking a question.

“You saw what he was going to do.”

“And more than saw,” Jupiter answered, shivering a bit at the memory of the bleak resolve that had been running through the man’s mind. “Okay. Let’s head back to the hospital.” She looked at the two of them and added, “Did you want me to get him?”

“Thanks, but I can manage. You’d better check in with Mercury and find out what the situation is.”

Jupiter nodded. “Considering that she’s got Pluto, Venus, and Saturn to back her up, though, I figure things must be pretty well under control by now.”

# 

Events on the third floor had turned into a disaster for all parties involved.

Proteus’s forces were the most numerous, but they were also the weakest as individuals. Their only real chance for victory had been to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers, and now that the element of surprise had been lost and over half of the mind-controlled humans and the clusters of biomatter disabled, the ongoing fight was turning against those that remained. Proteus would have sacrificed the biomatter in a mass suicide assault so that it could slip as many of the potential human test subjects as possible off this level and out of the building, but the long-buried program that had seized control of the entity was too single-minded to think ahead in that fashion. It would use the resources it had and either succeed or fail by them, then make a report and wait for new orders. That was the nature of its programming.

The Security detachment was in a different quandary. Because they had been deployed in a hospital, the two ten-man squads now on the floor had only been issued light weapons, to keep the potential for collateral damage and civilian casualties to a minimum. Their next-generation tazer guns were of little use against the biomatter, and even the more conventional sidearms some of the soldiers carried had proved ineffective against their decentralized techno-organic targets. The troopers’ knives—uncomplicated metal blades that the Security Director had adamantly insisted on including in the training programs and as standard armaments—were working much better, but couldn’t really do any more than hold the regenerating enemy at bay, and this only because the control program wasn’t interested in their owners. That opinion might change when the third squad and their complement of heavy weapons arrived, but first they had to get around the obstacles presented by the Senshi.

It was only natural that, since they were stronger than anyone or anything else on the floor, Mercury and Pluto were making the best progress. Their problem was the same as it had been at the start; they were trapped in a delaying action against a hostile force with vastly superior numbers, and they could not use their full strength for fear of harming innocents, leaving themselves at the questionable mercies of their mysterious opponents, or—worst of all—leaving Usagi unprotected, one floor above.

Having Calypso flying around in a wrestling match with that bloody unit wasn’t making Mercury feel any better about the situation. *She* had always been the one who was supposed to fight, *not* her little sister, and the reasons for that were even stronger now than they had been in the Silver Millennium. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Unless she assumed full human form, Calypso was immune to the hybrid’s powerful pheromones, whereas Mercury and Pluto would start reliving their romantic daydreams the moment they got within range of the thing. All they could do was wait for help, and try not to breathe in too deeply on Caly’s periodic fly-bys.

As if the endangerment of her sister wasn’t bad enough, the ongoing decimation of her workplace was another reason for Mercury to hate this battle. Calypso and the unit were struggling back and forth across the level like a giant pinball, caroming off of the walls, floor, and ceiling and smashing into or through everything in their path before rebounding away to strike something else. Every new crash made Mercury flinch slightly and add another line to the reprimand she was mentally writing for a nice little chat with her sister.

So no, Mercury was definitely *not* enjoying this fight.

Calypso, on the other hand, was loving every second of it.

The Nereid was not by nature a violent being. She had tackled the unit in defense of Mercury and Pluto, and had only intended to help her sister and her friend by keeping the unfortunate mutant away from them until they’d had a chance to recover from its curious chemical emissions and come up with a plan to defeat it. The choice to take physical action necessitated a physical form, of course, and of the vast array of shapes into which Calypso could have reconfigured her molecules, the body of a Senshi seemed most appropriate—and Mercury’s even more so. Most of the adjustments had been concessions to the fact that Calypso was *not* a Senshi, and that, lacking access to the same sources of power or the supplementary enchantments and instruments that had been provided to the Senshi over the millennia, she had to protect herself in other ways.

For one thing, while her assumed form *looked* human, its composition more closely resembled glacial ice. Human skin would have been impractical for such a form, not to mention easily damaged, and so Calypso had covered up all those places her sister’s uniform normally left exposed. The mask served another purpose. Calypso could assume any human shape she wanted, but she was most comfortable in her ‘natural’ human body, the one whose appearance was well-nigh identical to Ami’s. Since she could not reproduce the magical forces that masked the identities of the Senshi, the Nereid had been forced to employ a more material means of concealment for her face.

It was the realization that she could create and animate a form like this that was the source of Calypso’s elation. Shifting one’s molecular composition from rigid high-density ice to a far less inflexible crystalline structure with the kind of speed and accuracy required to engage in hand-to-hand combat would have been a challenge for an experienced Nereid elder, but Calypso was managing it. Not precisely with ease, but well enough to handle the unit, even in the face of all the distractions they kept running into. Literally running into, in the case of the walls. This crash-course that would have left a human battered, bruised, ensnared by a half-dozen grasping lengths of biomatter, and shocked into insensibility by the electric darts of the soldiers hardly registered on Calypso’s body. The high-voltage darts were like so much popcorn to the Nereid, and the other blows were defeated by her alternately ice-hard and liquid-slick form.

This just left the unit. Had it been a true unit, Calypso suspected that -her sister’s onetime assessment notwithstanding—she could have defeated it on her own. True, she did not have Mercury’s ability to manipulate large quantities of mist and ice in her environment, but she could do with her own body as she wished. The difference between fingers and talons was minor, the difference between a hand and a sword-blade only slightly more pronounced, and Calypso could easily have slowed the motion of her molecules so as to make even the slightest touch cold enough to freeze the surface layers of biomatter, at which point she could have begun tearing it away in chunks. More powerful units might be able to withstand that, but not a mere first-generation design—and Calypso could deal with a hostile human even more easily, by the simple expedient of putting the person to sleep.

As a hybrid, however, the Nereid’s opponent stalemated her. She had to restrict herself to punches, kicks, and flying bodyslams because anything more might have dealt lasting injury to the woman trapped within the biomatter. At the same time, the unintelligent green techno-organism formed a natural barrier against telepathy; it had taken a certain degree of effort for Calypso to penetrate that defense before, and as long as she was devoting so much of her awareness to controlling the motions and makeup of her body, she could not muster the psychic strength necessary to reach the hybrid’s human core a second time. She could drop out of physical form... but then the unit would break away and go after Mercury and Pluto again.

All things considered, Calypso had to admit that it was probably for the best that Saturn and Sailor V showed up when they did.

“Calypso!” V called out. “What in the world are you doing?!”

“Helping,” the Nereid replied as she twisted about in the air and slammed the unit against the corridor wall, hard enough to leave behind a faint imprint. The unit responded by tucking both legs up and kicking off from the vertical surface, hurling them both across the passageway and into the opposite wall. Again, the impact left behind visible scars, whereas neither of the airborne combatants seemed much affected.

“She calls this helping?” V murmured, taking in the depressions in the walls and the rest of the trail of destruction that Calypso and her dancing partner had left in their wake. Shaking her head, V glanced at Saturn. “Can you put a stop to that? Without hurting Calypso?”

“I’m... not sure,” Saturn admitted with a frown. “Caly’s said before that exposure to my powers would make her sick, but we never sat down and discussed just what would happen...”

“We’ll have to schedule an annointment for you two to discuss the issue later,” V said, half to herself. “But in the meantime, I guess it’s up to me.” She raised her sword and charged, crying out, “Sailor V to the rescue!”

“No, wait!” Calypso’s attempt at a warning came too late, as V rushed straight in at the two struggling figures. Calypso gritted her teeth and tried to think of something that would safely disable the unit before V was overcome by the hallucinogenic chemicals the thing was producing. She drew a blank.

“SAILOR V CHOP!” Calypso and the unit were both staggered as V brought the pommel of her sword down on the base of the hybrid’s neck. The Nereid winced behind her mask, noting that the Senshi’s position put her right in front of the clustered organs that were producing the unit’s pleasantly debilitating odor.

*The chemical affected Mercury almost immediately. Pluto lasted a little longer... probably because the temporal field was protecting her, accelerating the molecular breakdown of the stuff or slowing the rate at which she inhaled it... so V will probably go down right about...*

“SAILOR V KICK!” Calypso blinked and dropped out of diagnostic mode as V spun on one foot and delivered a sidelong kick that tore the unit right out of her grasp. The hybrid stumbled to the right, leaning on the wall to regain her balance. “You’re caught between a wall and a hard case now!” V exulted. She pointed the tip of her sword at the unit and called out, “LOVE-V-CHAIN!”

The blade instantly reverted to its original form, telescoping out from V’s hand and twisting wildly in the narrow space between her and the unit. The hybrid tried to follow the motion of the Chain and evade it, but V whipped her arm back and forth several times in rapid succession, expertly looping her weapon over, behind, and around her enemy. Less than two seconds later, the hybrid toppled over, her arms and legs bound by what had to be ten meters’ worth of gleaming gold links.

Calypso stood there on three inches of air, watching the whole thing with a dumbfounded expression. The Nereid could sense the chemical cloud in the air, its molecules bumping against and mixing with the outermost layer of her body moisture. This much of the stuff had been sufficient to knock out Mercury and severely disorient Pluto, and yet Sailor V was standing right in the middle of it without showing the least sign of silly-headed sleepiness.

“How are you...”

“Not now, Caly,” V said, stepping back from the roped-and-chained unit and pushing the confused Nereid along ahead of her. “Saturn! Your turn!”

Saturn nodded and closed her eyes, fixing the image of what she wanted to do in her mind. The last time she had tried to heal one—or two—of these hybrids, something had ripped the minds of the human hosts out of their bodies. She was determined not to let that happen a second time, but the only way to be entirely sure it wouldn’t was to speed up the healing process. A lot.

As had been demonstrated on any number of occasions, Saturn could be very quick when she needed to.

Holding the Silence Glaive upright, Saturn tilted back her head and turned her arms out at the elbows, reaching to both sides. The familiar violet-black light that made up most of her attacks shimmered ominously around the curved head of the Glaive, whereas its mistress’s empty hand was outlined by the more gentle light that accompanied her healing touch. Opening her eyes, Saturn pulled the Glaive in front of her body and raised her other hand to touch the flat of the blade. There was a single pure note as the light of the Glaive changed from deadly near-black to soft violet, and Saturn smiled. Then she shifted her gaze to the tangled unit and lowered her weapon, her empty hand still held to the base of the twisted blade.

Still wearing that gentle smile, Saturn said, “SILENCE GLAIVE SALVATION!”

A broad stream of violet energy shot from one of the deadliest weapons in the known universe and struck the hybrid head-on, and the half-human creature stiffened for an instant as her face was flooded by surprise. Then the biomatter just died, curling up at the edges and falling away from its human host in crumbling grey pieces that decayed away to nothingness before they even hit the floor. V’s Chain vanished as well, shining brighter and brighter until it transmuted back into pure golden energy and dispersed. All that remained was the now ex-unit, and—as was more or less standard procedure for a de-transformation—as soon as Saturn terminated her beam, the woman let out a sigh and collapsed on the floor, utterly exhausted.

What was *not* standard procedure was the fact that aside from a hospital identification bracelet, the woman wasn’t wearing so much as a stitch of clothing. V considered that and looked up at Saturn with a raised eyebrow. While the younger Senshi blushed and stammered a defensive reply, V ducked into a nearby room, coming back a moment later with a white linen bedsheet, which she spread out over the unconscious woman and tucked beneath her as well.

“Calypso,” V asked while she worked, “can you tell if she’s... okay?”

“Her mind is intact,” the Nereid replied. “I think she will be upset when she awakens, however.”

V nodded. “Heaven knows she has a right to be.”

“How did you do that?” Calypso finally managed to ask.

When Saturn did not reply, V realized the Nereid was addressing her, and looked up. “How’d I what? Beat her? Come on, Calypso; what did you think the point of all those nightly training sessions was, anyway?”

“That’s not what I meant. Don’t you feel... dizzy? Warm? Sleepy? Slightly aroused?” That last one made Saturn blush anew and cover her eyes in embarrassment. Even V blinked.

“Uh... no,” she slowly replied. “Should I?”

“Evidently not,” Calypso murmured. She shook her head. *I think I will have to discuss this with Mercury. Speaking of whom...* “We should get to Mercury and Pluto. She”—the Nereid nodded towards the unconscious ex-unit—“was not the only problem here, and we need to come up with a plan to deal with the others.” As she spoke, Calypso moved over next to V and knelt beside her, reaching down to the woman. V stopped her with a touch, and a look that was a question all on its own.

“We cannot just leave her here,” Calypso replied. “Whomever is responsible for the hybrids has already tried to cover their tracks by tearing away the minds of their victims. I don’t want that to happen to her if I can help it, any more than you do.”

V smiled approvingly. “Spoken like a Senshi. I guess I won’t chew you up for impersonating us after all.”

“Does that mean you’ll help me deal with Mercury?” Calypso asked, her eyes gleaming hopefully behind her visor.

“Nope.” The Nereid’s shoulders slumped at the smiling response. “Are you sure you can carry our friend here?”

“Nanako,” Calypso said absently.

“Eh?”

“It’s her name. Kanegawa Nanako.” The silver mask turned slightly blue as Calypso added, “I... heard it when Saturn turned her back. It... seemed important.”

“It is,” V said, putting a hand on the Nereid’s shoulder. “Thank you for telling me. But,” she added sternly, “I’m still not helping you get out of a scolding.” Calypso sighed as V raised her communicator and switched it on. “Mercury, this is V. We’ve got your sister, and her little playmate too. Everything’s cool.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mercury said, in a tone which made Calypso wince.

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Pluto’s voice put in. “She saved both of us by going off like that.”

“We’ll have a nice long talk about it later,” Mercury said. “Won’t we, Calypso?”

“Yes, sister,” the Nereid replied meekly.

“Good. Saturn, can you open a Dimension Door between your location and ours? We need to confer, and I don’t think Pluto can afford to spend any more of her energy in a teleport.”

“Not a problem.” Saturn raised the Silence Glaive to slice open space-time. When the Dimension Door swirled open, V saw that Saturn had put it flush against the side of whatever passage Mercury and Pluto were in, so that she, Calypso, and the Nereid’s unconscious passenger came out of the wall. Saturn followed a moment later, the Door snicking shut on her heels.

“Mars and Jupiter?” Mercury asked.

“Handling a friend of our friend here,” V replied, lightly touching Nanako’s head, which was pillowed against Calypso’s shoulder.

“Okay.” Knowing that the others would call if they felt they needed help, Mercury focused on the matter at hand. “Saturn, can you clear out the biomatter on this floor? From people as well as the building itself?”

“Easily. I used the same technique on her”—she nodded towards the ex-unit— “that I used to clear out all those buildings back in February. I just scaled it down. But that raises a question,” Saturn added, looking at Calypso. “What will happen to *you* if I fill this floor with my energy?”

Calypso cringed. “Nothing pleasant.”

“Which is why you’re going back to the elevator with Mercury,” Pluto said. “As long as Saturn keeps her powers confined to this floor, you can hover in the upper end of the shaft until it’s safe to descend. I’ll follow you once everything is clear. After all, we’ll need to be properly ‘rescued’ when this is over, won’t we?”

When Mercury nodded, Calypso silently assented to her sister’s will and carefully handed Nanako over to V before moving over to stand in front of Mercury, her arms held behind her back and her head bowed. The Nereid’s posture radiated humility and shame, and V suspected that she might even have been throwing out waves of mental apology. Whichever was the case, it worked; the hard look that Mercury started off with melted, and she put her arms around her sister.

“That’s the second time, Caly,” Mercury said in a thick voice.

“I know,” Calypso answered, bowing her masked face against her sister’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. But you needed my help.”

“You aren’t going to get off that easily,” Mercury warned, pulling back to look Calypso in the eye. “You really scared me this time, and I have a lot of things to say about it. You’re going to listen to them all, agreed?”

“Okay. Later,” Calypso added.

“Later,” Mercury agreed, taking her sister’s hand before looking at the others. “After you’re done, get yourselves out of here.”

“Right after we find a doctor or something,” V said with a look at Nanako. Mercury nodded.

“And the soldiers?” Saturn asked.

“I’ve got their radio frequency,” Mercury replied. “This isn’t the time or place for Twenty Questions, but when we’re ready, I’ll be able to find them. In the meantime, don’t do anything to antagonize them. Despite appearances, they may be on our side.”

“They have a funny way of showing it,” V said, adjusting her hold on the sleeping woman as the two sisters disappeared in a flash of blue light.

“Here we go, then,” Saturn said, raising the Silence Glaive.

“Before you do that,” Pluto interrupted, “let me switch off the stasis fields I left laying around. It’ll only take a moment, and it will make your job a bit easier—although you’ll have to be quick. Not everything I paralyzed has a layer of Mercury’s ice to keep it contained once the Stasis Bolts are removed.”

“That’s okay,” Saturn said.

“Yeah,” V agreed. “She’s good at ‘quick.’ Instant cures, instant *walls*...” She glanced at Saturn, who blushed and smiled at the same time.

“I said I was sorry,” Saturn mumbled, ignoring V’s doubting expression. “Let’s do this, Pluto.”

“Of course.” The two Senshi raised their weapons, closed their eyes, and took preparatory breaths.

“MO-” Pluto broke off after the first syllable as their communicators beeped collectively. The flicker from the Garnet Orb, as its power was first gathered and then abruptly halted on the verge of release, conveyed a sense of surprise.

“Could one of you get that?” V asked, shifting Nanako. “My hands are occupied.”

Saturn sighed, lowered the Glaive, and switched on her communicator with her free hand.

“...is under control,” Mercury was saying. “What about you two? Any problems?”

“No,” Jupiter said in reply. “Actually, Mars managed to turn this one back.”

“She did?” Saturn and Mercury said, both at the same time and in the same surprised voice.

“Yes, she did,” Jupiter continued without missing a beat. “Gave me a bit of a scare right at first, though. I’ll explain later. Do you need us to come up?”

“Oh, no,” Saturn said. “I’ve just got a little clean-up to do. Can you and Mars meet me and V out back in around two minutes?”

“Got it.” Jupiter’s signal blipped out.

“Sorry about the delay, Mercury,” Saturn apologized.

“No harm done.” Mercury switched off her communicator as well, and Saturn looked up at Pluto.

“Let’s try this again,” the youngest Senshi said. The eldest nodded, and they resumed their ready stances.

This time, Pluto had barely opened her mouth when the interruption came, in the form of five large men in feature-concealing headgear and body armor. The Garnet Orb pulsed anew, it a manner that could only be described as annoyed, and it was echoed by a huff from Saturn as she turned and brought down the head of the Glaive, slamming a Silent Wall into existence right in front of the inconsiderate intruders.

Getting the message, Pluto did not wait for anything *else* to come along, and raised her staff. “MOBIUS SPIN!”

As the Garnet Orb sent ten thousand hair-thin lines of deep red energy out in all directions, Sailor V was heard to ask, “What, no poem?”

# 

Not for the first time today, swearing became audible over Security’s com channels to the squads on the third floor, as his people were suddenly struck or narrowly missed by a webwork of blood-red energy that radiated throughout the level. The brief bout of cursing quickly gave way to confusion, as nothing bad seemed to result from either a hit or a miss.

“Sir?” one of the squad leaders radioed in.

“Wait for it,” the Director replied, unconsciously raising one hand. Sure enough, there came a burst of red as pulses shot along each of the innumerable laser-thin lines, passing harmlessly through everything in their path until they struck the shimmering energy fields that the Senshi had created about the level. The barriers, whatever they were, flickered and then flew to pieces, their essence scattering along the network of light and racing back towards its unseen point of origin, pulling the lines along with them.

The afterimage of the strange crimson grid was still hanging in the air when a wave of deep violet light swept across the monitors, blotting out everything in the field of view of the headsets. The eerie glow lasted only a moment before the screens were flooded with hissing static, as the feed from the cameras was cut off at the source. At the same time, the readings coming back from the sensors built into each Security trooper’s body armor flatlined.

Not for the first time today, the syllables of a heartfelt curse echoed off the walls of the Director’s office.

# 

When Saturn lowered the Silence Glaive again, there was not a trace of biomatter anywhere in sight. V had been momentarily concerned when Pluto withdrew her paralyzing power and several nearby clusters of the stuff began to twitch and lash out, but the rotating beams Saturn had generated from between the blades of her Talisman dealt with that problem. The Salvation didn’t repair the holes the biomatter had put into the walls during its explosive expansion, but V supposed you couldn’t have everything.

Case in point: the normal walls had been left standing, but the Silent Wall that Saturn had placed to hold back the goon squad with the rudely-timed arrival had been stripped away by the Salvation. This left five armed men within easy shooting distance of the three Senshi. And Saturn’s back was turned.

*CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK*

*CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK*

*CLICK* *CLICK*

*CLICK*

V could see the sweatdrops rolling off of those black headsets as the weapons refused to fire. One of the figures had raised a hand to the general location of his left ear instead of going for a weapon, probably to contact the rest of the mystery men for backup, but judging from the quick tap-tap-tapping of his finger, he wasn’t having any better luck with his communications gear than his cohorts were with their guns.

The chorus of ineffectual trigger-pulling had drawn Saturn’s attention as well, and she turned to confront the owners of the weapons. She didn’t use any of her powers; she just put one hand on her hip, thumped the butt of the Silence Glaive on the floor, and looked at them, the exasperation plain on her face.

V had to give the boys credit. They didn’t visibly flinch.

“Saturn,” she said. “If one of them makes a funny move, send him to Mongolia.”

“Understood.”

“You, on the left,” V said, glancing at the one who’d tried to radio for assistance. “Come here.” When the man did not move, V drew herself up and barked, “NOW, soldier!”

He not only moved, he practically snapped to attention in the process. The other four also straightened noticeably, and from the subsequent shift in their postures, V guessed that they hadn’t intended to do that.

*A good soldier will obey almost any command, provided it’s delivered in a loud voice. I’m sure I heard that somewhere.* She stepped forward and, in the firmest and most no-nonsense voice she could muster, said, “This woman’s been through a severe physical and emotional ordeal. She’ll probably need professional care when she wakes up, and you’re going to make sure she gets it. Agreed?” No response. “I asked you a question, mister!” V snapped.

“Yes, ma’am!” the figure replied, once again standing at attention, and then managing to look thoroughly annoyed with himself for having done it. V could hear the thought going through his head: You don’t take orders from the enemy, stupid!

“We’re not the bad guys here, Lieutenant,” V said, picking the first military rank that popped into her head. “We would have turned the lot of you to dust if we were. Now hold out your arms—and mind where you put your hands.” The man’s arms came up slowly, and V passed the woman over as carefully as she could. The soldier grunted and shifted as her weight settled on him alone, and the silver visor turned slightly towards V, as if in surprise. She grinned slightly. “You realize of course, that if anything happens to her, I’ll find you.” There was a cautious nod. “Good. I’m glad we see eye-to-eye on this.”

She backed away and indicated for Lieutenant Black to do the same. “And in the future, gentlemen,” V said, placing a hand on Saturn’s shoulder, “we prefer a verbal ‘hello’ as opposed to the projectile kind. Saturn, Pluto, let’s go.”

Dark red, darker violet, and bright orange light flooded the hall as the three Senshi disappeared.

# 

Proteus was tired. Crushing the ‘other’ within its mind was perhaps the most strenuous task the entity had yet performed, and it had not come without a price. There was now a hole in its mind, a great void which began with the scan of Subject #117 at 11:46 am and ended at 12:03 pm.

The command protocols had been buried so deeply inside of Proteus that it hadn’t been aware of them, but *something* had triggered them. It had something to do with the detailed bio-readings from the elevator, something to do with the other person who had been in there with Mizuno Ami. Proteus had tried to hold on to the data, tried to recall at least the face that had gone with those readings, but even thinking this far along the trail of events had stirred up the control program again. After suppressing it five times, Proteus had been left with no choice but to excise virtually all of the data associated with the damnable thing’s period of activation. Aside from the fact that the program existed and had been triggered by a detailed bioscan of some unknown human—a not-so-subtle hint to avoid using such sensors in the future if at all possible—Proteus recalled nothing of the incident. It knew only of the cause, and the costs.

The self-inflicted lobotomy had been an extreme measure, but it was the only real guarantee the renegade unit had of holding on to its continued independent existence—and *that* had already been severely jeopardized by this morning’s fiasco. Worse yet, Proteus’s pool of potential test subjects had been reduced to seven. All the implanted humans on the surface at the time of the control program’s activation had been deemed unnecessary impediments to the main operation, and cut from its control. The sub-units in the hospital had been destroyed, and both hybrids were gone as well. By far the most concerning development was that Nanako, Samoru, Mariko, and the others had retained their full memories, everything from the moment Proteus had taken them right up to the moment when its hold over them was terminated. Assuming the shock of the severance hadn’t damaged them, they could very well know as much about Proteus as it knew about them. Which was to say, everything.

With a sound that approached a tired sigh, Proteus shifted its insectoid body and began to move out. The location of its one refuge had been compromised; a new one would have to be established.

# 

The elevator had been dragged to a halt somewhat above the normal stopping point of the third floor, so Ami and Setsuna could have gotten themselves out of the car without too much trouble. Instead, they sat there for around a quarter of an hour, waiting for help to arrive from the outside. Ami put the time to good use, giving Calypso the first part of that promised scolding.

Setsuna was sitting close enough to catch the edges of the mostly one-sided telepathic discussion, and she spent a good part of the sixteen minute, thirty four second wait considering what it meant that Ami was this telepathically gifted in her civilian form, and how it related to those three curiously unconscious people back in the hallway. She used most of the rest of her time trying to guess, without benefit of the Garnet Orb or her prescient gift, who would open the door for them: hospital employees; search and rescue workers; or urban commandos. The voices that occasionally called in to them did not offer conclusive evidence for any one of the three.

Doctor Yotogi never even entered her mind until the doors rumbled open and revealed his face on the other side. “Hello, ladies. Fancy meeting you here.”

“Hello, Yotogi-san,” Setsuna replied. “Do you usually go around rescuing people trapped in elevators?”

“No,” he replied, grunting as he pushed the door open wider, “this is definitely a first for me. I did rescue a cat from a tree once.”

“Very decent of you,” Ami said, moving towards the door and ducking to clear the frame, which had been shortened by about half a meter by the irregular stoppage of the car.

“Are you a cat person, Mizuno-san?” Lucas asked, taking her hands and helping her down.

“I don’t have a cat of my own, if that’s what you mean,” Ami said, hopping down to the floor, “but I’m fond of them.” She released Lucas’s hands, dusted herself off, and turned to step away from the elevator so that Setsuna could get out. And she stopped, having come face-to-face with her mother. Rikou’s facial expression was tightly controlled, but Ami—herself an adept at that particular skill—knew exactly how to read that look. There was more open concern in her mother’s eyes than Ami had seen since New Year’s Eve, worry that quickly gave way to relief as Rikou looked her daughter over and found everything to be in place.

“You’re okay?” she asked, her voice even.

Ami nodded. “I’m fine, Mother. As well as I can be, considering.” She glanced back at the elevator and the holes in the nearby walls, and Rikou nodded slowly. “And you?”

“I didn’t even know there was something going on until we saw... well, soldiers... running through the halls downstairs. After that...” Something like a shiver went through the doctor, and Ami quite suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a crushing hug. Even as her arms moved to return the embrace, Ami was blinking in surprise.

“Mother?”

“I’m just glad that you’re okay, Ami,” Rikou said, the barely-repressed trembling in her body belying her calm, quiet tone of voice. She held Ami out at arm’s length and looked her over a second time, brushing a strand of hair back from her face. “That’s the second close call you’ve had with these... these *things*... and...” The doctor sighed and hugged her daughter again. “I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

“I’m glad, too,” Ami said softly, once again matching the gesture.

*Now where have we seen this before?* Calypso asked dryly.

*Hush, Caly.*

“Ahem.” Mother and daughter looked up at Setsuna, who was standing hunched-over in the shrunken elevator door. She smiled apologetically at them. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but... may I come down, now?”

“Oh.” Two cases of the famous Mizuno Blush broke out as Ami and Rikou stammered apologies and moved out of the way. In spite of all the visible damage to this part of the building, everyone nearby suddenly appeared to be smiling, or hiding smiles. Setsuna didn’t bother to conceal hers.

Maybe that was why she slipped. She’d taken the precaution of removing her high-heeled shoes before jumping down from the elevator, but the combination of her stockinged feet and the smooth floor tiles was a bad one as far as friction or balance were concerned. With a startled yelp, the mighty Senshi of Time pitched forward—right into a pair of arms belonging to an equally-surprised young doctor.

To hear the girls go on about it, this was one of the classic techniques to meet guys, and under slightly different circumstances, Setsuna might have taken a moment to enjoy the feeling of someone else’s arms supporting her, and being close to a warm body. Even the sense of humiliation wasn’t entirely unbearable; it was the first time since her injury that Setsuna had felt such a degree of embarrassment, and that was another important memory to be treasured. However, the moment had come too soon after the encounter with the hybrid. Those painfully incomplete romantic daydreams were fresh in Setsuna’s mind, and being this close to Lucas reminded her too strongly of what she did not have, what she had so completely lost and then been half-shown by the trickery of an uncaring enemy.

Almost unthinkingly, Setsuna lashed out, shoving Lucas back with a harsh, “NO!”

Fortunately, Setsuna was not in a clear enough mental state to strike with the full extent of her strength and training. Otherwise, the secret of her Senshi identity might have been put in jeopardy, not to mention what damage Lucas would have been in danger of sustaining. As it was, she managed to knock him off balance and send him staggering across the hall; the only thing that stopped him from hitting the floor was a fast grab at the reception desk.

In the moments immediately following Setsuna’s outburst, the silence was so complete that the proverbial pin might have been too ashamed to break it. Ami got a clear sense that even Calypso was too startled for words. Then Setsuna folded her arms and briefly hid her reddened face behind her empty hand.

Looking up, she politely asked, “Are you okay, Yotogi-san?”

“I think I should be asking you that,” Lucas replied, looking at her with wide but concerned eyes.

“I... I’m fine. I was just... startled.” Setsuna sighed and then bowed to him. “I’m sorry that I struck you, Yotogi-san. I know you were only trying to help me.”

“Setsuna, it’s all right. I’m not hurt, and I’m not angry. A little surprised, yes, but not angry.” Glancing at the battered elevator car, with holes in its walls where the biomatter had punched through, Lucas added, “I think I can see why you would have felt... threatened... like that.”

Setsuna flinched. *Threatened. Good word.* “Even so, that doesn’t excuse my behavior. Again, I apologize.” She turned towards the stairs, then stopped and looked at Rikou. “Are Usagi and the others still upstairs, Mizuno-san?”

“Yes,” Doctor Mizuno replied. “I spoke with... Ikuko...” Her voice trailed off as Setsuna walked away. Rikou blinked and then looked quickly at Ami, who nodded and hurried after her friend, understanding that her mother would want to talk to her about this afterwards.

Once she was on the landing and away from the door to the third floor’s main ward, Setsuna sighed wearily and leaned heavily on the railing. To Ami, she said, “I suppose Yotogi-san and your mother think I’m suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress after running into more ‘green monsters.’”

“I would expect so,” Ami replied, giving Setsuna the physical space she seemed to need right now. “Would they be right?”

“Maybe a little. This *is* the fourth time these things have managed to find me, and I can’t say I’m enjoying the attention.” Setsuna looked up. “Ami, when this one... when it gassed us... you saw yourself with Ryo before you passed out, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Ami replied, blushing faintly. “I take it that means that you saw... something similar?”

“Yes and no. I started to see places, and a person... but the images weren’t real. They were jumbled scenes, like what I’d expect to see, and *he* wasn’t even a real person. No face, no body. Just a feeling. But I *know* that I had someone once, and to have that... that *thing* playing with what memories I have, forcing me to think about one *more* memory that I’ve lost...”

Ami noticed how Setsuna’s hand tightened around the railing as she spoke. “And when Lucas caught you...”

“He made himself a convenient target. Something else that reminded me—but something that I could hit.” Setsuna sighed again, released the banister, and buried her face in her hands. “I feel like such an idiot.”

“Displacing your anger is a perfectly normal human response to a difficult situation,” Ami said, trying to sound supportive. Something occurred to her, and she hid a smile as she added, “Okay, so you made yourself look slightly crazed in front of an attractive man who seems to have a genuine interest in you, but that’s no great difficulty. Minako and Usagi do it all the time.”

“Ami,” Setsuna said, groaning and weakly chuckling at the same time, “you’re not helping.”

“Sorry,” Ami apologized, shrugging. She did not look or sound very sorry, though. “Now, put your shoes on and let’s go find Usagi-chan. It’s lunchtime, and after being poked, prodded, scanned, and then forced to sit around for twenty minutes, she’s probably gotten hungry enough to start attacking the vending machines.”

# 

There was going to be a Senshi meeting tonight, of course. Too much had happened today for there *not* to be one. But with Usagi, ChibiUsa, Setsuna, Luna, and Ami and Calypso at the hospital, Haruka and Michiru back at the house, and Artemis off who-knows-where doing who-knows-what, the four Senshi who returned to Hikawa agreed to take a break.

Rei stayed at home to make a new attempt at deciphering the Book with Rooky’s assistance, and Minako headed off to a track practice. By request, Hotaru dropped Makoto at her apartment, and then stayed for lunch. It was a toss-up as to what was the more intimidating part of that meal; watching Makoto eat like Usagi, or sitting there in the shadow of that bizarre young tree, which Hotaru would have sworn she could *hear* growing.

“Something wrong with the ramen, Hotaru?” Makoto asked between bites of her second serving.

“No, it’s wonderful.”

“Nicesh try,” Makoto said, devouring another mouthful of the noodles. “It’s instant ramen, Hotaru. Instant food can be many things, but even I can’t make it *wonderful.*” She cleaned out her bowl and then set it down. “So what’s bugging you?”

Wordlessly, Hotaru pointed over her shoulder at the sapling and the lesser plants that had intertwined with it. “The last time I was around a plant growing anywhere near this fast, there was a daimon involved. Not that I think there’s anything like that going on here,” she added, seeing the hurt look on Makoto’s face. “It’s just... have you given any thought to where you’re going to plant it? Let alone how you’re going to get it out of your apartment at its current size?”

“Have you been talking to Ami?” Makoto asked sourly.

“No, but I sort of figured she would have asked you about this by now.” Hotaru turned her head to regard the tree, letting her eyes see its brilliant green and gold energy. “It’s going to get a lot bigger, Makoto. Believe me; I can tell.”

“I know,” Makoto sighed. “And I believe you. I can feel it, too. I know that Ami’s right, that I can’t keep them here forever, but what am I supposed to do? I can’t just go out and plant a tree in the middle of the city. Even in the park, I’d need to get a permit or something, and there’d be all kinds of questions...”

“Maybe not,” Hotaru said. “If you found a place you liked, I could always set up a Silent Shield to hide it, like I do when we’re training. Nobody would ever know the tree was there except for us. At least”—she looked up at the tree again—“not until it got a lot bigger. I could only make a Shield so big without moving out into the park myself. Still, it would give us some time.”

“I... never thought of that.” Makoto looked at the tree in silence for a few moments, then turned to Hotaru. “Hotaru... it’s not just that I’m worried about someone asking questions. We both know that this isn’t an ordinary tree. If it turns out that there really is a dryad in there somewhere, and she wakes up in the middle of the park, how would I know? How could I get to her before someone or something else did?”

“That part, I’m not so sure about,” Hotaru admitted, scratching her head. “Offhand, I can think of about ten different things that could go wrong if I tried to leave a Dimension Door open between here and the park for you.”

“I could probably add a few to that list,” Makoto agreed. “Even so... I appreciate your offering to help, Hotaru. And I’ll think about it.” She looked at the tree again and quietly said, “I can’t keep putting things off like this.”

Hotaru suspected that Makoto was referring to the mental scan Luna would attempt tonight, as well as the tree, but she said nothing on either subject and went back to eating her ramen, being careful not to slurp.

Behind her, the tree continued to grow.

# 

The Directors met briefly in the wake of the most recent incident, the perpetual gloom of their gathering place tinged with a sense of uncertainty.

Security began with a precise report on the actions of his forces, and a summary of everything that the men had witnessed during the brief foray. He made special emphasis of the fact that two of the Senshi had been spotted striking down unarmed civilians, and that they had left others trapped within paralyzing webs of energy, where they could have been attacked by anything that happened by. His monologue touched on the curious new Senshi that had been spotted flying around and generally trashing everything that got in her way while battling what was later confirmed to be a woman. The Director also described how that woman had been ‘rescued’ from the Senshi, and he did not omit the fact that the lieutenant in question had submitted himself for disciplinary action.

“You don’t actually intend to follow through with that,” Information said.

“Of course not. Lieutenant Tanaka’s decision preserved the lives of his men and a civilian. Barring recommendations to the contrary from Sciences or Personnel, I’ll give him a reprimand and a few days of restricted leave until he realizes on his own that he made the correct decision, then restore him to active duty.”

“No objection here,” Sciences replied calmly. “The lieutenant’s medical examination turned up no trace of any potentially coercive or hallucinogenic compounds, and his brainwave patterns check out as normal.”

“The psychological evaluation didn’t reveal any problems either,” Personnel added. “So far as I can tell, the lieutenant is an intelligent man in full command of his faculties, although he still can’t explain how ‘Sailor V’ knew his rank, or how she was able to talk him and his men down so quickly and thoroughly.”

“The presence of Saturn and Pluto *might* have had an impact on their judgment,” Media said lightly. “Particularly since the majority of their equipment had just been destroyed.”

“Disabled,” Sciences interrupted coolly. “Not destroyed. The analyses are still proceeding, but so far as my people have been able to determine, none of the deactivated systems have suffered damage. They were merely drained of power—totally.”

“What about the weapons?” Security asked. “Even the conventional gear seized up in the wake of that energy wave.”

“Whatever the Senshi did to neutralize the electrical systems and high-energy weapons rendered the reactive materials in the other weapons chemically inactive. The substances involved seem to have been broken down at the molecular or even atomic level, and then re-bonded into inert compounds. What was gunpowder this morning is now just so much spent carbon, with no residual energy traces to suggest how the change was accomplished.”

“As if it was done by magic,” Media said.

“Quite.”

“What about the young woman that was handed over to Lieutenant Tanaka?” Political asked. “Or the man the Senshi left with the paramedics? What’s their condition?”

“Physically,” Sciences reported, “they’re as healthy as any of us. There were no traces of the contaminant in either of their systems, and the methods used to remove it have left no obvious damage, although the man was somewhat dehydrated initially. The state of their mental health is not quite so reassuring.”

“I was under the impression that they’d retained their memories.”

“They did,” Personnel said, “but that’s not an unmixed blessing. Sailor V wasn’t kidding when she said the woman had suffered a severe emotional trauma; I would guess she has a complete recollection of everything that was done to her. The man as well. And before you say anything,” she added, turning to the Information Director, “let me make it clear that neither of them is in any condition to answer questions just now. I will let you know when they are, and not a moment before.”

Information held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Data-wise, there’s not much more on these two than there was on the first three. The woman, Kanegawa Nanako, was admitted to the hospital near the end of February as a Jane Doe, after a pair of city maintenance workers found her in the tunnels. She’d been comatose in her room—on the third floor, of course—until today, and all attempts to uncover her records have turned up nothing. The same goes for the man—Fushi Samoru.”

“In the final analysis,” Security rumbled, “this morning’s incident is looking less and less like it was directed at us. True, there’s good a chance that whomever’s responsible for this green contaminant has been aware of our existence ever since my teams destroyed that insectoid creature in the tunnels, but if they’d known the location of this base, I have to believe that they would have sent a considerably larger force to attack it.”

“An infiltration, then?” Resources suggested.

“Unlikely, given the length of time for which Kanegawa was present in the hospital,” Sciences answered. “Her room is at the center of the contaminated area, and preliminary damage assessments show heavy damage in the ventilation shafts adjoining that section of the hospital. Those vents lead straight down to our facility, and could have been used to access this base weeks ago without our realizing it. I have to conclude that she was sent to the hospital for another reason.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Security said. He sounded a little disgruntled; understandable, since he and Sciences tended to be on opposite sides of the fence at most meetings. “The monitor station reported an energy surge just as the disturbance began, and analysis of that energy has matched it to the Senshi. The timing suggests that the Senshi arrived, were detected by the contaminant, and triggered a defensive action.”

“Any theories as to what the original purpose of infesting the hospital with this substance might have been?” Political asked.

“Based on what we know about it and how it has been used in the past,” Sciences said, “there is a possibility that Kanegawa was sent to spread the contaminant and infect others, but whatever the Senshi did to eradicate the substance has left no traces of it behind, either in the building or in those who were in the affected area.”

“So we have no proof.”

“At this time, no.”

“Unless you count the Senshi’s actions towards the patients,” Information added. “It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve taken steps to disable people who have been brought under the influence of a hostile force—Hinamatsuri being a recent example for which we have visual evidence.” He seemed to add that as a reminder to Security, who shifted slightly in his chair, but said nothing.

“I’ll bear that in mind when I meet with our supporters,” Political said. “Are there any other details I should be aware of?”

“There is one thing,” Information said. “Today’s events have given us video evidence that Sailor V is alive and well, and working with the Senshi. We ought to make use of it.”

“Making movies would seem to be *my* department,” Media noted.

“That wasn’t what I had in mind.”

# 

The use of magic, like most other things in life, requires regular practice if one expects to get any good at it. It is one of those arts in which, once the basics have been mastered, an adept can continue to advance at their own pace, without constant supervision and guidance from their master. This said, the knowledge of a more experienced wizard often comes in handy.

Archon’s apprentice was currently faced with such a situation. For the last day or so, she had been dogged by the most persistent and peculiar sensation. It was not so much like she was being watched, but rather, as if she was being followed by a faint sound that was at the uppermost extremes of human hearing. Almost too high to notice, quite impossible to decipher, and extremely annoying. She’d made several attempts to banish the sound, but it always returned eventually, as insistent as ever.

Consulting with her books and the memory crystal had already told the young sorceress that the ‘sound’ was the result of a spell that, for all intents and purposes, was the magical, interdimensional equivalent of a beeper. She was, essentially, being paged from another universe.

This was not unheard of, or so the books claimed. A side-effect of working with summoning magic was that as a wizard called upon the creatures of one world, he or she tended to draw attention on that world. The end results of such attention could be good, as more intelligent and powerful beings sought out the wizard to offer their services, in exchange for an opportunity to venture into this world. On the other hand, this sort of thing could be very, very bad. There were a few extreme cases in which careless or overconfident would-be summoners struck a deal with the wrong sort of creature and found themselves summoned away instead, to disappear forever into the trackless infinity between realities.

The apprentice had only been in contact with one other world, and its denizens were surely “the wrong sort.” Complicating matters was the fact that a normal daimon could not have mustered the energy to even attempt a spell like this. Whatever was trying to get her attention was a cut or three above the typical snarling beast of daimonic existence, which only made it that much more of a potential problem.

The girl would have liked to get in touch with Archon and hear his advice, but that was not possible. Although it had ended on a bad note, last night’s energy-gathering mission had otherwise gone exceptionally well, and that meant that Archon’s other duties would once again require his full attention. That was a disappointment—and more so, in light of today’s development—but the girl had understood from the beginning that Archon had taken on the task of instructing her as something of a hobby. This ‘Rise’ that he periodically spoke of clearly took precedence.

Since her teacher was unavailable, and her own magic not yet sufficient to block out the noise, there was nothing left but to answer the call and see who wanted what with her. She’d never get to sleep otherwise.

There was no way she was going to use her own apartment for this one. Summoning a minor daimon was one thing, but this entity had already proven itself capable of penetrating the dimensional barriers, even if in just this minor way. If the girl was leery about letting an assassin like Cestus know where she lived, she wasn’t about to allow a daimon that knowledge. Fortunately, she knew of a place that would be eminently suited to her needs. She gathered the implements she would need and threw on her cloak and reflective mask, then picked up Archon’s ‘pager’ and activated the teleportation spell within it.

She rematerialized in the middle of a large vacant lot, her back to the chain-link fence which blocked off access to the street, and her face towards the dark waters of the bay. There was a nearly full moon tonight, which made it easy to pick out the details of the debris piled across the place. There was a wide hole in the center of the lot, an inverted hemisphere gouged into the concrete by what looked to have been intense heat and crushing pressure. Most of the rubble was piled around that, and it was especially thick over the collapsed entrance of a series of formerly-subterranean passages and chambers, now shattered and flooded.

Space was at a premium in any major city, and even more so in Japan. A vacant lot would not normally stand undeveloped for long, but it had been two years and more since this devastation had occurred, and no one had even attempted to clear away the wreckage. The girl seriously doubted that anyone ever would. Some things left a mark so powerful that even those without magical training or ability would sense it, and instinctively shy away. Seldom-told stories whispered that this lot was haunted, or cursed; the sorceress didn’t know about any ghosts, but the part about a curse was accurate enough.

She didn’t know for certain what had happened here. She hadn’t been present to witness it, and Archon had been close-mouthed about his own suspicions. What the girl did know was that the event had involved a hideous level of energy, something sufficiently powerful that the local ley lines had *bent* around it, almost as if trying to avoid the cause of the disaster. The result was a mana-dead zone, a place from which no life or magic could be drawn. Either could be taken into it, but what lay within the zone offered no energy or sustenance. Natural creatures instinctively shied away from such places, and as for the unnatural creatures...

Picking a spot at the edge of the dead zone, the apprentice used her pager to inscribe the strongest warding circle she could command into the ground. As she considered the glowing white shape, the girl smiled wryly. The ’circle’ was actually two such shapes formed of many interwoven sigils and glyphs; one was placed solidly above a ley line, the other wholly within the dead zone, and both of them joined together in a figure-eight. Viewed from the side, the design suggested a mobius, the symbol of infinity.

*How very appropriate,* the apprentice thought, her smile vanishing as she took her place inside one of the circles and began the summoning. The symbols around her glowed more brightly as she called up energy from the ley line, and the radiance spread into the other half of the design, rising from the second circle as a translucent wall of light. The ground within the base of that wall turned steadily darker until it became the familiar black void, spilling its cold, evil energy into the world.

This was why she’d chosen the dead zone. The essence of the daimons and their realm tended to persist in this world for some time after the fact, and if this creature was skilled enough to reach into this world on its own, it might be able to use those lingering traces as reference points towards some future mischief. The nullity of the dead zone would prevent that; even the ley line the girl was tapping to generate her circle was too far away to be reached from the forming portal, and without immediate access to that kind of power, there would be nothing the daimon could do. Nothing beyond the minor scale of what it had already done, at any rate.

That annoying hum had not faded at the girl intoned the words of the spell. Instead, it lowered in pitch, slipping steadily into the audible range. It grew to a susurration as the passage widened, and when jets of shadow burst up from the narrow abyss, it became a murmur, punctuated by brief snatches of sharper sound. At the moment in which the portal fully opened, the noise ceased—and no daimon appeared.

*That* was unexpected. Most daimons were willing to leap headlong into this world and start taking things apart. The girl could feel this one lurking in the in-between place her spell had created, but it gave no indication of wishing to advance any farther at this time. She could have compelled it to appear, but she chose not to, instead waiting to see which of them would speak first.

-Interesting,—the daimon finally said. Its voice, like those of all the others, was an eerie mental whisper that betrayed no hint of gender.—The others did not mention that you were so patient.-

“None of your predecessors have been in any position to judge me,” the girl replied.

-Perhaps. The fact that a number of them have met their end while under your control says much, however.-

“Yes, it does. Mainly, it says that I need to locate more effective warriors.”

The unearthly being chuckled.—That is one possibility.-

“Can I assume that there is a reason why you have been attempting to contact me?”

-I believe we are in a position to assist one another.-

“Oh? How so?”

-You have just expressed your dissatisfaction with the quality of the daimons who have answered your summons. I can arrange for those “more effective warriors” you mentioned to be ready and waiting whenever you open a portal. I also know of a few tricks you can use to extend their usefulness, provided your magic is sufficient...-

The wizardess spoke a syllable and made a hooking gesture with her right hand, and a low hiss escaped from the pit of shadows as the wall of light twisted. “Is that ‘sufficient’ enough for you?” she asked calmly.

-Yesss,—the dark voice rasped.—That will do very well...—The girl nodded and relaxed her fingers, ending the little addition.

“Now tell me,” she said, “what do you stand to gain by fulfilling this oh-so-generous offer? I refuse to accept that it’s simply to allow yourself and a few... associates the pleasure of visiting Earth, while your rivals are shut out.”

-You summoned three of us across a few of your nights ago. One was utterly slain, the other two defeated and banished. One of the survivors is an old acquaintance of mine, and while in your world, he discovered something that is... of interest to me.-

“And now you wish to come across and get it, is that it?”

-Not just yet,—the daimon replied.—There are preparations I must make first, details I must know and difficulties that need to be overcome.-

“Not the least of which is actually crossing into this world.”

-Quite true. Only a human can open that door to me. Luckily, you are in the right place, with the necessary skills, while I am in a position to make myself indispensable to you.-

The apprentice quirked an eyebrow. “I’d hardly go that far.”

-Oh no?—came the smug-sounding reply.—I offer you a supply of skilled, intelligent warriors ready to answer your call at a moment’s notice. I can also arrange for your summons to be answered by a trickle of unknowns, possibly useful, possibly useless, and all of them already worn down by the struggle to reach you through me and those who choose to ally themselves with me.-

“Don’t make threats you can’t back,” the girl snapped, twisting her hand in a subtly different motion from the last. The wall began to flicker. “I can leave you locked where you are, between your world and this one, unable to interfere with me in either of them.”

-And what will that gain you?—the daimon returned.—I will escape a trap such as this eventually, and you do not have the power to destroy me entirely; slay me here or in your world, and my essence will escape to my own place. Even if you manage to trap me in your realm, you will be back where you started, with an uncertain and ever-dwindling pool of servants to draw from.-

After a long pause, the girl spread her fingers and uttered a soft word, causing the flashing wall to go back to its stable glow. “You’re more clever than the others, at least. Very well, daimon; I’ll consider your offer. But if we’re going to be... associates... I’ll have to call you something. Do you have a name? One that I can pronounce without cracking my jaw?”

-As a matter of fact, I do.—The voice changed during those words, losing something of its otherworldly echo and taking on almost human tones.—But it is not customary to give a name without receiving one in return.-

“You may call me Opala,” the young apprentice replied, feeling a slight tingle of pleasure at using the pseudonym Archon had given her.

-A pretty name,—the daimon murmured, in what was now surely a female voice.—Even if it is not your true one.-

The shadow that had been lurking just below the level of the breach since its opening rose, already coalescing into a material form as it left its own reality behind. The shape was that of a beautiful woman in a tight-fitting black vest, miniskirt, and boots, a woman whose pale face was crowned with a fall of black hair and two delicate jewel-like horns. The black bat’s wings rising from her shoulders were currently folded in and around her body to avoid contact with the glimmering wall of the summoning circle, and her eyes were a dark blue virtually indistinguishable from black.

“And I am Illecebra,” the daimon said, her voice soft and sultry.

# 

Saturn rubbed at her arm, feeling a slight chill. It was a fairly unremarkable sensation, given the design of the Senshi fuku, but she had trouble dismissing the creeping tingle as just a mundane draft.

Then again, she did have some things on her mind that might explain it. For the first time since these regular meetings of all the Senshi had begun, Uranus and Neptune were not present. Michiru had been up and around this afternoon when Hotaru returned from her lunch with Makoto, but where she was normally warm and serene, there had been a decided pensiveness about her manner. She also did not seem to have the energy she usually possessed, and had gone back to bed at about seven. After a full day of worrying, Haruka had been too tired to put up more than a few feeble arguments before acceding to Hotaru’s ‘suggestion’ that she go get some sleep, too, and that was simply not like her.

The brief stop at Makoto’s apartment hadn’t improved Saturn’s mood much. Despite a lingering tension between them, Ami and Calypso appeared to have had their ‘talk’ and settled matters, but Makoto was distracted and nervous. And upon arriving at Hikawa, yet another problem showed up, in the form of a deliberate and utterly inexplicable distance—emotional and physical—between Artemis and Minako. They sat on other ends of the room, doing their best not to speak to or look at one another, and constantly looked hastily away whenever they made eye contact—which was about every ten seconds. By the time the discussion of the day’s events had ended, Artemis and Minako had turned so many times that Saturn was privately amazed that their heads hadn’t come unscrewed.

Now she was sitting in Rei’s room, the Silence Glaive resting across her lap as she watched Makoto and Luna sitting face-to-face, eyes closed and foreheads joined by a beam of soft golden light as Luna tried to search Makoto’s memories for clues about the behavior of the Aegis. The operative word in that was ‘tried;’ Luna had made four unsuccessful attempts over the last half hour, and she did not appear to be having any better luck on her fifth go-round.

The problem, Saturn suspected, lay half with Makoto and half with the Aegis. Makoto was uncomfortable with the idea of someone poking around inside her head, and while she had consciously rationalized and accepted the need for it, her *subconscious* mind was putting up more of a fight. The Aegis were picking up on that. With her sight firmly in the life-force spectrum, Saturn could see the jagged arcs of electric energy that were dancing around Makoto’s bright green aura. The energy was particularly concentrated around her head, forming a web of light which Luna seemed unable to penetrate.

Nor was Luna the only one being confounded. Mercury sat nearby, observing the procedure through her visor and the Caduceus, monitoring brainwave activity and energy levels to try and find a vulnerable pattern in the Aegis’s field, or to get an early warning of a more aggressive defense by the Weapon. Saturn was secretly doing that as well, and getting nowhere. The only good thing so far was that she had not been forced to take steps to prevent the Aegis from electrocuting anyone. Yet.

At length, the mind-linking beam faded out. When Makoto opened her eyes, they were apologetic and frustrated; Luna’s were just weary.

“Nothing?” Mercury asked, lowering the Caduceus.

“That, and a headache,” Luna replied, pinching the bridge of her nose and growling faintly. “No, no,” she added, waving off Saturn’s hand. “Save your energy. It’ll be better to let this run its course.”

“I’m sorry,” Makoto said. “I really tried that time, but...”

“If it’s *this* uncomfortable for you, Mako-chan,” Mercury began.

Makoto shook her head. “It’s not that. I just can’t clear my mind this way anymore, not since this thing in my head switched on. If I concentrate on blocking out your emotions—and those from the others, and what I feel from the trees and plants around here—it defeats the whole purpose of meditation. But if I *don’t* shut you all out, my mind starts to wander anyway.” She sighed. “To tell you the truth, I was never very good at this stuff to begin with. I always had better luck clearing my mind in a fight.”

“Could we try something like that instead?” Saturn suggested, looking at Luna. “If Mako-chan were to spar with Artemis for a while...”

“It might do *him* some good,” Luna said, alluding to her counterpart’s earlier behavior, “but I couldn’t get a fix on Makoto if she was moving around like that.”

“Oh.” Saturn pondered the problem anew. “What about Caly? Could she do it?”

“Caly could pick out the thoughts of one person in a crowd of a thousand, if she had to,” Mercury said, “but she’s too sensitive to the Aegis to do something like this. Besides, there are some very real differences in the way Caly thinks and what she can sense or feel, as compared to a human, and Makoto would be empathically aware of most of them. That could be very uncomfortable for her, which would make the Aegis try harder to defend her.”

Saturn frowned. “Well, if not Calypso, then what about *you,* Mercury? Could you do this?”

“I... *should* be able to,” Mercury admitted. “Eventually. But my mental abilities are still too rusty to attempt something like this just now.” Something in her reply made Saturn doubtful.

“There’s no need to push so much, Saturn,” Luna said. “I honestly didn’t expect it to go any faster than this.”

“Sorry,” Saturn apologized. “It’s just that we have all these problems, and I’m too impatient to wait around for them to be fixed. I want to wave my hand and have it all done.” She waved one hand and then shrugged. “I guess being Saturn has spoiled me a bit in that sense.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that very much,” Makoto said grimly. “You’re not the *only* one who wants this over with.”

“On that note,” Luna said, sitting up, “let’s try again, shall we?”

# 

The vacant, debris-choked lot was devoid of life once more, and the bare stones betrayed no hint of the meeting that had occurred there just a short time ago. It had not gone unnoticed, however, and now the two witnesses were discussing what they had seen.

“Well?” the first woman grated, sitting back in her chair. She was surrounded by a horde of battered electronics, most of which appeared to have been assembled by hand or seriously modified after purchase. Aside from some scattered lights on the equipment and the glow of a few monitors, the room was dark.

“There... there were no indications of any mechanical support,” came the second woman’s reply. Her timid voice was tinny with static. “She must have been using magic.”

“Oh really?” was the sarcastic response. “And what was it that tipped you off? The fact that it takes a warehouse’s worth of specialized technology to open a portal? Or the way she dematerialized afterwards?” The woman in the chair shook her head, muttering, “Idiot. What else?”

“The daimon itself gave off readings consistent with a Class Four, possibly a Class Five. That could have been due to interference from the portal’s radiation...”

“I doubt it. What about the girl?”

“The sensors couldn’t get a lock on her.” The answering silence was deadly, and she hastened to explain. “I accounted for the portal and the natural deadening effect of the area, but there were at least six kinds of energy that don’t correspond to anything in our files blocking the scans. They completely obscured her life-signs, and between them and her clothing, her physical profile was impossible to...”

“Quit babbling!” The nervous woman shut up immediately. “Better. Now, I want you to write up a program for the sensors. Something that can compensate for whatever blocked them this time and find out who our little mystery woman is, if she ever comes back. Can you do that much?”

“I... yes, if I narrow the scanning area and increase the frequency of...”

“I didn’t ask for a dissertation!” the first woman snapped. “God, why can’t you ever just be quiet and do as you’re told?”

“I’m sorry,” the other woman whispered miserably.

“SHUT UP, MIMETE!”

 

# 

_(Zoom in on Hikawa. Rei is sitting in the fire room, meditating; Yuuichirou is carrying out heavy manual labor off to one side; and Grandpa is nowhere to be seen. Camera zooms in on a tree where the four crows are perched, on different branches. Rooky looks up.)_

**Rooky**   _(deep, serious voice)_ : Today’s episode revolves around a series of coincidental encounters which have potentially far-ranging impact. Setsuna, Ami, and Calypso ran into Proteus’s sensor and set off a chain reaction that ended up with the mutant unit’s existence and identity finally slipping out. The finally-named apprentice met up with a nasty little daimon from five thousand years ago, at a spot which has a history of daimonic activity, and managed to get herself spied upon in the process. Artemis and Minako are having trouble with being a little too close, and Setsuna experienced something similar with Lucas.

**Rooky** : These events are examples of how even small, seemingly unimportant things can turn out to have a much larger effect on our lives.  _(pauses)_  Actually, none of them are really that small to begin with, but the point is, it’s not wise to dismiss things out of hand. What may seem at the time to be trivial, coincidental, or—to use the vernacular—to be a done deal may in fact be something entirely different and of far greater importance in the long run. Then again, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a cigar...

_(Thrax leans over and bops Rooky on the head with his beak.)_

**Rooky** : Awp!  _(rubs his head with one wing, glancing at the larger bird)_  Okay, okay, I’ll stop now... all you had to do was ask...

_(Fade to black)_

22/09/02

Okay, the real moral of this episode is that the writer needs to read a LOT less online fanfiction during his normally-scheduled writing hours! BIG apologies go out to the entire fan community for the delay. ^^;

Yes, a new attack for Saturn. I know she’s got a healing “attack” or two in the manga, but I have no clue what they look like, and I simply cannot make sense of the names, so...

Two notes on words that I can think of that might have confused or annoyed people:

Viricide: This little exercise in hyperbole is a totally made-up word (so far as I know) intended to mean “the murder of a power.” I didn’t want to use “deicide” (killing of a god) because Balance isn’t a god.

Opala: An altered form of opal. Since it’s Sailor Moon tradition for the bad guys to have the names of minerals or gemstones, I figured what the heck. It’s also an appropriate name for this girl for a few other reasons, but I’ll let you guys puzzle them out for yourselves. ^_^

Upcoming:  
\- Senshi spring break beach trip.

And done!


	32. Sounds and Silences; Taking the Time to Talk Things Through

The coming of dawn transformed the surface of the ocean from a deep blue void to a shimmering liquid flame, the bright white and hot red of the sun mixing against the blue and green of the waves. Far below the surface, however, the chilly darkness remained undisturbed, and the new sunrise was marked by nothing more than the soft chiming of a small timekeeping device.

Lady Istar paused at that sound and looked up from her workstation, her face somber as she regarded the dark domed ceiling above her. The only sources of illumination in the vast chamber were the translucent screens of energy hanging in the air before her, and their light did not penetrate far into the shadows. Most of the room, like much of the city, remained dark whether it was morning, noon, or night on the distant surface.

It should not be so. Not in the city, and most certainly not in the Celestial Hall.

Long ago, in the days before the rise of the Empire, the people of Atlantis had built the Celestial Hall to serve as an observatory and an astrological laboratory, a place where the scientific and sorcerous studies of the movements of the stars and planets were carried out side-by-side. From within those walls, the ancient Atlanteans had plotted the course of their destinies and their voyages into space, growing wise and prosperous and powerful—and ultimately creating their Empire. Always difficult to understand and harder still to accept, the craft of astrology fell into disfavor and disuse in later years, and the task of guiding the Imperial fleets was passed on to the Hall of Stars, but the Celestial Hall remained, fulfilling a new purpose that had been discovered quite by accident.

During the terrible Succession War that had followed the end of the thousand-year First Dynasty of House Imperator, a band of citizen-refugees had taken shelter in the Hall, guided and guarded by the Elder Mars of the day. It had been that woman who first discovered that something about the Celestial Hall harnessed the same heavenly forces that empowered the Senshi, permitting any of them to use her abilities more easily and more often in or around the Hall, and to recover in a single night’s sleep within its walls the strength that might otherwise take days to regain. Mars had been able to single-handedly defend her charges for days, and once she had fully understood the nature of the Celestial Hall, she was quick to call in her sisters. With the Hall as a base of operations, the Senshi were soon able to quell the fighting in the streets and re-establish the Imperial City’s neutrality; though the war raged on for another five years, it was widely-agreed after the fact that peace would not have come so quickly without the Senshi-defended city of Atlantis serving as a meeting place between the feuding Lords.

Ever after, the Celestial Hall had been the common home of all the Senshi. The central structure—the true Hall—always retained its age-old design, while additional buildings were added on around it to address all the needs that the old observatory had never been intended to serve.

Laraea Istar had visited the Celestial Hall a number of times in her youth. Sometimes she had been dragged along when Jenna snuck away from her tutors and went to visit Athena; more often, she had gone on her own, putting the Hall to its original use as she pursued her personal interest in astrology. The Senshi hadn’t minded her company, and had always been gracious hosts. Laraea fondly recalled telepathic lessons in this very chamber with Lady Mercury, who had encouraged her in studies considered by most people to be a foolish waste of time. Just as dear to her were her memories of debating with Lady Pluto—Athena’s mother, Lyssa—on the nature of Fate and Destiny, and how Time and the movements of the cosmos fit in.

In view of the events of later years, those memories did not come without some measure of pain for Laraea, but nearly as troubling just now was the dark, silent state of the Hall. This had always been a place of light and life when she visited it. There had always been someone here; if not a Senshi, then a guard, or a servant, or even the small children of one of the women for whom this place was a second home. And sometimes the not-so-small children. Laraea would forever hold a special place in her heart for Lady Uranus’s bright-eyed son, an adventurous boy who had surprised her with her first kiss when they were fourteen—and stolen any number of others later on, to the detriment of her studies.

Not that she had minded too much. After all, woman cannot live on horoscopes alone.

It was that sense of practicality which had allowed Lady Istar to make use of the Celestial Hall these last few months without being too troubled by the ghosts others might have imagined walking the corridors. Lapses such as this lament for the emptiness of the Hall were brief and easily dealt with, and an acceptable tradeoff for the privacy she enjoyed here. On this particular night-turned-day of work, that privacy had been essential; the contents of the three holographic screens Lady Istar had been studying could get her into a considerable amount of trouble if someone saw them, and even more so if that hypothetical person realized what she was planning.

Two days ago, Laraea had been called to the throne room to hear Lord Stone’s report on his mission. She had been an impassive observer as the data recorder built into Gamaliel’s bracer played back the last ten minutes of the operation. The rogue behavior of the units and the inexplicable mutation of the nexus did not bother Lady Istar too greatly, since she knew that Archon would see to those problems personally. Even the revelation that the Phoenix was in the hands of the Senshi only disturbed her for a moment —a very long and uncomfortable moment, yes, but the playback of Lord Stone’s brief dialogue with Mars and Athena had laid that unsettling instant to rest.

What Lady Istar had not been able to get out of her mind after the debriefing was the image of the sparkling blue sphere, rushing in from out of nowhere to attack and defeat the two Deep Ones that had disabled six Senshi. Lord Stone’s mission recorder was no rival to the Mercury Computer by any stretch of the imagination, and the device had only been set to gather audible and visual data anyway, but even that was enough to confirm that the blue object was in fact a Nereid. Few things could move in absolute defiance of gravity and inertia like that, and nothing but a Nereid could have done that and overpowered a pair of Deep Ones in the span of twenty seconds.

It was commonly believed by the other Lords that Laraea Istar had inherited her telepathic abilities from a Nereid grandparent. This was true enough; her maternal grandmother had been a Nereid Elder who had chosen to live out the last decades of her life in full human form, aging, sleeping, eating, and bearing two children to Lord Istar. What was *not* known was that Laraea herself was significantly more than the quarter-breed Nereid popular rumor made her out to be. Her mother had already been a few days pregnant when she married, and the child was not that of her human fiancée, but of a Nereid she had met and loved during her years at the universities on Mercury.

As a result of her parentage, the current Lady Istar’s telepathic and extrasensory gifts were the equal of any true Nereid’s, and she also possessed a degree of conscious control over the inner workings of her body. This latter gift was one Laraea had always kept secret, but her known abilities had made her the perfect choice to lead the search teams that had been dispatched to Mercury after the Lords had returned to Atlantis.

That same prodigal status had left her suffering nightmares for weeks after her exposure to the psychic noise left over by the centuries-old genocide. Making the experience even worse for Laraea was the knowledge that, under different circumstances, she might have entered into this era and found family on Mercury to welcome her. Not her Nereid parent, certainly—not even Nereids could live for twenty-five centuries—nor the half-sisters she had known of, nor even their daughters. But she would surely have had relatives; ten generations removed, perhaps, but that was still far closer than anything the other Lords could have hoped for in this day and age. Instead, she found a dead world of beautiful, ruined cities that echoed with the psychic agonies of millions of murdered minds, some of them those same relations she had hoped to find.

And now, somehow, one of them was on Earth. *With* Mercury.

The idea of *not* going to find that Nereid had never even occurred to Laraea. All that was really in question was how she was going to go about it. A long-distance search would be useless, given the size and population of the city, and by the same token, an on-site search would take far too long without some other criteria to help narrow it down. The Atlantean archives contained little that might provide such an answer.

So instead, Lady Istar had spent the last two nights poring over information plucked off this “Internet” that the modern people had created. Despite the general disorder, the rather slow rate of data exchange, and those profoundly irritating little banners and captions that kept popping up over, around, and beneath the items she was interested in, the network was proving very helpful. She didn’t have a workable plan for finding the Nereid just yet, but she was getting there. She just had to keep searching—and keep her work secret. The other Lords did not know of the Nereid’s existence yet, and would not know for some time, until Janus and Jenna decided to risk revealing the existence and involvement of the Senshi. Anyone who discovered her working like this would wonder what she was doing and ask questions that might be... inconvenient.

With that in mind, Laraea switched off the three screens of information, plunging the Celestial Hall back into that silent darkness. She did not bother to summon up a light spell; it might have drawn attention, and her memory and her enhanced mental senses were all the illumination she required to find her way out of this place. In short order, the Lady emerged in one of the more commonly-traveled corridors of the city. As soon as she stepped in, the crystalline bands set into the floor, walls, and ceiling began to glow softly blue, a light that both preceded and followed her as she turned left and headed towards her daily duties. For all intents and purposes, she looked freshly risen from a night’s rest, rather than like a woman who had not slept in almost three days.

Sometimes being not entirely human had its advantages.

 

# 

The last three days had not been very enjoyable ones for Makoto. She, Luna, Ami, and Hotaru had spent the better part of an hour each night trying to find a way to establish direct contact with the Aegis, but for an unintelligent device, the Weapon was proving to possess a stubborn streak to match Makoto at her most intransigent. It continued to ignore Luna’s best efforts at telepathic contact, and the Mercury Computer had yet to provide an answer as to why the Weapon remained so doggedly silent.

Makoto hadn’t been keen on the idea to start with, and when she saw and sensed Luna on the verge of unconsciousness each night because of the mental strain, a little more of her self-restraint fractured off and fell away. The leftover frustration and worry was making it hard for Makoto to get to sleep at night—this despite the weariness she was still feeling even after an entirely normal day—and her restlessness carried over into the days. It took most of each day for the foul temper to fade, only for it to build up again with every new session. She’d woken up positively cranky this morning, and felt certain that she would have snapped at Ami or Calypso if they hadn’t already left for the hospital.

Then there was the matter of her tree. When Makoto first planted the silver acorn, she’d been concerned that it might somehow lead to the birth of a new dryad. Ami had attempted to soothe her friend’s worries by reminding her that trees took decades to grow to full size, only to have her assurances dashed by the strange tree’s rate of development. Forced to take a new stance by the rapid growth, Ami kept pressing for Makoto to agree to plant it somewhere, and after last Friday’s meeting at Hikawa, Makoto had gone to bed wearily admitting to herself that she was going to have to take a chance and move the tree before it started to suffer from its confinement or began to damage her home.

Naturally, the tree had stopped growing that same night. Makoto knew as soon as she looked at it Saturday morning that something was different, and a quick check with the Mercury Computer had allowed Ami to confirm that the rate of growth had dropped to zero. At least in the vertical sense. The tree was still extending its branches, putting out new leaves, and causing Makoto’s other plants to grow to ever-more-gigantic proportions, but it hadn’t gained any extra height of its own.

It was probably the only plant in the city of which that could be said. According to Ami, the destruction of the last mana nexus had dumped a sizable amount of free earth-energy into the environment, and the plants and trees of Tokyo had soaked that up as easily as water. The resulting universal growth spurt had the experts baffled, and the employees of several municipal departments were on the ropes as they tried to keep pace with the frenzied Spring.

Makoto sympathized, although she personally felt that the question of what to do with a tree hovering on the verge of sentience was a more difficult one than the challenge of trimming back a few lawns and pruning some inconvenient leaves.

“What are you doing?” Makoto wondered aloud as she brushed her fingers against the tree. Her touch caused the blossom-laden vines that had grown up around the trunk to shift in a decidedly un-plantlike manner, and the leaves curled towards Makoto as a wave of sensations swelled up in her mind.

*...warm-light drink-food good-happy self-self small-selves growing with life soft-warm touch-presence? Animal skin-flesh sharp-hot energy life-death-danger safe gentle-strong friend Makoto Makoto Makoto Makoto...*

Standing there with her eyes closed, Makoto smiled as the sapling acknowledged her presence. It wasn’t really speaking to her; the whisper-quiet words were just her mind applying familiar labels to the half-formed impressions she could sense in the tree. Half a thought was a whole half more than any of her other plants had ever shown, but it wasn’t enough for the tree to comprehend her question, let alone answer it. It simply continued to give off an aura of calm contentment, its reaction to Makoto coming across as an endless repetition of her name, in the singsong manner of a happy child.

“I wish you could really understand me,” she said, sighing. “Then maybe I could figure out what I’m supposed to do next.”

There was no response, which was probably just as well. Makoto knelt next to the pot and busied herself checking through the thick growth about the trunk and the roots for any signs of sickness, quietly pushing aside the litany of vegetative bliss as she worked. There really wasn’t much need for this; the tree and its partner plants had all been ridiculously healthy before the mana nexus went up, and they were more so now. Even the soil in the pots seemed improved, richer in color and in scent than Makoto recalled it, although she wasn’t sure if that was because of the aftereffects of the nexus or because of her one-time energy-dose from the Aegis. Still, even if her attention was not required, it made her feel better to at least go through the motions. The tree certainly seemed to appreciate it.

After she had given the now ever-thirsty plants their third drink of the day and put the watering can away, Makoto moved into the kitchen to start working on supper. The cupboards and the fridge were looking uncomfortably bare, but with the week-long beach trip just ahead, Makoto wasn’t too worried. Taking stock of what was left, she shrugged and decided to mix up a soup and a salad. That would take care of most of the perishables, and...

Makoto frowned as she set everything down on the counter. There was something else that she’d better take care of if she was going to be out of town. She got out a pot, filled it with water and set it on the stove, then went for the phone. She dialed a number she knew by heart and came back with the receiver held between head and shoulder as she went about her cooking.

“Kino residence,” a young boy’s voice said after the third ring.

“Hello, Matsuzai.”

“Mako-chan! Hi! How have you been?”

“I’ve been okay,” Makoto replied, fudging the truth a little for her cousin. “Is Uncle Kodachi there?”

“No, Dad’s out. Mom’s at work, too.”

“Okay, then, can you give them a message for me?”

“That depends. What’s in it for me?” Makoto could hear the impudent grin over the phone.

“Nothing,” she replied evenly, bringing her knife down on the cutting board with a thunk, “but there’s definitely a pounding in it for you if you *don’t* take the message.”

“Bully,” the young boy muttered.

“I heard that, punk.”

“All right, all right. What’s the message?”

“I’m going out of town with some friends this Friday, and I don’t expect to be back until next Wednesday. Do you have a pencil and paper there? I’ll give you the number.”

“Hang on.” Makoto did that, sliding the board-full of diced celery and carrot into the pot and then getting started on the chicken. “Back,” Matsuzai said abruptly. “What is it?”

Makoto glanced at her collection of messages and numbers, hanging pinned on the wall next to the phone, and read the number Ami had left there a few days ago. Matsuzai repeated it under his breath as he wrote.

“Got it,” he said. “Did you need someone to stop by and water your plants while you’re gone? Or get your mail?”

“No, that’s all right. I’ve already got someone to take care of all of that.” She and Ami were still discussing whether it would be a better idea to have Hotaru open up a permanent Dimension Door between the apartment and some closet in the beach house, or to ask her to open temporary ones each day. If it came right down to it, teleportation was always a viable alternative.

“So Matsu,” Makoto said, “how are things with you? I remember hearing something about how you weren’t going to be allowed to play soccer anymore if you didn’t pull your marks up.”

“Ah, that was just Dad talking. You know he’d never pull me off the team. Besides, I did fine.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve heard that one before.”

“No, really,” the boy replied defensively. “I did.”

“If you say so, Matsu. What else?”

“Well, Yanagi is in another one of her phases right now—something to do with an idol singer I’d never heard of until she fell in love with him and started wearing this ridiculous rainbow-colored make-up.” Matsuzai sighed. “I’d almost be glad to go back to school right now to get away from her, except that since I start senior high this year, I’ll have to be around Sis and her friends even more often than usual.”

“Poor Matsu,” Makoto said sympathetically. Sort of.

“Yeah, poor me. Oh, I ran into Nemoto-san at the rec center last week. He says hi.”

“Shinozaki?” Makoto said. “How is he, Matsu? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s about the same as always,” her cousin answered. “He was getting in a little practice, just to keep in shape for the school soccer season, and he gave me some advice for when I try out for the team. He asked about you a few times, too. You should call him or something. You’re probably the only girl he knows that won’t go all mushy space cadet on him as soon as he tries to talk to you.”

That made Makoto blink, set down the knife, and put her hand to the phone. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know?” the younger Kino said in surprise.

“Obviously, Matsuzai. Now explain.”

“It started happening a few months after you moved out,” Matsuzai replied. “Nemoto-san was in the hospital for a week or so, and word went around that he got hurt protecting a girl from some freak with a knife.”

On the other end of the line, Makoto’s hands clenched. *The lion.*

“The whole thing gave him one heck of a reputation,” Matsuzai continued, not noticing the creak as Makoto’s grip on the phone tightened, “and the girls have been sighing over him ever since. The dashing knight and the damsel in distress, and all that. The fact that nobody’s ever *seen* this mystery girl only seems to make them believe the story that much more.”

“How do *you* know all this?” Makoto managed to ask.

“You’re forgetting who I live with,” Matsuzai said wryly. “When she’s not going gaga over her latest pop-star crush, Sis is one of Nemoto-san’s biggest admirers. You wouldn’t believe how smug she can be around her friends about having known him for so long.”

It took an effort for Makoto to hold back a laugh at that. Yanagi had known *of* Shinozaki; she was only a few months older than Makoto, and the cousins had lived close enough as children to run into each other fairly often. But the games the younger Makoto and Shinozaki had played with their friends tended to involve a lot of running, jumping, climbing, and falling down into the grass or dirt. Yanagi—as fashion-conscious a six year-old as ever walked the Earth—had avoided them like the plague whenever possible. Yanagi ‘knew’ Shinozaki about as well as Makoto knew Jadeite.

Makoto deliberately avoided the question of why it was so important to her to have that fact clear in her mind.

“Anyway,” Matsuzai continued, “like I said, you should give him a call. Or better yet, you could come watch the team tryouts in a couple of weeks and visit for dinner afterwards. I don’t know about Yanagi, but Mom and Dad and me would like to see you again, and there must be a whole bunch of other people around here who would, too.”

“I might do that,” Makoto said.

“And you could bring some cookies, too,” Matsuzai added brightly.

This time, Makoto did laugh. “Always thinking of your stomach, right, Matsu?”

“Hey, give me a break. I’m a growing boy.”

“Growing sideways, maybe. What were you the last time I came over? A hundred and twenty centimeters?”

“Hey!”

“Oh, that’s right. It was a hundred and ten.”

“I’m going to hang up now,” Matsuzai said after an injured silence. “You play too mean.”

“Okay. Give my love to your folks—and Yanagi, too, even if she doesn’t want to hear it.”

“I will.”

“And Matsuzai?”

“Yeah?”

“Even if you are a short, grouchy boy, you know I love you too, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” came the embarrassed reply. “Um... you take care of yourself, Mako-chan. I’ll see you around.”

“’Bye.” As the line clicked off, Makoto smiled and set the receiver down on the counter. Matsuzai was burdened with the disadvantage of having to live with a girl who possessed most of the bad qualities of the proverbial big sister but few of the good ones, and Makoto had always tried to balance that out for him. Oh, sure, she bullied him around on occasion—surrogate or natural, that was one of the things that big sisters were for—but never out of malice. Yanagi did that much too often, when she bothered to notice her brother at all.

Sometimes Makoto felt a little ashamed about not being there for her younger cousin more often, but she knew this was just the way things had to be. She’d tried living with her uncle’s family after her parents died, but Uncle Kodachi reminded her too much of her father—and Aunt Nezumi, not enough of her mother—for her to stay longer than a few weeks. They’d just been too close to her pain then, and now... now she was comfortable where she was.

But a visit would be nice.

Smiling at the thought, Makoto stirred the soup a few times and then went to put the handset back.

 

# 

A man and a woman made their way down the halls of the hospital. The man was dressed like any of the doctors that the pair passed, while the woman’s clothing was somewhat more relaxed, although still projecting a professional appearance. The slender briefcase in her right hand helped with that aspect of her look.

“...glad someone was available,” the doctor was saying in a low voice. “Especially considering how far Sapporo is from the center of things, and how busy it’s been recently...”

“If you’d called a couple of weeks ago, we might not have responded for a while yet,” the woman admitted. “But there were nine more incidents like this one on Friday—that we know of—all of them taking place at or around the same time. When your report came in, it was labeled ‘top priority’ and rushed through the system.”

“*Nine* more?” the doctor repeated. “Are they all like this?”

“The aftereffects seem to vary from person to person. Four are stable —traumatized, but stable—a fifth has lost all memory of the last three months, and two more are being kept restrained and heavily sedated to stop them from hurting themselves or anyone else.”

The doctor winced. “That sounds about right. Our patient’s only marginally responsive to anyone besides her brother or another member of her family —unless someone touches her, in which case she starts screaming. She’s also woken up twice shrieking about monsters in the walls.”

“It could be worse,” the woman replied. “Number eight fell down a flight of stairs and broke his back. The ninth victim was driving at the time of his ‘attack,’ and was comatose when they pulled him out of the wreckage. It’s even odds right now as to whether or not he’ll ever wake up again.”

The doctor frowned. He was tempted to ask how, if the ninth victim was unconscious, they knew for certain he had been involved in this mysterious incident. He didn’t get the opportunity, as the two of them had just arrived at their destination.

“This is it,” the doctor said, although he suspected his guest already knew that. He reached for the doorknob, but was stopped by the woman’s hand on his wrist.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to wait outside, Fujitaka-san. What I have to say to Yamada-san involves a confidentiality agreement with another patient. I have permission to discuss it with her or any members of her family who are present, but no one else.”

Consternation flickered briefly across the doctor’s face. “Very well,” he agreed with obvious reluctance. “I’ll be down the hall, at the front desk. She’s alone right now, so don’t be surprised if she doesn’t respond to you at first. And remember what I said; don’t try to touch her.” With that, he turned and walked back the way they had come.

The woman watched him leave and then opened the door. The room beyond was comfortably lit and reasonably cheerful, except for the silence that filled it. The only occupant was a young woman sitting up in the bed with her head turned towards the window. Presumably, she was watching the mid-afternoon activity of the city beyond the glass, but her gaze appeared distant and unfocused.

“Yamada Mariko?” the woman asked. “My name is Watanabe Megumi. I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes. May I come in?”

There was no response from Mariko, unless one counted her slow blink as an answer rather than an involuntary reflex. Megumi took it as such and stepped inside, firmly closing the door behind her. Bearing in mind what the doctor had said about Mariko’s reaction to being touched, Megumi pulled one of the chairs back from the side of the bed to a safe distance before sitting down.

“I saw in the medical reports that you’ve been reluctant to talk about the events leading up to your... incapacitation,” Megumi said, setting her briefcase on a nearby table. “I want you to understand that I have no intention of asking questions you don’t want to answer.” She unlocked the briefcase and removed a tape recorder, which she set down on the table. “I’m here at the request of a friend of yours, to pass along a message, and to answer any questions you may have about it.” With that, she pressed Play.

“Her name is Mariko,” a woman said on the tape. Her voice was pleasant, but tense with rigid self-control. “Yamada Mariko. We met back in junior high... it must be eight years ago now. I was in my second year, the loudest and proudest girl in the grade, and she was this quiet little shadow of a first-year student who barely ever said a word in the halls or during lunch. For all I knew, she kept her mouth shut in class, too. I couldn’t understand how anybody could be so shy, and I didn’t want anyone to take advantage of her, so I appointed myself her new best friend.” She chuckled. “I’m positive she thought I was stalking her right at first, and it drove me insane that I could never get her to use more than a handful of words at a time, or to stop calling me ‘senpai,’ but along the way... we just clicked. I liked to talk, and she liked to listen. We went on like that for a couple of years, even after I got into senior high.” There was a sigh. “And then I met Yoshi.”

“Go on,” Megumi’s voice said.

“He was one of the ones with more charm than a store full of good-luck bracelets, a list of conquests as long as your arm, and no qualms about adding new names to that list. Getting involved with him was a mistake, but at the time, I was the only one who couldn’t see it.” The woman sighed a second time. “Anyway, after a couple of harmless weeks, Yoshi started getting more serious and insistent, and we were at a fair one night when he finally went too far for me. I told him to back off, and that’s when I saw his other face—the one that wouldn’t take no for an answer, that said things would go as far as *he* wanted, and were over when *he* decided they were. I was scared out of my wits, so I tried to slap him and run for it. Yoshi caught me about six seconds later and started calling me names in front of the little crowd we’d drawn, practically breaking my arm in the process. Out of all the people there, Mariko was the last one I expected to stand up to him and tell him to let me go.”

“She was your friend, wasn’t she, Nanako?”

“She was a five-foot-nothing slip of a junior high student,” Nanako replied. “Yoshi was two years older and twice her size. He just laughed and tried to push her out of the way, but the next thing I knew, Mariko had disappeared from in front of us, and Yoshi was shouting in pain. My quiet little kohai had the jerk in some sort of arm-lock. Mariko told me afterwards that she’d been taking self-defense courses since grade school, but at the time, it was a lot like seeing a teddy bear grow fangs, and it scared me almost as much as Yoshi had. Mariko was as calm and polite as ever, and just asked Yoshi to let me go. He did, but he wasn’t about to let some junior high girl push him around in front of everyone, so the second Mariko released Yoshi’s arm, he tried to attack her. She only had to knock him down three times before he got the message and left us alone, after which she apologized for hurting him and then walked me home.”

“She sounds like a very considerate girl.”

“Yes, she is.” There was a pause before Nanako bitterly added, “I could almost wish that wasn’t true.”

“Nanako?” Megumi’s voice said, to the sound of a squeaking chair.

“It’s... it’s m-my fault!” Nanako burst out, her prior control shattering into soft sobs. “That... thing... it would never have gotten Mari if I hadn’t... it’s my fault!”

“Nanako,” Megumi said, more firmly. “You weren’t responsible for what that creature did to you, or to your friend.”

“Yes, I was!” the crying woman shot back. “After that night with Yoshi, Mari promised she would look out for me, and when she graduated from high school, it was my idea for us to share that apartment! Don’t you get it? It’s *my fault* that she was there at all! Sh-she was there when that monster began... *changing* me... and she tried to protect me again! If she’d just run away, it wouldn’t have caught her, and she wouldn’t be hurt now and... and... damn it, Mari, why did you have to be brave? Why couldn’t you have just run away...”

Megumi had been watching closely while the tape played back, looking for a reaction from the silent woman in the bed. For quite a while, there had been none, but now she could make out a faint quiver in Mariko’s lips and eyelids.

“Senpai...”

“Mariko?” Megumi asked, stopping the tape as the recording of her voice tried to calm and comfort Nanako.

“I tried,” the young woman whispered. “I tried, but... I wasn’t strong enough...”

“Nanako knows you tried to help her, Mariko. That’s why she’s so upset right now. She doesn’t know what happened to you, and she’s afraid for you.”

Slowly, almost as if she’d forgotten how to move, Mariko turned her head to look at the other woman. “How do you know? Where did you get that tape? Nanako was... she was still...” Her eyes widened in sudden fear, and she shrank back. “You’re... you’re one of...”

“NO,” Megumi said firmly. “No, Mariko, I’m not. Look.” Very slowly, Megumi reached to the back of her neck, lifted her hair aside, and then turned in her seat so that Mariko could see the upper left portion of her neck, just at the base of the skull. She repeated the motion for the right side. “You see?”

“No.” Mariko shook her head, her hand pressed against the small scar on the back of her own neck. “No, you... you’re lying. It’s hidden, that’s all.”

“Nothing’s hidden, Mariko.” Megumi let her hair fall and looked directly at the frightened girl. “Do you recognize my face? Was I one of the people Proteus caught?”

Mariko flinched violently. “Don’t say that name!” she hissed fearfully.

“Was I one of them?” Megumi pressed. “Had you ever seen me before today?”

“I... I don’t think so... but it’s been three days since... it could have caught you...”

“It could,” Megumi admitted, “but could it have gotten me here this quickly? With Nanako and seven more people like the two of you scattered all over Tokyo for it to worry about as well? Could it have tracked down and recaptured *all* of them in just three days, with the limited resources it had, and still get me here?”

“I... I don’t...” Mariko scrunched up her face in confusion. “If you aren’t... you couldn’t have known about Nanako. You couldn’t have gotten her to talk. It still... had her when I was... it would have made sure she couldn’t say anything.”

“It doesn’t have Nanako anymore, Mariko. Or Samoru, or any of the people it was trying to infect at the hospital. They’re all free, and safe.”

“Safe?” Mariko repeated, sounding almost hopeful. “She’s... no, if... if it was about to lose control, it... would have... but then she wouldn’t have been able... but if... but...” She winced and put both hands against the sides of her head. “This doesn’t make any sense... you know... but you can’t know... but you know...”

“Mariko, calm down.”

“Go away,” Mariko whispered, shuddering. “Please, go away. I don’t want to talk about this...”

While her face remained calm, inwardly, Megumi sighed. She’d been expecting a reaction like this, but she’d hoped she might be wrong. As gently as she could, she said, “All right, Mariko. I’ll go. If you decide you want to talk to me, Doctor Fujitaka knows how to get in touch with me.” Packing up and locking her briefcase, Megumi stood and headed for the door, only to pause in the middle of opening it and turn around. “And if you decide not to change your mind, you’ll still have my best wishes for a speedy recovery, and my assurance that Nanako and the others are getting the best possible help. Good-day, Yamada-san.” Megumi bowed and left the room.

Mariko took no notice of her departure, and for quite some time after Megumi had exited, the only sound in the room was that of Mariko’s unsteady breathing. In due course, she calmed down and lowered her hands from her temples, instead pulling her knees up to her chest as she went back to looking out the window.

“I’m sorry, senpai... I’m so sorry...”

 

# 

Humans do a lot of running in their lives. The luckiest and happiest ones usually run for no reasons beyond fun and the sake of their health, while the much greater majority have a share of those, and add to them less-pleasant forms such as running blind, running off half-cocked, and getting the run-around. Entirely too many people have had to partake in that most ancient, unpleasant, and yet essential task of running for their lives, and at least as many have wound up running away from situations less threatening to life-and-limb than to other, more intangible portions of their being.

Minako had foregone merely running away in favor of outright running herself into the ground.

The plan was very straightforward. She got up early, had breakfast, then found a track somewhere and ran until noon. When hunger pangs forced the issue, she stopped for lunch, then returned to her exercises and kept at them until it was time to go home. Arriving home, she would shower, have dinner, then collapse into bed too exhausted to think or do anything except sleep until the next day, when the cycle would resume. It was a plan both simple and direct, with no needless little details to complicate matters—a classic Minako Idea (TM).

As was usually the case with Minako Ideas (TM), this one wasn’t quite working out according to spec. Oh, she was tired, but not as tired as she should have been after three and a half eight-hour days of running; those holdover Senshi traits of ever-increasing strength, speed, endurance, and recovery were making mind-numbing weariness a grail more difficult to achieve than the real thing.

*Maybe I need a new plan,* Minako said to herself as she slowed down from her latest lap, eventually coming to a stop hunched over with her hands on her knees. *Or at least a bigger track...*

“Having fun?” a female voice inquired politely, as a familiar pair of tanned and toned legs walked into Minako’s downwards field of view.

“Buckets full,” the bent-over blonde replied. She glanced up and managed a smile. “Care to join me, Elza?”

“I’ll pass,” the recently-graduated captain of the high school track team said. “I’ve got my own training regimen, and systematically running myself to the point of utter exhaustion isn’t part of it.”

“It builds character.”

“In that case, I think you’d better stop and take a break before all that built-up character develops into a full-blown multiple personality disorder. Come on.” Elza put her hands on Minako’s shoulders and guided her towards the benches.

“Only for a minute,” Minako said, promptly suggesting otherwise by dropping onto the seat and leaning back against the chain-link fence behind it as if she never intended to get up. “Just until I catch my breath.”

“Gotcha.” Elza took a seat next to Minako and gave her a good amount of time to recover before she spoke again. “So, are you going to give me an explanation as to why you’re wearing yourself out, risking injury through exhaustion, and just generally wrecking your chances on the track this season? Or am I going to have to pinch it out of you?”

Minako rolled her head around to gaze steadily at her former captain. “I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to do that anymore, Grey-san.”

“I might have to make an exception in this case. I’m not about to sit around twiddling my thumbs when something is messing with a member of my team. Particularly not the captain-elect for the upcoming season.”

“You’re barking at the wrong dog, Elza,” Minako said, her expression hidden by her hair as she shook her head. “I’m just doing my best to get in shape. I’ve got a big pair of shoes to fill, and I know I’m really not all that hot a runner.”

“Don’t try to kid a kidder, kiddo,” Elza replied. “For one thing, my feet aren’t that large, and for another, all that *this* kind of running is going to help you do is hurt yourself. Besides, I knew perfectly well you weren’t going to win any medals in the sprints when I gave Coach Ito your name. That isn’t why I wanted you to take over.” She brought one of her feet up onto the bench and hooked her hands around her knee. “Give me an honest answer here, Minako; if I were to name any girl from our team, just off the top of my head, she’d probably be better than you in at least one event, right?”

“Maybe not in the javelin throw,” Minako said after scratching the back of her head in a moment of reflection. “We didn’t really have any serious throwers last year... but otherwise, yeah, I suppose you’re right. Keika, Yui, and Hikari are almost as fast as you, and Yuriko and Ichiko both jump like they’re half rabbit or something.”

“A few of the girls have seniority, too, seeing as how you didn’t join the team until your second year—and we both know a lot of them are more devoted to their sports than you are.”

Minako shrugged. “I told you from the start that volleyball was more my game. If there had been a spot on the school squad last year, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“I know.” Elza smiled. “In a way, that’s one of the reasons I picked you to replace me. You’re familiar with all kinds of sports, so you know exactly what it is the other girls need in order to give their best to the team, but you’re not so focused on any one event that your performance in the others suffers—and even if each of the other girls can beat you in *her* best event, you can nail all of them in everything else. Beyond that, you get along with everyone well enough that they’ll listen to you without making a production out of it; and you’re as tough as anybody I’ve ever known. You’ll make a hell of a captain, but if you go and burn yourself out like this” —Elza gestured at the track—”Coach won’t have any choice but to cut you, and that’ll hurt the team’s chances this year. I don’t want that to happen. Do you?”

“No,” Minako admitted.

“Then tell me what it is that’s bothering you,” Elza pressed. “I know it’s something... or maybe *someone?*” The question did not get an answer, but after looking closely at Minako’s expression, Elza nodded. “Someone, then. And I’d guess that whoever it is, they’re close enough to you that talking about this with Usagi or the others would be awkward as all hell, or you’d have done it already.”

“Something like that.” Minako sighed and surrendered to the inevitable. “Have you ever had a really, really good friend, Elza? Someone you trust with anything, any secret, any problem? Somebody who’s always there for you and looking out for you the best he can? And then one day, it just... gets complicated?”

Elza smiled wistfully. “Yeah,” she said quietly, her eyes looking up into the sky and back in time. “Yeah, I know how that is.” She glanced over at Minako. “Nice?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sweet? Smart?”

“Kind of a goofball, actually... but yeah, he can be really sweet.”

“Cute too, I suppose.”

“Gorgeous,” the blonde replied mournfully.

“Available?”

“Yes. No. Arrgh.” Minako briefly beat at the sides of her head. “What I mean to say is, yes, he’s single, but no, he’s not available. He’s been in love with another girl since before I ever met him—and I mean *totally* in love. They *belong* together, and I never gave it a second thought... but now...”

Elza clucked her tongue. “That’s quite a mess you’ve managed to get yourself into. It reads like something out of a second-rate romance manga.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“I suppose it could be worse, though. At least ‘the other woman’ isn’t a friend too, right?” When this failed to draw some kind of rejoinder, Elza looked over sharply at Minako’s blushing face. “You’re not serious.”

Minako’s reply was to bow her head, poke her fingers together, and mumble something vaguely affirmative.

“Damn, girl,” Elza said with a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Is your taste in men always this complicated?”

“Just about.”

Elza could only shake her head. “Well, that would certainly explain a few things.”

“Eh?” Minako asked, looking up. “Such as?”

“Oh, for starters, the question of why a pretty girl like you with such a fixation on love always seemed to be without a date. For a while there, I used to wonder if you only complained about it so much to hide a relationship with Rei. I guess I overlooked the possibility that you just had really twisted luck.” She shook her head again, dismissing the line of thought. “But anyway... have you given any thought to what you’re going to do about this situation of yours?”

“As little as possible.”

“Then you’d better start,” Elza said firmly. “This is the sort of thing that’s only going to get worse the longer you try to ignore it.”

Minako winced at the truth of this observation. Elza didn’t know that this was her fourth day straight of running; she’d come to the rec center on Saturday, then switched to the Juuban field and the university track the next two days to avoid tipping off her former captain, who had taken a job at the center to help pay for her first year at college. While there was just enough room for Minako to dare to hope that her daytime absence had gone unremarked by the other girls, she’d been so tired at night that she’d slept through yesterday’s training session, and quite possibly missed her turn in guard duty over Usagi as well. Minako had no idea what excuses Artemis might have made to cover for her, but she knew that her friends probably hadn’t bought it; Artemis wasn’t the greatest liar in the world to begin with, and the girls knew him—and her—too well to be fooled by any hastily thought-up story.

Questionable planning, over-the-top execution, futility of effort, utter lack of secrecy, and disastrous consequences; the performance scorecard for the latest Minako Idea (TM) was quickly filling up with high nines in all the categories.

“Have you talked with your friend?” Elza continued. “Does he know how you feel?”

“Yeah,” Minako sighed, hanging her head. “He does.”

“What about your other friend? Does she know about it?”

“No.”

“Then you should tell her.”

“WHAT?!” Minako blurted out, her head snapping up to stare at Elza in shock.

“This is going to come out sooner or later, Minako, and frankly, you’re not very good at hiding things.” She glanced pointedly at the track. “You can *keep* a secret well enough, but hiding the fact that you *have* the secret is just beyond you. You owe it to your friend to at least be honest with her, and not let her find out about this secondhand—and the longer you wait to tell her, the worse it’ll be when you finally do. Trust me on that.”

Even in her current state, Minako felt her love sense react to the faintly melancholy tone of Elza’s voice. To her, those few words spoke of friendship, affection, and attraction, all tied up together and abruptly severed, leaving behind a dull ache of loss and regret.

“The voice of experience, Elza?”

“I guess,” the older girl replied with a sad-eyed smile. “Bad experience, but... you know what they say.” She paused, and then winced as she realized what she’d just done. It was much too late to retract the remark, however, as Minako had already seized the cue.

“’It is better to have loved than lost, but it is a far, far better thing to do than...’” Minako trailed off, frowning as even *she* realized that this wasn’t how the line was supposed to go. “Darn it. ‘It is better to have loved the lost, and...’ no, that’s not it, either. ‘It is better to have loved AND lost...’ no, that just sounds bad right off the top.”

Elza was shaking her head. “One of these days you’re going to get a quote right, and it’s going to mark the end of the world.”

“Critic.”

Elza patted her on the shoulder, then glanced at her watch. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work, Minako. As much good as I’m sure I could do like this, they don’t pay me to sit around playing therapist.” She stood, looking down at Minako. “Are you going to think about what I said?”

“No. Because you were right—except for the bit about the quotes.” Minako stood up as well, groaning and creaking a great deal more than Elza had. “I think I’m going to have to stagger home and die for a little while, but I’ll be okay.”

“No more running?”

“No more running. Except for team practices and such. And... I’ll try to talk with my friend. I don’t know *what* I’m going to say... but I’ll think of something.”

Grinning, Elza put an arm around Minako’s shoulders. “*That* sounds more like the girl I choose as captain. Now come on,” she added, letting go and playfully smacking Minako’s upper arm. “Let’s get you to the showers before you start killing birds with that stink.”

“Thanks,” Minako said dryly. As they walked towards the building together, she added, “There’s just one other thing.”

“And that is?”

“*Me and Rei?*”

“It was just speculation,” Elza replied with a slight shrug.

“Based on *what?*”

 

# 

It was a scrapyard, the resting place of hundreds of vehicles whose time had come and gone. Everything from bicycles and small motor-scooters up to school buses was represented among the population of the steel cemetery, presided over by the requisite crane and hydraulic crusher, surely the angels of death for any mechanical creation.

If there was any particular symbolism in that, Proteus was in no shape to recognize it. The choice of the scrapyard as a hiding spot had been one of pure convenience, simply because this place happened to be close to the wide sewer pipe from which the weary entity had dragged itself a few days prior. Even so, that choice had worked in Proteus’s favor, as it could control the yard’s machines just as easily as it could the minds of the human employees. More, in fact, since the machines didn’t have wills of their own to complicate matters.

Proteus was still smarting from the injuries it had been dealt five days ago, for it had discovered a disturbing side-effect to the loss of Nanako, Samoru, and the other seven subjects. The severance of their minds from its own awareness had lessened Proteus in a way it had never anticipated, wiping out its memory of their memories. Where there had once been a complete accounting of every event in their waking lives, there were now only scattered fragments, and none of those *feeling* quite the same as before. Proteus had been able to perceive its captives’ memories as its own, but now what little it remembered of those people came through as if it had been an outside observer.

The implications of this were frightening. Proteus had attained sentience by capturing and linking with sentient minds, and now it appeared that the loss of those minds could return it to its original state of sub-consciousness—the state of the control program that it knew still lurked somewhere in its own physical and mental makeup. That notion was utterly unacceptable, but it also seemed inescapable.

If it was true that Proteus’s continued awareness relied upon maintaining possession of the minds of its captive humans, then those minds must be kept secure at all costs. The only ways Proteus knew to achieve that was either to stop using the humans in its tests, which would impair the process of its growth, or to purge their minds. It could not do that before an exercise without rendering a hybrid useless for testing purposes, and it could not execute a purge quickly enough to overcome whatever it was that the Senshi had done to sever Nanako and Samoru. If it could not keep the minds secure, then it could not send them, but if it did not send them, it could not learn...

The endless playback of that logic loop was giving Proteus a headache. It found some reassurance in the addition of four new minds to its collection, and in the possibilities its control of machinery offered, particularly from the heart of a junkyard just outside one of the more industrialized parts of the city. Factories and warehouses full of minds and machines were within easy reach. Rats could be there within hours, and infiltration well underway in a few days.

The more Proteus went over that idea, the more it began to shrug off its depression and take real interest. It could produce many kinds of flesh, but repeated conflicts had shown it that flesh alone was no match for the Senshi, or even the more mundane capabilities of well-prepared humans. Humans had reached similar conclusions long ago, and begun to produce tools to do what they could not. Proteus knew that it lacked the means to produce inorganic materials as part of its creations, but it had not discarded the ability to incorporate foreign objects into itself and reconfigure them to new purposes. And it was now surrounded by such foreign objects.

The image of a redesigned test subject appeared in Proteus’s mind. Plates and rods of metal replaced synthesized chitin and bone in the external armor, and a network of wires was added to the layer of biomatter between the steel shell and the human flesh. Several of the specialized organs that the units used as energy weapons were spaced throughout the body, their makeup altered to produce a smaller and steadier flow of power rather than quick, high-intensity bursts, and a number of changes were made in the planned augmentation of the human core of the projected unit.

A second unit blueprint was being drawn up at the same time. This one had no human element, and was instead a straightforward blend of inorganic components and biomatter constructs. Synthetic flesh and muscle wrapped around metal bones, and additional manufactured organs were included into the frame, the largest of them positioned within the lump which was all in the way of a head that Proteus deemed necessary for this design. Even by the standards of the mismatched hybrids, this new form was ugly and inelegant, a squat, bulky, and unmistakably artificial thing that would never be confused with a human.

On the other hand, such devices would make excellent support for future hybrid tests. Something for the Senshi to shoot at, while a damaged or disabled hybrid slipped away, to be redesigned and reused. By removing the time-consuming re-engineering necessary for a human element, the time necessary to produce a single unit would be greatly decreased. Mechanical components could be assembled separately while the biomatter sections grew, and installed or removed as required. And if each machine-unit was controlled by a removable ‘brain,’ Proteus could have multiple records of a test, without the need for establishing large networks.

Having convinced itself, Proteus sent out new commands to its remaining servants. One of the seven containment pods quivered and burbled as the next mutation process began, but the other six split open, releasing a half-dozen slime-covered, slack-faced men who exited Proteus’s makeshift shelter and began to move around the yard in search of specific materials. The entity also sent out rats, some to help in the search, others to keep watch, and a few to scout out the surrounding area and get an idea of any potential resources it held.

*Why didn’t I think of this before?*

 

# 

The house was quiet. Considering how large the building was and how few people actually lived there, such stillness was hardly unusual, and Hotaru was quite used to it. After enduring the long silence and dark, eerie atmosphere of her father’s house for all those years, these moments of quiet in Michiru’s bright, warm home were refreshingly comfortable for Hotaru. Instead of being driven to do things to fill up the silence and make it go away, she was able to take advantage of it instead, allowing herself to relax and do things she enjoyed simply for the sake of that enjoyment. In the case of today’s period of quiet, she had decided she needed to be teeny.

“Teeny” was a word describing the wide range of emotions that, every so often, made Hotaru discard her little-girl form for a few hours. Sometimes it meant she was just frustrated with being short, and at other times, it meant she was tired of being cute and sweet. Today, teeny meant that Hotaru was in the mood to sit on her bed and giggle, cry, and sigh as she read the novel Makoto had loaned to her the week before. Like most of the volumes in Makoto’s small personal library, this one was an epic romance, full of high adventure and desperate fighting, heart-wrenching separations and fairy-tale reunions.

A couple of scenes were also inappropriate for a little girl’s eyes, which was why Hotaru was only reading now that Haruka had gone out for an afternoon drive. Haruka didn’t approve of her foster-daughter even looking at that sort of thing, a tendency which the foster-daughter personally found a bit odd. No matter how old her body looked, she had access to a fifteen year-old’s perspective of the world; she knew perfectly well what these words were talking about, just as she knew went on in that room down the hall. And yet any time Hotaru even hinted at this, Haruka went into super-protective mode and changed the subject.

*Maybe that’s part of the problem,* Hotaru thought, pausing in her reading. *Haruka even gets embarrassed when Michiru talks about...*

Thump.

*Huh?* Hotaru blinked and looked up at the door, then slid off her bed and moved to investigate, leaving the book behind. That muffled sound had been of something hitting the floor, and it had come from the direction of Michiru’s studio—which was an impossibility, because Hotaru knew perfectly well that nothing ever fell over in that room.

Hotaru stuck her head out into the hall in time to see Michiru closing the studio door. Her back was turned and her face was hidden behind the screen of her hair, but there was no hiding the nervous tension that filled her body. Her left hand shook faintly as she removed it from the doorknob, and when Michiru pressed both hand and forehead against the smooth wood a moment later, Hotaru caught a glimpse of her wan and weary expression.

“Michiru?”

Gasping, the older girl spun around where she stood, her eyes reflecting a momentary fright before recognition and relief settled in.

“Hotaru,” she said, forcing a laugh to expel some of the stress. “You startled me.”

“Are you okay?” Hotaru asked as she came out into the hall.

“I’m fine. I just thought you’d gone with Haruka.”

“That’s not what I meant. I heard something fall in there.”

“Oh.” A shadow passed across Michiru’s face as she glanced at the studio door. “That was... one of my paintings, Hotaru. It... I...” Michiru paused, and then, slowly, she described how she had woken up this morning with a desire to go back to her art. She hadn’t touched the brush for the last five days, ever since that encounter with the Deep Ones; it had only been yesterday that she’d felt sufficiently recovered to resume playing her violin, but that had gone well enough to convince Michiru to try her hand at painting again. Her voice trailed off as she said this, and she cast another haunted look towards the studio.

“I felt fine while I was painting it, but when I finished and took a good look at it... everything was just so wrong, I... I couldn’t stand to look at it.”

“And you knocked it over?” Hotaru asked, astonished. She knew of several paintings that Michiru had done and disliked—some of them considerably so— but she had never heard of her physically lashing out at one of them.

“I’ve painted dark scenes before,” Michiru said quietly. “They used to come to me as regular as the tides when I was dreaming about the Silence, or after my parents died.” She paused. “It seems strange to say it, but I don’t know which of those was worse. The Silence was so hideous and huge that the small part of it I could see in my dreams seemed... almost trivial. It didn’t *care* about us as individuals, and it would have been over so quickly... What happened to my parents was just the opposite. It was something that most of the world didn’t even notice, but it cut me, inside, deep and cold, and it went on hurting and hurting...”

“Michiru, stop it.” Hotaru was surprised how coolly the words came out. What Michiru was saying was scaring her, and *how* she was saying it was scaring her even more.

Michiru was aware of the world around her in ways the other Senshi—even Haruka—could not always understand, and she had the proverbial artist’s sensitivity in spades. When something touched her, it did so deeply, whether good or bad: the faint smile that nearly always graced her lips grew out of the pure joy Michiru took from life and living, and of the love she had for everything and everyone that shared her world; by the same token, a single tear sprang from a well of sorrow so deep most people would have drowned in it. The shifting serenity that was her typical expression was a mask, a prism through which she could reflect upon her joys, and a shield against the things that frightened her.

In anyone else, the fear and uncertainty Hotaru was hearing in Michiru’s voice would have been a normal, healthy reaction to the events of a few days ago. But since it was Michiru, that haunted air and those mild quavers of voice screamed at the little Senshi of borderline hysteria. And all she could come up with in response to the terror of the woman she loved as her mother was a blunt request—a virtual order—to stop?

It worked. Almost like a verbal slap, Hotaru’s abrupt tone seemed to startle Michiru out of her unsteady monologue and into a semblance of her normal behavior.

“I’m sorry, Hotaru. I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just...”

“It’s what?” Hotaru asked, reaching out to take Michiru’s hands in her own. She quietly wished that Haruka was here to do this; she understood Michiru better, could tell what was wrong without asking, and would know what to do. Hotaru had to ask to be sure what was wrong, and she had no way to be certain if asking wasn’t making things worse.

“It’s what I can feel from Neptune,” Michiru said. “From the *others.* For Neptune to be so afraid of the Deep Ones, they must have hurt so many of... of us... I can only remember Larissa’s life, and she was happy and safe, but there’s so much pain and terror from the others... it’s like having the whole Silence pointed right at ME, except worse... because this already happened.” Her voice tiny and frightened, she added, “And I couldn’t stop it.”

“Because you weren’t there,” Hotaru replied firmly. “You weren’t there when it happened, Michiru.”

“Part of me was, Hotaru. I can’t see or remember what happened, but I can feel what was left... weak... hurting... alone... so afraid...”

Those words stirred unpleasant memories in Hotaru’s mind, images that flickered past her mind’s eye as she relived a short lifetime’s worth of fear and sadness. She saw again the fallout of the things that Mistress Nine had done during her brief periods of activity, random events of cruelty administered with ruthless precision to destroy a young girl’s life. Thanks to memories stolen from the evil creature during their final, fatal fusion in the moment of Saturn’s true awakening, Hotaru also saw some of those events from Mistress Nine’s perspective, and understood why she had been made to suffer. Partly for pure sadistic pleasure, but also because the daimon wanted to keep her afraid, to make her feel weak and alone. To keep her under control. And for another reason Mistress Nine had never wanted to admit to.

Fear. Fear of Saturn. Fear of *her.*

*The daimons are the most powerful enemies the Senshi have ever faced, and yet they’re afraid of me. They’re made of the raw force of chaos—of Chaos— the same energy that created youma and corrupted the Black Moon Family, Nehelenia, and Galaxia. And they’re afraid of me, because I can take that power and bring it down to dust as easily as I would any other.* Hotaru looked wonderingly at Michiru. *The Deep Ones dwell in the ocean, one of the places where Neptune would be at her most powerful; could they be afraid of that power? Could that be why they singled out so many of its Senshi? To make all of them afraid, and stop them from realizing that the monsters that terrified them so much were just as frightened of them?*

Hotaru wasn’t sure. She *wanted* to say that was the reason, wanted to say it out loud to reassure Michiru, but she didn’t have any proof beyond a feeling. She trusted her feelings, but she wanted to give Michiru something more solid than that.

Then too, Hotaru didn’t believe that just saying, “Cheer up, because they’re scared of you, too,” was going to fix this. So she did the best she could, and gave Michiru a hug.

“You’re afraid,” Hotaru said, “but you’re not weak. You’ve fought fear before, Michiru, and you’ve beaten it. I’ve seen you do it. You can do it again. And as for being alone...”

“You can’t protect me,” Michiru said. She had responded to the embrace, but not as much as Hotaru had hoped, and the fear that held her back was in her words again. “I know what you’re going to say, Hotaru-chan, and I know you mean it with all your heart, but not even you can promise to protect me every moment of every day. And even if you could, we already have to guard Usagi; SHE comes first.”

“I know,” Hotaru answered. “But that wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“It... wasn’t?” Michiru asked in confusion. In spite of the circumstances, Hotaru smiled. It was rare that she managed to do that to Michiru.

“Okay, it wasn’t the *only* thing I was going to say.” Hotaru backed up until her hands were loosely holding Michiru’s. “I was also going to say that even when you think you’re alone, you’re never alone. I’m living proof. Look at me, Michiru. I’m Tomoe Hotaru, the daughter of Souichi and Keiko.” From her teenaged form, she shrank, pulling Michiru’s arms down slightly. In her six year-old’s voice, she said, “I’m also Tomoe Hotaru, the daughter of Kaioh Michiru, Tennou Haruka, and Meiou Setsuna. And Tsukino Usagi, I suppose.” Hotaru changed again, growing into a taller and more mature version of herself than her teenaged form, a young woman who wore a deep purple dress of an ancient style, and whose eyes reflected a sadness similar to and yet different from the one that had haunted the elder Hotaru’s. “And I’m Pandora de Umbra.” She changed yet again, summoning her fuku. “I’m always Sailor Saturn, Soldier of Destruction and Rebirth. And that means, in some small way, I’m all the other women who have ever shared this power. Just as you are connected to all the women who have ever shared your power, Neptune.”

“I know that,” Michiru began.

“And I know that you know,” Saturn replied, another touch of humor amidst the seriousness. “But you don’t seem to realize the full extent of what that means. Think, Neptune. You didn’t just inherit the pain and fear and sorrow of all those women. You share in their happiness, their courage, and their joys as well. *They* will always be with you, no matter what, and so will their power. I know that it wasn’t enough to defeat the Deep Ones in the past, but that was the past. Stop and think about it. When was the last time a Senshi of Neptune had to face the Deep Ones?”

“I don’t know. Luna and Ami didn’t say... and I didn’t really want to ask.”

“It can’t have been less than twenty-five centuries, though, can it? The Senshi have served the Moon Kingdom since the Fall of Atlantis, and the Moon Kingdom rarely had dealings with Earth. And Earth is the only planet where the Deep Ones reside, right?”

“That seemed to be what Luna and Ami were saying,” Michiru agreed.

“Now think about what happened when we went back in time,” Saturn continued. “Remember the fighting in the hall. We’re all supposed to get stronger as we grow older, and *their* Venus—Allys?—was somewhere in her thirties, but *our* Venus was more powerful than that at sixteen. And that was five thousand years ago.”

Saturn didn’t try to get into the math involved in this line of reasoning. How in the world did you measure the strength of something like a Crescent Beam, let alone compare two of them and *then* try to extrapolate relative figures? Ami might be able to do these kinds of calculations, but Saturn knew her limits.

Luckily, she could see that Michiru understood what she had been getting at. The outright fear on the older girl’s face had faded to apprehension, which was now warring with puzzlement and the faintest glimmer of hope.

“You were right when you said I can’t promise to keep you safe,” Saturn admitted, sliding her hands up to Michiru’s shoulders. “I’ll try my best not to let you get hurt, and so will the others, but even if we can’t keep you away from the Deep Ones, you’ll still have your own strength. Trust in it, Neptune. Trust it like you always have, and it will give you the power to protect yourself.” She smiled again. “And trust that if you are taken from us, we won’t stop kicking tentacled ass until we get you back.”

“Language, Hotaru,” Michiru chided, automatically going into Mom Mode.

Saturn promptly released Michiru’s arms to tuck her hands behind her back and bow her head. “Sorry.”

That finally got the reaction she wanted; Michiru let out an exasperated chuckle, then put her hands to Saturn’s chin and raised her face. Smiling, she asked, “What am I going to do with you?” in tones of resignation.

“Grow grey hairs?”

“If you absorb much more of Haruka’s sense of humor, I’ve no doubt that I will. Although,” Michiru added with a glance at Saturn’s forehead, “if you’ll pardon the pun, you seem to have a head start on me in that respect.”

The younger Senshi blinked and tried to look where Michiru was looking. Catching a glimpse of the inexorable, irrepressible white lock, she groaned.

“I am getting *very* tired of this thing,” Saturn muttered, taking hold of the troublesome hairs with one hand and sending a pulse of energy up to the roots, restoring the normal dark hue. “There,” she said, ruffling her hair. “All better.” She looked at Michiru’s face then, and grinned. “And now that *I’m* beautiful again, it’s your turn!”

“Wh-aa!” Michiru blurted out, as she was pulled down the hall towards her room. Through the walls, she could hear the noise of the bath faucet suddenly cranked up to full, and half laughing, half serious, she asked, “What are you doing, Hotaru?”

“You look awful,” Saturn said bluntly as she dragged Michiru into the master bedroom. “Your face is all grey, your eyes are puffy, and even your hair doesn’t look right. Here, I’ll show you.” She stopped them in front of the vanity mirror and allowed Michiru several seconds to take a look at her reflection. “You’ve been neglecting yourself, Michiru, and you’re starting to look all gross and slimy.”

“I am N-aack!” Michiru started to protest, only to be cut off with another bizarre sound as she was yanked forward once again. No matter how small Saturn looked, she was still a Senshi, and thus a heck of a lot stronger than any normal girl her size.

“So,” Saturn continued, reaching out with one booted foot to nudge the bathroom door fully open, “as a considerate friend and a dutiful daughter, I’m going to make a small return on all the baths you gave me.” Grinning cheerfully—or maniacally—she hauled Michiru into the bathroom, using a pulse of purplish force to shut the door behind them. The same light winked around the edges of the door for an instant after it had closed. “After all, the very best way I can help you to feel better is to arrange one of those sinfully self-indulgent baths you love so much. Now let’s see. Blue bath oil, or green?”

“Turn off the water, Hotaru. I don’t feel like having a b-” Michiru broke off suddenly as she rattled the doorknob and found it immobile. “Ara?”

“Would you rather have the pink? Or some of the bubble bath?”

“Hotaru,” Michiru said, jiggling the handle a second time, “what did you do to the door?”

“I locked it,” came the cheerful reply. “Oooo, you’ve still got some of that rose water left! Haruka loves this stuff!”

“Open the door, Hotaru.”

“I will,” Saturn said as she switched off the powerful faucet, which had already filled the tub most of the way. Michiru liked having baths; she didn’t like waiting for them. “Later,” Saturn added, sprinkling a liberal dose of the sweet-smelling rose water into the steaming tub. “Right now, I think I should give you some privacy.”

“Ho-” Saturn blinked out from the bathroom, reappearing just outside the door. “-taru!”

“Get in the tub, Michiru.” Saturn said over her shoulder.

“Open the door, Hotaru. I don’t want to have a bath right now.”

“Come on,” Saturn said in a wheedling tone. “Wouldn’t it be nice to be all clean and beautiful again after the week you’ve had? You could surprise Haruka-papa when she gets home...”

As Saturn had hoped, bringing Haruka into this forced Michiru to stop and consider her response. The past six days had been rough for her, and they had not been much less difficult for Haruka, who’d gone out of her way to be there when she was needed. She had been nothing short of wonderful, always smiling, always supportive—but maintaining that attitude while Michiru was so depressed and scared had really taken a toll.

Hotaru was right; Michiru *had* been neglecting the finer points of her appearance this week, and it *would* be nice to put a stop to that. Not just for the sake of vanity, but also for the boost it would give Haruka to see her on the road to recovery.

Bowing her head against the bathroom door in a curious reflection of her earlier posture outside the studio, Michiru asked, “Since when have you been so wise, Hotaru?”

“I’m lucky,” Saturn replied, touching the spot on the other side of the door where she could most clearly see the imprint of Michiru’s energy. “I’ve had a lot of wise mamas to show me how it’s done.” She ended the brief communion with a grin. “Now, are you going to get into the tub, or am I going to have to exercise the nasty Haruka side of my nature and teleport you in?”

“I’m still dressed, you know,” Michiru replied in amusement.

“I can fix *that,* too.”

“You wouldn’t,” came the disbelieving response.

“Not normally, no, but if Haruka-papa were in this situation, she’d do it in an instant. Don’t I have a daughter’s obligation to try and live up to the standards set by my parents?”

If Michiru had anything to say to that, Saturn missed it. She heard the faint rustle of clothing and then heard the water shift a moment later as Michiru climbed into the bath. She waited until she heard a soft, contented sigh before dispelling the seal on the door; it would take an earthquake to roust Michiru from the tub now that she was starting to enjoy herself. With a satisfied smile, Saturn turned and left the master bedroom. Halfway back to her own room, she paused and looked down the hall at the studio door.

She wanted to go in there and see this thing, this painting that had so seriously disturbed Michiru. It would be such an easy thing to do, too: one quick application of her powers would open the locked door as easily as it had the master bedroom on dozens of different occasions; another would bring the picture to her; a third would send it back, exactly where it had been before. There would be no trace, no way for anyone to know she had even been in the room—but Saturn knew that even without any physical proof, Michiru *would* know. She always knew. And while Michiru hadn’t said outright that she didn’t want anyone else to see the picture right now, Saturn could tell that she would be upset if anyone did.

The idea of her foster-mother being disappointed in her was enough to do what no lock in the universe could have accomplished. Leaving the door and whatever lay behind it untouched, the little Senshi shifted back into teen-Hotaru and returned to her room. Not really in the mood for more reading just now, she put the borrowed book away and sat down in her chair, staring out the window and thinking.

 

# 

Setsuna had come to her first meeting with her new psychiatrist armed and ready for anything. Forewarned by Mizuno Rikou to expect a session more unconventional and emotionally-taxing than the ones she had gone through during her first stay in the hospital, Setsuna had spent a good part of the last week in preparation. She’d raided the local library for books on psychiatry, which she devoured at her normal pace. She had checked with Luna, Ami, and Calypso for details on the limited mental protection the Senshi had, particularly with regards to hypnosis. She’d reviewed every aspect of her identity and the cover story surrounding it, doing her best to weed out possible hints at the truth.

“More tea?”

“No, thank you.”

Somehow, the notion of being served tea and small sugar cookies by this woman had never occurred to Setsuna. It had definitely thrown her off her game. For that matter, so did her host.

Kikukoe Yasashii was a short-haired brunette with a pleasant, relaxed demeanor and a fashion sense to match. The psychiatrist was also one of the smallest adults Setsuna had yet encountered. She *might* have been taller than ChibiUsa, but if so, the edge in height was in the shoes on her feet and the hairs on her head. Any weight advantage would have to be measured in ounces.

All in all, not exactly a person to inspire the sort of reaction Ami’s mother had demonstrated. Kikukoe-san’s workplace—a sedately decorated den in her home—fought that impression down even further.

That, Setsuna suspected, was the whole idea. Project a harmless front, lull the patient off guard... and BAM! Psychiatric nuclear assault!

Setsuna winced internally. That sounded a little too much like something Minako would have come up with. Either the tea was drugged, or she needed help more urgently than she’d thought.

Urgency didn’t seem to be a big part of Kikukoe-san’s personality. They had been sitting here for five minutes and twenty-four seconds now, and the biggest questions the woman had asked in that time were how Setsuna took her tea, had she had any trouble finding the place, and whether or not that was her *real* eye color. Setsuna answered honestly—with milk; no, she hadn’t; and yes, it was—and spent most of the rest of the time politely waiting for the woman to get on with whatever she had in mind.

Another two minutes passed before the psychiatrist glanced over the rim of her own cup and murmured, “Is there something wrong with the tea, Meiou-san?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your tea. You’ve hardly touched it.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s... just not what I was expecting.”

“Ah.” The older woman set her cup down on her desk. “Mizuno Rikou has been carrying tales, I see.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Her name is on the official request for a secondary pyschiatric evaluation, and she has certain opinions about me and my methods.”

“She *did* imply a few things,” Setsuna admitted.

“I can imagine.” Yasashii gave Setsuna a direct look. “Did you ever ask Rikou why she wanted you to come see me rather than go back to your sessions with Miyazaki-san?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”

“Two reasons. One”—and she raised a finger—“is her sense of professionalism. Rikou will always try to do what’s best for her patient, regardless of her own feelings. She may not fully agree with how I do my job, but that I do it well is enough to convince her. Of course, Miyazaki-san is also very good—which brings us to the second reason.”

“Which is...?”

“Experience. I don’t know if Miyazaki-san told you or not, but yours was the first such extensive case of amnesia he’d ever encountered.”

“He did mention that,” Setsuna said. “And you?”

“Retrograde amnesia is a particularly severe and uncommon form of mental trauma,” Yasashii replied, “but yes, I have dealt with it once before. I’ve also worked with a number of patients suffering from less extreme forms of memory loss or suppression. Although by no means my exclusive specialty, it’s become something of a field of expertise.” She paused, looking gravely across the desk at Setsuna. “Even so, my goal here isn’t to get your memories back for you, only to help you deal with not having them. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I do.” Setsuna smiled. “It’s not that you don’t want me to remember, it’s just that you’re more concerned about me attacking someone again or having another near-breakdown in the meantime. Right?”

“Words to that effect, yes,” Yasashii agreed. “Although if you *do* feel the need to hit something, I have some excellent equipment set up in the basement for that very purpose.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good.” The psychiatrist sat back in her chair. “So, Meiou-san. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing since January?”

The next forty minutes were more like what Setsuna had anticipated. She talked about life with the Tsukinos, about dealing with her early difficulties with crowds, and about her venture into the workplace. Yasashii asked what had made her choose to do certain things, such as going to live with Usagi instead of one of the other girls, or why she’d decided to go work at a retail clothing store, and Setsuna answered as honestly as she could, describing the vague sense of familiarity she’d had with Usagi from the start, and the seemingly instinctive knack she had for designing and repairing clothing.

Not once during the entire time did Setsuna find it necessary to be anything less than totally honest. This may have had something to do with how Kikukoe-san was avoiding the more stressful, almost inevitably Senshi-related topics. She did not mention the incident on New Year’s, even though Setsuna knew that the woman must have been informed about it. The subject of her ability to perceive Time did not come up, which caused Setsuna to quietly thank Lucas, Doc, the nurse Kima, and even that bumbling orderly for keeping their silence on the matter. And while Yasashii did question her about the mall, it was only to see how Setsuna felt about working there. She did not touch upon the incident there a few weeks ago, or what had come after.

As the scheduled hour of this first session began to wind down, Setsuna found that nothing particularly stressful had taken place, and she began to wonder if Kikukoe-san was holding back.

“What makes you say that?” the psychiatrist asked when Setsuna mentioned this suspicion aloud.

“Mizuno-san doesn’t strike me as someone given to exaggeration, and she described your methods as ‘the emotional equivalent of high-impact aerobics’.”

“She said that, did she?” the older woman asked, with a faintly whimsical smile.

“Word for word.”

“Well, if we assume for the moment that Rikou is correct—which I will admit she very often is—and that I am taking it easy on you—which I will *not* admit at this time—why do you think I would do something like that?”

After considering the question, Setsuna finally shook her head and simply replied, “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you think about it, then, and see if you can give me an answer next time?”

“I guess I’ll do that. When is ‘next time,’ anyway?”

“Let’s see about that.” Yasashii opened up a schedule book on the corner of her desk and flipped through several pages. “My first opening is next Tuesday afternoon; would that work for you?”

“That could be a problem,” Setsuna said. “I’m going to be out of town until well into next week.”

Yasashii looked up. “Oh?”

“Usagi-chan and the other girls have a yearly tradition of going to the beach for a week or so. We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon, and I’m not certain yet when we’re coming back.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Yasashii said with a genuine smile. “I make a point of encouraging vacations.” She turned another few pages while saying this. “All right, shall we say a week from Monday, at six?”

“That should be just fine,” Setsuna said.

“Excellent.” After making a quick note in her schedule, Kikukoe-san got up from her chair. “Well, Meiou-san, it was a very interesting first session, and I look forward to our next meeting. In the meantime, enjoy your trip.”

“I will certainly try to,” Setsuna said, standing in turn and gathering up her coat and purse. “And thank you for the tea.” She bowed, then left the room.

The psychiatrist walked over to her office window and glanced out at the street. Setsuna appeared there a moment later, and the older woman now allowed herself the envious, admiring sigh that she had suppressed when Setsuna entered the office an hour earlier. Like old habits, old fantasies died hard, and a younger Kikukoe Yasashii would have given almost anything to be that tall and have such long, lovely hair.

Shaking her head, the woman gathered up the tea set and took it out to the kitchen, then moved to a small, book-filled study where a desktop computer waited. She sat down, switched the machine on, and in due course brought up a file that included medical reports on Setsuna and the assessment of her original psychiatrist. Yasashii began to add notes of her own, typing at a smoothly steady pace.

*16/03/00— First session. My initial impressions of Meiou-san match Miyazaki-san’s profile of her on most points. Her powers of perception and recall are even more exceptional than I had expected; when questioned about recent events, she delivered concise responses that included very specific times and what appear to be word-for-word quotations of those around her. The fact that she can retain and access so much information so easily and still function perfectly normally is nothing short of astounding. The implications of this mental acuity with regards to her pre-amnesiac state are troubling, but if Meiou-san has guessed at the extraordinary detail of the life she has lost—which I think she must have—she seems to have accepted it already. Her overall emotional state is impressively stable for someone who has endured as many traumatic experiences as she has in such a short span of time. I suspect my evasion of those events may have amused her on some level.*

*I have not dismissed the possibility of a disassociate fugue state, but it seems even more unlikely to me now, as Meiou-san exhibited no reluctance in discussing her previous life. She admitted to a degree of disappointment that her friends could not tell her more about herself, all of it directed towards her ‘old self’ for not opening up more. I intend to question her more closely about the relationships between herself and these girls, as it seems curious for a woman in her mid-twenties to associate so closely with those five to ten years her juniors. Her position as foster-mother to the youngest girl would readily explain this, but that relationship raises questions in and of itself, in light of the results of Rikou’s recent examination. I would tend to doubt that there is a connection between Meiou-san’s missing child and her foster-child, given the ages in question, but it’s too early to say for certain either way.*

Yasashii paused and then added, *Her eyes are uncanny,* before saving the file and switching off the machine.

 

# 

There are many difficulties involved in space travel. Crossing the void between planets and stars requires a considerable amount of technological or mystical expertise, and the resources that must be invested to obtain that knowledge in the first place are not insignificant themselves. There is also the matter of time, whether it is spent in preparation for the journey or in the actual trip itself. But even these problems pale in comparison to that most ancient and ultimate impediment to any form of travel:

Simple boredom.

It’s true that there are countless fascinating things to see across the universe. The problem is that they make up only a fraction of the cosmic sum total, and are spread out amongst the biggest, emptiest, most mind-numbingly dull medium ever conceived. Space is a good thing to have—Creation would be a horribly jumbled mess without it—but it’s not much to look at. In fact, it’s nothing to look at. Literally. And there is a *lot* of it out there.

Forget sightseeing. Mortal eyes aren’t up to the task of gazing across the cosmic expanse. Having the Hubble Space Telescope (or its sorcerous equivalent) close at hand won’t help much either, since it’s a lot of extra mass to push around, and getting a clean look at anything would necessitate slowing down or even stopping, thereby extending an already-lengthy journey. Scenic detours are likewise out of the question for those strapped for time —not to mention cost-prohibitive—and random deep-space encounters offer no relief either. Close encounters at the sort of velocities needed to cross space in non-geologic periods of time are over almost before they start, and while there may be a lot out there, most of it’s so far apart that the only way the typical traveler could encounter it without going in search of it would be if *it* came in search of *him*—and that’s almost never good.

What all of this leads up to are four basic guidelines:

Never undertake a long journey without a good reason;

Make the journey as quickly as possible;

Bring something to do, and;

If the opportunity to do something even remotely interesting comes up along the way, TAKE IT.

Alexandra considered family and personal honor to be a very good reason for making the trip to Earth, and had traveled as quickly as she could without tiring herself out. She also had plenty to do, thanks to the crystal-recorded information her father had given her; over fifty human years’ worth of history made for an excellent mental diversion, although she would be a lizard’s uncle before she ever *understood* all of what she was reading.

Still, when she crossed into the asteroid belt, Alexandra didn’t miss out on the opportunity to entertain herself with a few aviational acrobatics. The smaller rocks weren’t much to look at, but there were a lot of them, often moving on unexpected vectors and frequently hidden by—or overlooked in the face of—the city-sized and mountain-sized stones. A fly-by or two here, a makeshift dodging contest there, and some high-speed skimming thrown in for added measure would all be good practice for the reception that the dragon expected once she reached Earth and found her quarry.

She engaged in a little target practice as well, choosing the smallest, fastest-moving space rocks and blasting them into even tinier fragments with a well-placed burst of lightning. Even as she did so, however, Alexandra was careful to always aim away from the larger stones and the thickly crowded heart of the field. After millions of years, most of the greater asteroids had settled into relatively stable orbits, but the tiniest push to one of them could spell disaster a few thousand years down the line. Alexandra had had her fill of such rogue bodies two centuries ago.

Besides, rearranging the scenery would annoy the locals, and the last thing Alexandra wanted to do right now was get every asteroid-dwelling void dragon in the region mad at her. She’d already sensed a few passing spell-probes, reminders that even the most inhospitable environments were not always as lifeless as they might seem, and quiet warnings to move on quickly and in peace.

Almost seven days of travel had brought Alexandra to the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and she expected to spend another week in flight before she reached Earth. Once she was groundside, she could start searching for her opponent. Detection spells rarely worked properly where Senshi were concerned, as Alexandra had learned firsthand when the young Jupiter walked into her lair without setting off any of the defensive spells, but she did have the girl’s name and the names of the city and the country where she lived. Not a lot of information, but enough to greatly reduce the size of the area she’d need to search.

*With a little luck,* Alexandra thought, glancing at the memory crystal that hovered before her as she flew, *I’ll find something in here to help me narrow things down further... and if not, I’ll just have to be patient.*

The thunder dragon snorted into the pocket of atmosphere that surrounded her. Patience was not one of her greater virtues. With that thought foremost in her mind—and the memory of the faint probes running it a close second— Alexandra decided to increase her speed until she was well clear of the belt.

Each of the draconic breeds capable of space travel had its own particular means, and in the case of thunder dragons, it involved the creation and manipulation of strong magnetic fields. They could navigate space around Jupiter with ease, thanks to the giant planet’s far-reaching energies, and Alexandra had used a variation on that everyday power to launch herself into space, accelerating continually until she passed beyond the edges of Jupiter’s magnetic field. She was maintaining her speed and heading now by drawing upon the energy of the solar wind, first collecting the scattered microparticles with large fields centered around her wings, then magnetically channeling them around her body, and finally firing them away into space in tightly-controlled bursts whenever she needed to correct her course.

It was an elegant, efficient form of travel. All Alexandra needed to do to change the strength and configuration of the energy around her was to shift the position of her outstretched wings, making it appear as if she was truly flying in space. The electromagnetic energy she was able to absorb from the photons and other high-energy stellar ejecta replenished her strength, while the particles themselves served as an essentially unlimited source of propellant.

There was one other nice thing about flying like this. Much of the energy involved was intense enough to be visible to the naked eye, especially once the deflected light began to build up. Alexandra currently appeared to be composed entirely of radiant green-white energy, a being of light soaring across space on kilometer-long wings of raw power.

It was the sort of thing that could make a girl feel very good about herself.

 

# 

Quite some distance behind Alexandra, another dragon was crossing the asteroid belt. Pyrogar’s overall appearance at the moment was far from the luminescent splendor of the female ahead of him; huddled in on himself with his wings folded protectively around his body, the magma dragon bore a passing resemblance to the dark, heavy stones drifting in the space about him, an impression reinforced by his occasional collisons with errant rocks that happened to cross his starwards course. The asteroids were coming out second best in those encounters, breaking apart upon impact with the dull red glow radiating from Pyrogar’s black wings and armored body, resulting in a trail of debris in his wake.

Much like the creatures themselves, the common method of space travel amongst magma dragons was a powerful and brutal affair. Lacking the inexpensive means of flight that the thunder dragons possessed, magmas got by with the sheer brute force of their magic, firing themselves into and across the void on pillars of raw elemental flame. After the initial awesome display of power, the dragon would coast along in silence and stillness, saving up energy for another brief burn.

Pyrogar might have appeared to be asleep, curled up as he was, but his mind was fully conscious. Eyes were of only moderate use in the void—and hearing and smell and taste no good at all—but he had other senses and other sources of information, all of which were at work. While part of Pyrogar’s awareness guided the spells driving him through space and any matter that got in his way, another part was tending to the magics that probed that same space. He was aware of Alexandra’s location, and was undismayed by the lead she had on him; he’d begun this pursuit knowing full well that he would not catch her until they reached Earth. He saw all of the asteroids minutes and even hours before he crashed into them, and took no action to adjust his course to avoid them; he had neither the energy to spare for the task nor the least inclination to even bother with it.

To Pyrogar’s way of thinking, his own concerns—such as getting to Earth in time to catch Alexandra—took priority. The rest of the universe could flaming well look after itself.

He was a bit surprised when the universe did just that.

Where just a moment ago there had been only the empty cold of space, Pyrogar suddenly felt another kind of cold, a chill which sapped his magic and felt as if it were pulling at him from all sides. The ruddy barrier that surrounded him began to weaken instantly, and he sensed that his speed was falling as well, from hundreds of kilometers per second to a few dozen. Soon it would be hundreds of kilometers per minute, then per hour; before long, he would be stopped dead in empty space, eventually dying from exposure as his strength and magic were sucked away by the deadening force.

Snarling in annoyance at this delay, Pyrogar roused himself and looked about. He did not waste time trying to seek out the source of the nullifying energy, but instead found a large asteroid and steered himself towards it with twinned, rocket-like bursts of flame from beneath his unfurled wings. The drain affected those, too, and continued to drag at him, but now it was actually helping him; the planetoid was a few hundred kilometers away, and by the time Pyrogar reached it, he’d slowed to the point where he was able to land with nothing more than the strength in his own body to brace him.

As soon as he found his balance atop the mountain-sized stone, Pyrogar arched his neck and swelled his chest as if taking a deep breath. Veins beneath his armored hide glowed orange a second before he spat out a molten fireball at a nearby ridge; the explosion which followed a second later lit up the area like a second sun, and in that flash, the magma dragon spotted his problem.

Void dragons were well-named, for their bodies were sleek and black like the empty space that was their home. They were sinuous in form, snakelike but for their long legs and truly immense wings. An elder void dragon was among the largest of all breeds, and all the more fearsome for its command over entropic magic, which could suck the strength from any opponent. It was that deadening power which had interrupted Pyrogar’s flight; a lesser application of it absorbed some of the light that struck a void dragon’s body, making it even harder to spot—unless there was a great deal of light.

The void dragon revealed by the blast of Pyrogar’s flame was half again as long in the body as the magma himself. Its serpentine neck was nearly that long on its own, the tail was even longer, and its wingspan rivaled all three combined. Just one of those vast sails could have covered Pyrogar entirely, and their touch would drain the life from his body almost as quickly as the nullifying field the void had already used on him. It descended towards him in silence, its jet-black eyes reflecting neither light nor soul, an image of approaching death.

The magma dragon snorted two contemptuous plumes of fire from his nostrils and hunkered down atop the asteroid, anchoring himself firmly as he arched his neck in an aggressive pose. Unimpressed, the void dragon continued its approach, the entropic effects of its magic growing stronger as it neared; the chill began to penetrate Pyrogar’s thick hide, and the light from his smoldering molten spittle died faster.

Pyrogar shrugged off the numbing sensation and kept his eyes on the dark specter, waiting until it was only a few kilometers away. Then he drew himself up again, his powerful form actually trembling as his veins burned anew. Instead of striking at his foe, the magma dragon released his grip on the asteroid and aimed straight *down,* kicking off with legs and wing-thrusts and breath all at once, blasting himself skywards even as his attack bored into the surface of the asteroid and tore it to pieces.

Pyrogar only had a moment to look before the force of his launch carried him past the void dragon, but he thought he saw surprise on its lean features as it flew straight into a megaton of rocky shrapnel.

Impressive as they might appear and as formidable as their powers were, void dragons were not without their weaknesses. The main one was that centuries of life in microgravity left their bodies extraordinarily frail, at least by draconic standards. The newly-created asteroids flying at this void dragon would tear apart its wings and crush its bones with ease, should they strike it.

Well clear of the immediate danger area, Pyrogar watched with dark amusement as the void dragon let out a noiseless shriek and tried desperately to evade the tumbling rocks. The subsequent display of acrobatics was very impressive, but when it was over, the void dragon looked more dead than alive. One of its wings had been smashed at the apex, and the sails of both were tattered and bent from the maneuvering stresses. A hind leg had been pulverized in a sharp turn that had smashed it against a passing rock, and there were extensive scrapes along the dragon’s chest and neck.

Still very much alive in spite of the beating it had just taken, the void dragon began to move away from the area, surrounded by a peculiar ripple in space. Pyrogar immediately went after the miserable creature. He was sharply aware that every minute he spent dealing with the void would put Alexandra that much farther ahead of him, but it couldn’t be helped; there was principle here, at least as much as in his quarrel with the female thunder dragon.

Besides, he was hungry.

 

# 

Whenever Rei was due to leave the shrine for more than a day, she tended to descend into a frenzy of cleaning, almost as if she didn’t trust Yuuichirou and her grandfather to keep up their respective ends of the chores while she was away. This was true to a certain extent, and with her longtime home faced by as much as a week of her absence, Rei’s most recent bout of intensive housekeeping had been even more pronounced than usual, starting almost as soon as she was fully awake on Wednesday morning and continuing through into the next day.

Now it was Friday, and the energy that had previously gone into sweeping and scrubbing had been redirected into packing for the week-long beach trip. Compared to the crusade against dust and grime, the task of getting her selection of clothes and other essentials for the next week to fit into a couple of modest-sized suitcases was nearly as relaxing as meditation.

“Awp?”

Nearly, not entirely.

“Where did the pretty Rei-di get all her skins and feathers?”

“Why does the pretty Rei-di take her skins and feathers from the wood boxes and put them in the other boxes?”

“What does the pretty Rei-di need all her skins and feathers in the boxes for?”

Rooky had a hundred questions, and he asked most of them while poking through the contents of the suitcases sitting on the bed. Rei thought she must have shooed him out of the luggage twenty times in the last half-hour, only to find him back there again as soon as she turned around. It was as peculiar as it was annoying, because there was nothing in the suitcases that should have held Rooky’s interest for this long. *She* liked her clothes, but they were simply not the sort of small, glittery things the crow collected for his pretties.

“Out, Rooky,” Rei said for the twenty-first time as she came over to add a double handful of socks to the contents of one of the bags. The scrawny bird obeyed, withdrawing his head from its inspection of the luggage and hopping back along the bedcovers, watching her. Rei barely glanced at him, or at Phobos and Deimos, who were perched on opposite ends of her dresser, watching both of them. All the scene needed to be complete was Thrax’s presence, but he’d gone out for a flight earlier and had not yet come back.

Rei hoped the big raven returned before she left. Thrax hadn’t really done much in the weeks that she’d known him, but she found that the idea of not seeing him for five or six days was an uncomfortable one, and all the more so if she didn’t say some sort of good-bye. The same feeling applied to the other birds, which was the reason she’d allowed them to come in and watch her, and also why she was putting up with Rooky’s endless inquisitiveness instead of chasing him back outside and shutting the door.

“Rawk?”

About to close the first suitcase, Rei looked up at the sound and saw that Rooky had diverted his attention towards the door. A quick glance told her Phobos and Deimos were doing the same, and after a moment of concentration, Rei sensed what the birds had—two people, coming across the courtyard. Rei picked up only a fleeting sense of warmth and presence, but she still recognized the vague impressions and who they belonged to. Smiling, she moved over to the door and slid it open.

Her visitors were a pair of young women a few years older than herself, both tastefully dressed. The one on the right had long, dark hair done up in a style that suggested a cat’s ears rode atop her head, and the other had pure white hair done up in a braid.

“I was starting to wonder if you’d decided not to come by, Cooan.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Rei,” the youngest Ayakashi sister replied. “We ran into some ugly traffic.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d listened to me and taken a right instead of a left at the traffic circle,” Beruche noted.

“If I’d gone that way, it would have taken us an entire half an hour to get here!” Cooan protested.

“And just how long did we spend stuck in traffic?” Beruche asked. She looked away from Cooan and nodded, politely adding, “Hello, Rei.”

“Hello, Beruche. Both of you, come in. Can I get you something to drink?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Beruche said.

“Same here,” Cooan added, kicking off her shoes. “But thanks for... asking?” She had stopped halfway through the door, blinking at the three birds as they stood there and looked back at her. “Ah... Rei?”

“Yes, Cooan, I’m aware that there are three crows in my room. Don’t worry, they don’t bite.”

“I seem to remember otherwise,” Cooan replied, looking cautiously at Phobos and Deimos as she stepped all the way inside and knelt next to the table.

“You *were* trying to burn down their home back then, Cooan,” Beruche noted as she closed the door. “About once a week, if I remember correctly.”

“Well, they won’t bite *now,*” Rei amended, sitting down across from Cooan and looking over at the birds. “Right?”

The corvine pair returned her gaze, looked at Cooan, and then glanced at each other. Phobos shuffled his feathers and made no reply, while Deimos cawed faintly before preening her left wing.

“I get the feeling I haven’t been forgiven,” Cooan said dryly.

“Probably not, but they’ll let it slide. And I think Rooky decided he liked you the moment you came inside—didn’t you, Rooky?”

“Aaawp,” Rooky crooned, his eyes glowing with avarice as he examined the bright earrings both sisters wore. Rei would have sworn that Phobos gave the scraggly little crow an annoyed glance.

“Where did you find that one, anyway?” Cooan asked.

“England,” Rei replied, watching Rooky closely to let him understand that thieving from this pair would not be a wise or welcome thing. She glanced back at the sisters—who, as expected, looked startled—and wryly added, “It’s been a busy couple of months.”

“We knew that much already,” Cooan said. “The little monsters that tried to attack the store were a pretty clear sign something was up.”

Rei stared at the two sisters. “Oh, kamis,” she said in a sinking voice. “I’m sorry, I never even thought to call you after that...”

“It’s okay, Rei,” Cooan assured her. “We knew you girls must have had your hands full if something that bad was happening. Besides,” she added with a proud toss of her head, “the four of us may not be fearsome warriors anymore, but we aren’t exactly helpless, either. We came out of it a lot better than most people, thanks to Oneesama and Oneesan.”

“What do you mean?” Rei asked, blinking in confusion.

“Well, for one thing, there’s these.” Cooan reached into her purse and took out a handful of small teardrop-shaped crystals whose facets varied from blue to grey to violet. They immediately reminded Rei of the bits of crystal technology that the sisters and the other members of the Black Moon Family had employed. They also got Rooky’s undivided attention, but mindful of his promise to Rei not to speak in front of most people, he was able to restrain himself from crying ‘pretties’ and swooping over to snatch one of the glittering prizes. Instead he just stared at them, his wings twitching every so often and his claws kneading the bedcovers in an unconscious snatching action.

“Oneesama made them,” Cooan was saying, as she handed one of the items over to Rei and set the rest on the tabletop. “They’re designed to draw in and contain any negative energy that gets near them. We’ve got a dozen or so protecting the apartment and the store, and when those creatures showed up and tried to trash the place, the first batch of them that got near the building were disintegrated. That made the rest awfully nervous, and once Oneesan had given them a few rounds with her whip, they took off running.”

“I can imagine,” Rei said absently, most of her attention focused on the crystal in her palm as she cautiously tested it with her mind. It gave off no feeling of darkness, only a faint tugging sensation, and... Rei blinked suddenly, the mental probe switching off as Cooan’s last sentence fully registered. “Her *whip?* I thought Calaveras’s weapons disappeared when Usagi healed her...”

“Those whips did,” Beruche replied succinctly.

Rei couldn’t stop her cheeks from turning red at the implications of that.

“We’re a little concerned about her,” the white-haired sister admitted with a nod, “but it’s just as well that one of us was armed. Petz’s little energy-absorbers were designed to handle ambient radiation, not combat conditions. The link they’re set up with helped spread out the strain that first time, but another large jolt probably would have done the whole system in.”

“I don’t get it,” Rei said, shaking off her blush. “You said Petz made these? How? From what?”

“Oneesama used to work with the engineering division on Nemesis before the four of us were assigned to Rubeus,” Cooan explained. “Her control over energy was useful for a lot of the work they did, and she picked up some of the tricks of their trade over the years.” Her lips creased into a small, melancholy smile, and she softly added, “In hindsight, I think that she may have been trying to impress Saffir.” Sighing, Cooan shook her head and continued. “In any case, when Usagi used the ginzuishou on us, she only purged the negative energy that life on Nemesis had filled our bodies with. Our memories weren’t affected, so Oneesama still remembered everything she’d learned. All she needed was the means to put what she knew to use. Saffir gave her that, although I don’t think it was what he really intended by giving her his jacket before he... left us.”

“How would a jacket have helped Petz make these?”

“Saffir had a number of crystals sewn into the front.” Beruche traced spots over her own chest that paralleled the design of the garment in question. “As it turns out, they weren’t just for decoration. He was carrying a workshop’s worth of tools and a respectable library around with him wherever he went, right out in plain sight, and I doubt that even the Prince ever realized it. I’m not sure if Saffir told Petz about it before he left or if she figured it out on her own later on, but she made the first batch of these a few months later, when we started hearing about new attacks.” She made a face and added, “We would have told you about these then, but between moving into the new building, getting the store established, and going back to school... well, we sort of forgot for a while, and by the time we did remember, it didn’t seem like you needed the help anymore...”

“...but now it seems like we could use all the help we can get?” Rei guessed with a half-smile.

“You said it, not us,” Cooan murmured.

“It’s okay. Things *have* been awkward recently.” Rei looked at the crystal. “I take it these are working right now?”

Beruche nodded. “Each crystal’s absorption field extends ten meters or so in all directions, and any sort of negative energy that enters that range will be drawn to the gems and trapped inside. The rate of absorption is limited, though, so it’s best to set up the crystals so that their fields have a degree of overlap; that way, two or three of them will be able to affect any given energy source all at once.”

“Would they be any use in a fight?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. The rate of absorption isn’t high enough for one crystal to seriously affect the sort of creatures you *usually* have to fight. You could get a greater effect by increasing the number of crystals involved, but you’d have to get them all within ten meters of the target, and then keep them like that long enough for something to happen. It could take ten seconds or ten minutes, depending on the creature you were up against, and we all know how easy something like *that* is.” Three pairs of eyes rolled ceilingwards before Beruche continued. “You could carry one or two crystals as personal defense, to drain off the power from any negative-energy attacks or spells you encountered and lessen the effect, but you might turn yourself into a dark force magnet in the process.”

“I’ll pass,” Rei said, grimacing at the notion. Some cosmic fluke might have graced Minako with semi-indestructibility—a claim whose accuracy was still being debated among the Senshi corps—and Makoto had the Aegis’s glowing shields to protect her, but the rest of them bruised just as easily as ever. “So they’ll keep a house clear and relatively safe from lesser monsters, or hold off attacks from a more powerful creature for a short time.”

“That’s right,” Beruche agreed, closing her eyes as she nodded.

“What about ghosts?” Rei asked suddenly.

Beruche’s eyelids flew open in mid-nod, and her already porcelain-pale skin went bloodlessly white. “G-ghosts?” she repeated unsteadily. “Wh-what’s this about ghosts?”

“Ah, well...” A confession of her concerns about the shrine’s apparent haunting was dancing on the tip of Rei’s tongue, but Beruche’s sudden and unexpected reaction made her tongue stumble over the words. “It’s just that... I was wondering if the crystals could handle negative *spiritual* energy as well as the *physical* forms you two described, and... are you okay, Beruche?”

“She’ll be fine in a minute, Rei,” Cooan said, reaching over and patting the nearer of her sister’s hands, which were both currently gripping the edge of the table like white clamps. The hand in question immediately let go of the table and seized Cooan’s fingers; the grip didn’t appear any gentler than the one that had been used on the wood, but Cooan didn’t flinch or protest. “Oneechan just has a problem with ghosts. And to answer your question, yes, the crystals can drain negative spiritual energy as well as they do negative physical forces.”

“You’re sure?”

“*Very* sure,” Cooan said firmly. Rei nodded and would have been content to let the subject drop right then and there out of consideration for Beruche, but Cooan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

“Well, ah... from what the two of you were saying, I wasn’t completely sure-”

“No, Rei, I meant about ghosts. Why ask about them specifically?”

“Oh.” The young priestess tried to think up a way to explain without scaring Beruche witless. “I asked because there’s... a place I’m pretty sure is being haunted”—sure enough, even that much made Beruche squeak—“and I’ve been wondering about a way to deal with it.”

Cooan cocked her head at an angle, frowning. “I admit I’m no expert, Rei, but doesn’t this Shinto thing of yours include advice on dealing with spirits? And what about being a Senshi? That has to help.”

“It does,” Rei said with a trace of irritation. She understood that Cooan’s background and upbringing hadn’t offered many options when it came to spiritual belief, but the casual ‘Shinto thing’ remark still made her blood rise to a slow simmer. She forced herself to stay calm. “They both do, and I do have experience dealing with ghosts in both fields—but this particular ghost is unusual. It showed up in a place I hadn’t thought a ghost *could* appear, and my wards and prayers don’t seem to have any affect on it.”

“They don’t?” Cooan asked, looking confused and more than a little worried by this information. “Rei, I saw you knock over a few droids with those things, and I know you’ve used them successfully on creatures with even more power. Are you saying this ghost is strong enough to just *ignore* you?”

“It’s not a question of strength,” Rei replied firmly, shaking her head. “If the ghost was that powerful, it would have destroyed my wards and almost certainly attacked me, but it’s been weeks if not months since it manifested, and nothing like that has happened. In fact, all that *has* happened is a few things moving around. Books that get put back on shelves, doors that seem to close on their own after being left open; it’s almost like this ghost is trying to be helpful.”

Now Cooan just looked confused. “That doesn’t sound like any ghost I ever heard of, but Earth is different from Nemesis in just about every other way... so I suppose that ghosts might be different as well...”

“I don’t care,” Beruche said bluntly. “I don’t ever want to see another ghost again if I can possibly help it. Where is this one, Rei?”

Again, Rei cast about for a safe answer, but while she could be deviously dishonest in other aspects of her life, she’d made a practice of telling people the truth in spiritual matters for so long that she couldn’t bring herself to lie this time. The truth, of course, was also out of the question, and so Rei was left momentarily speechless.

Picking up on that hesitation, Beruche repeated the Wide Eyes Of Fear and Blood Rushing From The Face routine. “Here?” she asked in a tiny voice.

Rei sighed, and nodded once. “If you want to leave, Beruche, it’s okay. I’ve only ever noticed things happening here in the shrine proper, so...”

“Excusemethankyousorrygoodbye!” Beruche was out the open door and clear across the courtyard almost before she had finished her own sentence. The rapid exit sent the crows into a fit of startled cawing.

Cooan watched her sister’s rapid retreat before turning to Rei and asking, “You’re sure about this?” She was nervous, if not nearly so spooked as Beruche.

Silently, Rei pointed past the youngest Ayakashi; around her, the three crows cawed again, their feathers ruffling up as they shivered nervously. The scene was eerie enough that Cooan gave a start and leapt into a half-crouch as she spun about. Finding nothing except the wide-open door, she momentarily frowned, but then her own eyes widened as she realized what Rei was getting at.

When they’d come inside, Beruche had shut the screen behind her.

She hadn’t stopped to open it on her way out.

 

# 

“Achoo!”

“Gesundheit,” the Sciences Director said.

“Thags,” Media replied, sniffling. “Dis ‘suber-sprig’ ob ours is drivig by hayfever wild. I do’t subbose you could prescribe any addihisdamies bor be?”

“Nothing that would be more effective than the usual over-the-counter brands.”

“Dab.”

“Just how serious is this growth period?” Political asked. “The budgets for at least three different city departments are already going to be tangled up for months as it is.”

“Our tests suggest that the worst of the accelerated floral development is over,” Sciences said. “The fact that most of the plants in the city have decided to seed this early in the year is going to play havoc with the normal growing patterns—and related concerns such as hayfever season...”

“Do dell.”

“...but the radiant energy which appears to have triggered the hyperdevelopment has decreased in strength by over seventy percent in the last two days. We’ve also managed to confirm that the effect was limited to within a fifty block radius around the source, so there’s no danger to national agriculture.”

“Have you been able to determine the effects this energy has had on people within that area?”

“Only a few of our people were within the affected area, but we’ve tested all of them, and none show any detrimental effects of exposure. There have actually been reports of people with fractured, broken, or deteriorated bones experiencing accelerated recovery, and patients with certain blood disorders are showing reduced symptoms.”

“Good news for a change,” Information said. “Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of it.”

“I take it we’ve run into difficulties on other fronts?” Political said.

“We checked the area our guests indicated this ‘Proteus’ thing was hiding out,” the Security Director said. “There was evidence that *something* made out of that green mold was down there recently, but if it was our target, it was gone long before we got there. The physical tracks, such as they were, went straight into a sewage flow. The chemical sensors stopped working at that point, and my teams couldn’t find any signs of re-emergence anywhere in the area.”

“We have people checking treatment plants and the like,” Information added, “but I don’t expect them to find much. Given the time that’s elapsed and the size and complexity of the city’s infrastructure, the target could be anywhere by now.”

“Unfortunately true,” Political admitted. “Are we making progress with our extra security precautions?”

“All communications equipment has been switched over to secondary frequencies,” Sciences reported. “On the chance that the Senshi might have the capability to track radio waves, we’ve also broken out the portable relays for the Security teams, so that they can coordinate with headquarters without transmitting directly.”

“Will that impair field operations at all?”

“Hooking one of those transceivers into a phone-line and linking to the base takes about ten seconds,” Security said. “It’s a little cumbersome, but it’s manageable—and it’s better than running the risk of giving our location away.”

“The underground detectors have been installed in all of our facilities and the Diet building,” Sciences continued, “but it will take two more weeks to build all the sensors necessary to equip all the city’s hospitals and police and fire stations. Complete installation should require another additional week.”

“Between the new sensors and the repairs to the Security equipment that was damaged last week, our supply of electronics components will be pretty thin after this,” Resources pointed out. “I’ve placed the orders for extra inventory, but we won’t be back up to optimum amounts until some time next month.”

“I’ll make sure my people are aware of that,” Sciences promised. “Barring another massive burnout of the sensor network, I don’t foresee a serious need for parts in the near future.”

“What’s the status of the special project?” Political asked then.

“Delivery of the package was confirmed Monday morning,” Information replied. “The recipient has been making inquiries through official channels and questioning other sources since then, but that appears to be the extent of her reaction so far.”

“I see. Does that concern you?”

“Not terribly so, no. The woman has a reputation for being a bit of a risk-taker, and I admit I was hoping to take advantage of that, but an impulsive nature doesn’t necessarily equate to foolishness. I’m going to keep her under surveillance for another couple of weeks before I make any permanent decisions.”

“Very well.”

 

# 

The Inner Senshi had never had much of a formal arrangement for making the trip to the beach. Sometimes they went up in cars driven by parents or boyfriends dragooned into working as a taxi service, and on other occasions, they took the train. They had traveled as a group or in ones and twos, each of them leaving whenever and however it was convenient, and arriving whenever she got there.

This time around had been no exception to the usual disorder. Ami would be going up with her mother, and Makoto with them, while Yuuichirou found himself coerced into driving Rei, Usagi, Setsuna, Luna, and a load of suitcases. ChibiUsa packed her luggage onto the van with the rest, then took a bento full of snacks that Ikuko had prepared and made herself scarce until after the others had dragged the ranting, ‘food-stealing brat’-hunting Usagi into the vehicle and driven off.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Ikuko chided as ChibiUsa emerged from her hiding place. “You and Usagi are both mature enough now to talk out your disagreements, instead of one-upping and sniping at each other like this.”

“But this way is more fun, Ikuko-mama,” ChibiUsa replied with a pout. “And besides, when it comes to your cooking, we’re both horribly greedy little monsters.”

“Yes, but you could make some effort to be more civilized about it.” Ikuko sighed and shook her head. “It must come from Kenji’s side of the family. None of *my* relatives acted like this when they were your age.”

“I guess that must be it,” ChibiUsa agreed with a nervous laugh, one hand inching towards the pocket where a small black sphere with feline-esque features waited. She hated to use Luna-P’s hypnotic power on her mother’s family any more than was absolutely necessary to maintain her secret; like anything else used repeatedly over time, there was always a chance of resistance building up and eventually rendering even this powerful hypnosis useless. Still, sometimes she had no choice—and with Ikuko, there always seemed to be one of those ‘sometimes’ lurking just around the corner. The woman had very strong feelings when it came to her family, and ChibiUsa was never sure just how well Luna-P’s mesmerizing effects held up against them.

If Ikuko had been a more suspicious person, she could very well have seen through the illusion. But since she was not, the false memories that Luna-P had created won out once again, and the older woman simply smiled at ChibiUsa and turned back to cleaning up the last traces of her earlier snack-making.

A horn went off outside, and ChibiUsa rushed over to the window. Spotting Haruka’s car in front of the gate, she smiled. “That’s my ride!” She dashed back into the kitchen and gave Ikuko a hug. “’Bye, Ikuko-mama.”

“Good-bye, ChibiUsa,” Ikuko replied, warmly returning the embrace. “Say hello to Hotaru-chan for me—and please, promise me that you’ll at least *try* not to go out of your way to aggravate Usagi for the next few days.”

“I promise,” ChibiUsa said halfheartedly, before pulling away and heading for the door. She set down the bento long enough to pull on her shoes and jacket, then retrieved it, opened the door, and sent a last “Sayonara!” over her shoulder as she stepped outside and shut the door behind her.

“Planning to rough it, are you?” Haruka asked, looking ChibiUsa over as she approached.

“No, I sent all my stuff...” ChibiUsa stopped just outside the gate and blinked as she got a clear look at the car and its passengers. Michiru was along, which wasn’t a surprise, but she had given up her usual seat in the front and was instead squeezed in the back between Hotaru and the other passenger, a girl Hotaru’s age, with wavy blue hair and a wavy blue dress that were both a lot like Michiru’s.

“Calypso?”

“Who else?” Haruka asked rhetorically, while the Nereid smiled and waved her fingers at ChibiUsa in greeting. “Come on, New Moon, hop in so we can get on the road.”

“Uh... right.” ChibiUsa did as she was told, and Haruka hit the gas as soon as she was buckled in. Craning her neck around the edge of her seat, ChibiUsa frowned at the scene in the rear. “I thought you were going with Ami and Makoto.”

“Change of plans,” Calypso responded. “Ami was hoping to introduce me to her mother as a cat, but Rikou insisted on helping with the luggage this afternoon, so I ended up doing a nice impression of small potted plants and empty space for a while instead. We were both a bit concerned that I might not be able to sneak out without being noticed, and I wanted to visit Michiru before leaving for the week anyway, so...”

“Ah.” ChibiUsa turned around, looked at the box of snacks sitting on her lap, and turned again, holding up the bento. “Um... anyone want some fresh cookies?”

The drive was considerably more satisfying for ChibiUsa since, for once, she was able to share Ikuko’s baked goodies with people who didn’t try to consume the entire bag in one massive inhalation. Haruka turned down the offer of food, citing the need to keep her hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road; ChibiUsa agreed with the sentiment, but privately gave Haruka ten minutes at the most before the sight of everyone else enjoying the snacks and the sound of them ‘oooh’-ing and ‘mmmm’-ing over the delicious morsels eroded her resistance, and she pulled over for a pit stop. Ikuko’s cooking was just too wonderful to pass up. Calypso only did so because she did not possess a digestive system right now, but she very much enjoyed her companions’ reactions.

Over twenty minutes later, Haruka had not taken her attention from the road except to answer a couple of questions from her passengers. ChibiUsa was startled by this remarkable resistance, and watched Haruka carefully from the corner of her eye for the remainder of the trip. She noticed that the blonde was glancing into the rear view mirror every so often, her face peculiarly fixed as she did so.

*Is she worried about Michiru?* ChibiUsa thought, listening to the blue-haired girl’s soft laughter as Hotaru described the antics of a group of children she had gone out to play with the other day. *The answer to that question is ‘all the time,’ but still... Michiru seems fine right now. Maybe Haruka thinks she’s faking it?*

*Or is it Calypso?* ChibiUsa wondered, hearing the Nereid’s light voice interrupt Hotaru’s narrative with a question. *Haruka’s been a little defensive around her since we brought her back. Is it Calypso’s relationship with Michiru that worries her? I know Haruka has a touch of a jealous streak in her sometimes, but...*

But neither concern nor simmering possessiveness quite appeared to be the source of that look. ChibiUsa was still puzzling over it as they drove off the highway and entered the neighborhood where Ami’s aunt had her summer vacation house. At that point, she had to stop wondering about what was bugging Haruka and concentrate on giving directions, as none of the Outer Senshi had ever been on this trip before.

When they pulled up in front of the house a few minutes later, there were no other vehicles present. Given the way Haruka drove, ChibiUsa wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn that they were the first ones here, but Ami came out of the house shortly following their arrival. Calypso scrambled out of the car and rushed across the grass to give her sister a hug.

“Did your mother change her mind about staying?” Haruka inquired.

“No,” Ami said, doing her best to return Calypso’s lower-than-usual embrace. “She and Mako-chan just went to the supermarket so that we’ll have something in the fridge and the cupboards tonight. Caly wasn’t too much trouble for you, I hope?”

“Ami,” the Nereid protested. “I may look it just now, but I am not a child. Kindly don’t talk about me as if I’m going to cause a disaster the minute your back is turned.”

“Do the words ‘flooded basement’ or ‘exploding showerheads’ ring any bells, Caly?”

“That was a thousand years ago!”

“She was no trouble at all,” Michiru said, smiling. Calypso turned around and beamed at her.

“See? I was perfectly well-behaved.”

“You’ll forgive me if I suspect that Michiru’s opinion may be a bit prejudiced,” Ami replied.

“Well, of *course* it is,” Calypso said patiently. “You know she’d only say I was misbehaving if *she* had done something wrong and was trying to shift the blame to me, like she always used to do. But since she says I was good, that means we both were. Right?”

“I think you just lost your advocate, Calypso,” Hotaru advised with a glance at Michiru’s face. Calypso looked up and back, and found herself on the receiving end of a piqued frown.

“Maybe that didn’t come out the way I meant it,” the Nereid offered with a faint smile.

“Or maybe it came out *exactly* the way you meant it,” Michiru replied.

“Hey, all I did was tell the truth. If you hadn’t tried to get me in trouble all those times...”

“*I* got *you* in...?!” Michiru caught herself on the wind-up to a shout and leaned back against the side of the car, letting the tension go with a long breath. “No, no. We’re not going to do this. You don’t need to start a vacation with a fight.”

Calypso opened her mouth to reply, but Ami put a cautionary hand on her head and said, “Michiru’s right, Caly. You can tease her some other time.”

“All right,” the Nereid grumbled.

“Would somebody care to give me a hand getting all of these inside?” Haruka asked from behind the open trunk.

“All of what?” Michiru asked, puzzled. She watched in confusion as Haruka pulled a pair of large suitcases from the trunk, one of them Hotaru’s, the other one part of the set that Michiru used herself. Two smaller cases that matched that one quickly joined it on the sidewalk. “Haruka?” Michiru asked, looking up with an amused but uncertain smile. “Are we staying after all?”

“’We’ aren’t,” Haruka replied, her eyes averted. “You are. You need a break, Michiru. I know that you’re trying your best to get over what happened, but being in that house... there are so many memories there for you already, and... I don’t want you to associate what you’re going through now with the house where your parents loved you, where we... where you’ve been so happy in the past. You’ve got a chance to get away from where this happened, and from home, and go somewhere that doesn’t have any bad memories for you, with people who care about you all around. I want you to take that chance.”

Michiru blinked and extended a hand towards her partner. “Haruka-”

“Michi, please. Hear me out?” Haruka looked up, proud and pleading and loving all in the same gaze, and Michiru brought her hand back, holding it against her heart as she nodded. Haruka gave her a quick smile of gratitude, then sighed.

“I’m... not very good at this sort of thing,” the blonde admitted, running a hand through her short hair as she tried to find the words she needed. “When something hurts me, my first impulse is to smash it or get away from it. Doing anything else is... it’s not impossible, but it’s hard, and it gets more difficult the longer it goes on. I worry, and I get uncertain... and eventually I end up lashing out or running anyway. As much as I want to help you, I know I’m just as much of a hindrance right now, and it’ll get worse as time goes on. You don’t need my problems bogging you down right now, so I’m going to do my best to fix things that way.”

“It won’t work,” Michiru said. “Even if you leave, you’ll still worry about me, and I’ll still worry about you. I’ll worry more, because I won’t know where you are or what you might be doing while you’re concerned for me.” She almost sounded triumphant about it.

“You’re half right,” Haruka replied, a shadow of a grin forming. “We’ll worry about each other, and you won’t know where I am, but I’ll know that you’re here, and that you’re safe and surrounded by people who love you. I won’t worry so much, knowing that, and you’ll know it, and worry less about me. You’ll even have fun while you’re here.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t be able to help yourself, you mean.” Haruka was grinning openly now. “I know you, Michiru. No matter how calm and collected and self-controlled you act, deep down inside, you can’t resist going with the flow. After two days with this pack of fun-happy maniacs, you’ll be giggling and beach-hopping and lazing around with the best of them.”

“I won’t,” Michiru repeated stubbornly, betrayed by the flush in her face.

“Liar.” Haruka stepped forward and put her arms around the aqua-haired girl, who sighed and laid her head against Haruka’s shoulder.

“You’re not going to change your mind, are you?” Michiru said quietly.

“No, I’m not. This is a good idea. It’ll be good for you personally and professionally, and it’ll be good for *us.*” Haruka pulled back, resting her hands on Michiru’s shoulders as they faced each other. “We’ve been together for more than three years now, Michi, and in all that time, we’ve never been more than a couple of hours apart. A little separation now and then is a healthy thing, right?”

“Are you saying I’m boring you?”

“Never,” Haruka murmured fervently, raising one hand to touch that warm, smooth cheek. Michiru tilted her head towards the touch, lifting the hand she had kept between them to reciprocate the gesture.

“There’s more to this, isn’t there?” she guessed, her voice too soft for the others to hear. Haruka didn’t say anything, but the answer was plain in her eyes, the way they lifted slightly towards Ami and the other girls, the way something moved in their depths. “Her mother?”

“I wouldn’t last a day here with her around,” Haruka replied in the same hushed tone. “I’m sorry, Michi.”

Michiru pressed a finger to her lips and smiled. “It’s okay, ‘Ruka. I understand.” In a louder voice, she added, “Besides, the rule is that no males are allowed, right? You do have an image to protect...”

A chuckle escaped Haruka. “Yeah, there is that.” She kissed Michiru’s finger, then took her hand and kissed the back as well. “What would I do without you?”

“It would seem that you have five days to find out. But before you start researching, be a dear and take the luggage inside?”

“Right. Hotaru, Calypso; grab a bag.” Hotaru nodded and came over to get her own suitcase, but Calypso just blinked.

“Why me?”

“Consider it the fare for the ride.”

“Oh. Well, what about her?” Calypso pointed at ChibiUsa. “Doesn’t she have to pay, too?”

Haruka looked at ChibiUsa, considering. “She has a point.”

ChibiUsa thought for a moment and then pulled out the bento with a smile. “I still have some cookies left...”

“Done,” Haruka replied, hefting the largest suitcase and one of the smaller pair. Calypso screwed up her face into a look of insult, but—after a physical and mental poke from Ami—she walked over and picked up the remaining bag, and followed Haruka and Hotaru inside with it, muttering audibly and firing telepathic complaints back at her sister.

ChibiUsa, Ami, and Michiru looked at each other. “You don’t mind, do you?” Michiru asked Ami.

“Of course not. There aren’t any waterbeds, and you might end up on a couch or the floor anyway, but there’s room, and we’re glad to have you. As long as you help with the chores,” Ami added. “Mako-chan handles the cooking, of course, and she and Rei-chan *generally* divide the day-to-day cleaning between them, but everybody has to help with the groceries and the laundry.”

“I believe I can manage that much,” Michiru said with a smile. Then she sighed. “I only hope Haruka was kind when she was packing for me.”

“If you two take all your vacations together, she must have a good idea what you’d want for a few days at the beach,” ChibiUsa said.

“Oh, she knows what *I* like. It’s what *she* likes that worries me.” Michiru shook her head. “The last time I let her pack unsupervised, I ended up wearing t-shirts and jeans for the better part of a week.”

ChibiUsa thought about that and shook her head. “I don’t think I can picture you dressed that casually, Michiru.”

“Neither can I, to tell you the truth. Which is why I never bought any clothes like that for myself.”

“Never? But...”

“Haruka, on the other hand, has them in abundance.”

“She didn’t,” Ami said, hovering in the grey area between disbelief and amusement.

“Didn’t what?” Haruka asked, coming back out of the house.

“Michiru was just telling us why it’s a bad idea to allow you to pack for a trip,” Ami replied.

“That again?” Haruka asked mildly. “Honestly, Michiru, I don’t understand what you have against wearing pants instead of a skirt.”

“I have nothing against wearing pants once in a while,” Michiru replied. “It’s jeans I refuse to wear.”

“They look good on you.”

“They chafe.”

“You’re so sensitive.” Haruka chuckled. “Well, you don’t have anything to worry about this time. Hotaru-chan helped me pack, so you’ve got plenty to wear.”

Michiru glanced towards the house. She wasn’t surprised to hear that her foster-daughter had had a hand in this plan. In fact, she suspected that Hotaru’s involvement went a lot further than helping to pack some clothes. Setting this up without Michiru noticing it would have involved *some* planning, and strategy had never been Haruka’s forte; she was clever, and could adapt to almost any situation she was thrown into, but she wasn’t terribly patient, whereas Hotaru possessed patience and cleverness both in respectable measure. Michiru would have taken odds that their talk on Wednesday had led directly to this.

Summoned by the thought, Hotaru appeared in the front door, Calypso close behind. While the Nereid tromped over to Ami and slouched against her, the dark-haired girl took in Michiru’s quizzical look, guessed she was in for some scolding, and did her best to look contrite as she came out onto the lawn. She stopped in her tracks a moment later, however, her eyes widening in alarm. Everyone turned, and there was a hiss of worry from Ami as she saw her mother’s car slowing to enter the driveway. Her fingers tightened on Calypso’s tiny shoulders, as if she were intending to throw her sister out of sight, but it was too late for that. Rikou had the entire yard in plain view as she pulled in and parked the car, and Calypso was out in the open. If Rikou had approached from the other direction, Ami would have been able to hide Calypso’s child-sized body behind herself long enough for the Nereid to shapeshift into something else, but now...

“Hello, everyone,” Rikou said as she got out. “Kaioh-san, Tennou-san.” She inclined her head to the older two, then smiled at ChibiUsa and Hotaru, who found themselves unable to do anything except smile back and try not to panic.

“Ma’am,” Haruka replied, nodding with obvious discomfort.

“Mizuno-san,” Michiru said, somehow managing to look and sound as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on as she also returned the greeting. “Thank you for having us. I hope it’s no trouble.”

“You’re welcome, and it’s quite alright. My sister bought this place as much to host parties as she did for a family vacation spot; there’s plenty of room.” She glanced past the girls then, seeking the only face she didn’t already know.

Time seemed to slow down for Ami. What to say? What to say? She could see Michiru, Haruka, and—beyond her mother and the car—Makoto all looking at her, and could sense ChibiUsa and Hotaru doing likewise. Michiru appeared calm, Haruka amused, and Makoto wore an expression that perfectly suited the feeling of imminent doom Ami was working hard to keep from showing on her face.

She had to lie to her mother now. Directly, to her face, and with no well thought-out story. She had to make something up right now, and hope it was good. With no idea what was going to come out, Ami opened her mouth...

“Hello!” a cheerful voice said, its source much lower than Ami’s throat. Ami felt a chill and looked down as Calypso continued, “You must be Ami-chan’s mother.”

“I am,” Rikou replied warmly, smiling in a manner Ami recalled vividly from her childhood. Adults often looked down on children—and there were more than a few doctors who looked down on *everybody*—but here was a smile that told a child he or she was being acknowledged as a full person in his or her own right, as important and worthy of respect as any grown-up. That smile, honed to easy perfection by years of use, accounted for much of Rikou’s success as a pediatrician. She liked and respected children, and they liked and respected her right back. “And you are?”

“Umiou Kari,” Calypso said. “Michiru’s cousin. Pleased to meet you.” She bowed as formally as she could with Ami’s hands maintaining a death grip on her shoulders.

“I am pleased to meet you as well, Umiou-san,” Rikou said, nodding respectfully. “Will you also be staying with us?”

“If you don’t mind having me, Mizuno-san, I would like that very much.”

“I’d be delighted, Umiou-san. And please, call me Rikou.”

“I will if you call me Kari-chan.”

“It’s a deal, Kari-chan.”

“Thank you, Rikou-san.” Caly bowed again, then grinned, broke away from Ami, and rushed over to collect Hotaru and drag her back inside.

“What a polite young lady she is,” Rikou said, watching ‘Kari’ disappear into the house. She glanced at Michiru, smiled, and added, “Or was that just for my benefit?”

“A little of each, Mizuno-san,” came the response. “She *can* be very polite, but she’s usually much more exuberant. And you have to be very, very careful around her when she wants something, because she’ll take it any way she can.” Michiru sighed, ‘best friend’ feeling coming across perfectly disguised as ‘older cousin’ feeling. “I also ought to warn you that she and I have a very immature tendency to get into shrieking matches with each other. It isn’t something I’m proud of...”

“You don’t have any reason to be ashamed, Kaioh-san. You have to care about someone a great deal for them to draw that kind of passion out of you.”

“Yes,” Michiru agreed, looking over at Haruka and recalling the encounter at the mall, when she had gone into a brief, screaming rage after the first of the hybrids had thrown Uranus through a display window. To judge by her sudden blush and hasty glance in the other direction, Haruka must have remembered it as well.

Rikou noticed the by-play and smiled at it before going back to the car and popping the trunk. “Ami, has there been any word from the others?”

“Ah... not yet, kaachan,” Ami replied slowly, shaking off the distracted daze that Calypso’s act had thrown her into. “Why?”

“Just wondering how many we should expect for dinner,” Rikou said, pulling a couple of grocery bags out of the back of the vehicle. “And what to cook.”

“That’s my department, Rikou-san,” Makoto said. She had one arm around a large bag and was getting a second from the back seat.

“Sorry, Mako-chan,” Rikou apologized. “Force of habit.” She headed for the house, while the other girls came over to help with the food.

“Okay,” Makoto asked quietly, “*what* the hell is Calypso doing?”

“Meeting my mother,” Ami said wearily. “She was looking forward to it until that mess at the apartment this afternoon. I should have realized that if she couldn’t come with us as my cat, she’d try another way.”

“But as Michiru’s cousin?” ChibiUsa said. “And don’t give me that look,” she added, as they all did. “*I* didn’t have any choice.”

“Maybe Calypso thought she didn’t, either,” Michiru said speculatively. “If she wanted to *meet* Mizuno-san, Caly needed to appear as something she’d acknowledge as a living being, not just as another inanimate object.”

“That’s probably why she did it,” Ami agreed as they turned towards the house, laden down with a mix of heavily stuffed paper and weight-stretched plastic bags. “Not to mention that if I’d used my telepathic abilities around her at any time within the last couple of hours, I’d likely have seen this coming—a point I’m sure Caly’s going to rub my nose in to make me use those abilities more often.”

*You’d better believe it, sister,* Calypso said from inside the house ahead of them.

 

# 

_(The screen fades in to the sound of slow, sleepy breathing, and the occasional flip of a page. Artemis and Ryo are sitting on a park bench together, the cat curled up and dozing, the young man reading.)_

**Ryo**   _(not looking up)_ : Artemis, you’re up.

**Artemis** : Zzzz... n’uh? Wazzat?

_(Still not looking up, Ryo points at the camera.)_

**Ryo** : It’s time for you to dazzle us with your ethical wisdom.

**Artemis**   _(going back to sleep)_ : You do it.

**Ryo** : It’s not in my contract.

**Artemis**   _(opening an eye)_ : Eh? How’d you manage that?

**Ryo** : I have my ways.

_(Cut to a shot of the youma Bunbou looming menacingly over a couple of sweating lawyers.)_

**Artemis** : Riiiight...  _(Yawns, stretches, and sits up.)_  Oh, well. Today’s episode illustrates—at some length, I might add—the usefulness and importance of communication. Specifically, talking, although body language, electronic media, and telepathy all got some time as well. And of course, reading. You’ve got to have good basic skill in *most* of these to get by in life, and the better you are with them, the more places you can go. Having a vocabulary limited to movie one-liners and quasi-pronounceable slang such as “l33t” just isn’t going to cut it, especially not when it comes to major efforts at communication—such as this story, for instance.

**Ryo** : There’s another thread running through the story besides the importance of language, but if I gave it away, it would spoil the fun.

**Artemis** : I thought you said you weren’t going to do this.

**Ryo** : I never said that...

_(Fade to black.)_

06/03/03

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

Three words for you all: Writer’s. Block. SUCKS!

My extended apologies to everybody for the delay on this one. I had to rewrite it three times before things started to click, and the pace was not helped by my finding too much new fanfiction to read online...

Sigh. I like to read, I like to write. I wish to heaven that I was capable of doing both at once.

Those who have recently emailed me asking for progress reports, but not received them—now you know why. Also, congratulations and best wishes go out to Portia Allen, a reader who is expecting a baby in another couple of months. I shall endeavor to have more episodes available to help you to make it through the next couple of months.

In future episodes:  
—Traditional Senshi vacation (ie, monsters coming out of the woodwork);  
—The new school year lurks just around the corner; and  
—My humble homage to Godzilla movies.

Okay. Onward to #33!


	33. You Try To Take A Day Off, And Just Look At What Happens

# 

Even setting aside its tremendous age and the fact that it had been built with equal measures of science and sorcery, there was no existing feat of architectural engineering anywhere on the planet that was quite like the Imperial City of Atlantis.

Essentially shaped like a gigantic disk, its outer edge rose higher off the ground than a hundred-story skyscraper, while the face was literally kilometers across. Most of the external surface was smooth and level, but the top of the city-structure was a series of circular elevations and depressions, arranged one within the next. These three thick rings were unbroken except at their north ends, where a relatively narrow ‘valley’ cut through them on its way to the circular mesa that formed the hub, and on their south sides, where the reverse was true and a wedge-shaped platform joined all the rings to the center.

Oceanic debris had covered the entire surface, but it was possible to see that the outermost and innermost edges of each of the three broad circles were covered by hundreds of once-beautiful mansions. The space in between these sub-structures formed another series of three rings, joined below and broken above, but whatever had been in that zone was long since gone, leaving only a flat surface buried in sand and the occasional deep-sea life-form.

Though it was trapped in darkness and half-covered by the liquid-pulverized dust of ages, the top level’s likeness to the Imperial symbol would still have been immediately evident to any observer.

Before the Fall, this uppermost sector had been the home of the Great Houses. The center was the site of the palace and the mansions of the seven great families—Aquila, Draco, Imperator, Istar, Nyx, Stone, Triton—while each of the lesser Houses had its residence on the appropriate outer ring. The manors had the same kind of elegant sprawl that could be found in the private retreats of nobles from later empires, only with a far more vertical design; each house rose two or three floors from the surface of its respective ring, not counting towers, and then had five or more ’underground’ levels. The empty space in the midst of the many homes had once been an enormous park-like landscape, and the deep channels between the larger segments had held a lake, which poured over the north side in a roaring waterfall. The entire sector had been shielded by a dome of energy, which could block out everything from sunlight and cold weather to a falling meteor or a determined assault by a fair-sized fleet. Like so much else in the city, that shield had been knocked out in the chaos of the Fall, and when Atlantis sank, the homes of the Lords were pulverized.

In hindsight, the shield’s failure was for the best. The age-old city’s architects had anticipated the need to physically seal off different sections of the arcology, and the moment the barrier fell, immense emergency doors locked into place at all levels. While the top sector was all but destroyed, the internal compartments survived the Fall and the subsequent millennia of crushing submersion more or less intact. Had the barrier been up, it might very well have been able to withstand the tremendous pressure of the icy depths—and then when it failed because of the steadily declining power, an unthinkable quantity of water would have hit the unprotected top of the city like a meteor.

Still, as she exited her quarters and moved quietly down the hall that night, Lady Istar could not help but reflect how much easier it would have been for her to make these trips to the Hall of Stars if she did not have to creep past the rooms of a dozen of her fellows. Her body’s need for sleep had finally caught up with her a few days ago, and after two nights of forced absence, she was eager to return to her private project.

However, the lady was not in such a hurry that she forgot to keep her eyes, ears, and mind open. She was well past the last of the apartments when her telepathic sense alerted her to the presence of another mind, in the arboretum that was located just up ahead. Somewhat annoyed at the delay, Laraea paused and considered her options. Go back and risk being overheard, stay put and wait...

“Hello?” a boyish voice called out. “Is someone there?”

Laraea recognized the voice, and knew immediately she wasn’t going to be able to get by undetected. She shook her head briefly and then moved forward into the chamber with the speaker, a pale young man in his mid-teens who wore a jet-black mantle trimmed in royal blue.

“Oh,” the young lord said, his dark eyes blinking once. “Good evening, Lar -I mean, Lady Istar.” He bowed once, quick and a bit unsteady.

“Good evening, Lord Nyx,” Laraea replied with a more practiced nod. “Am I disturbing you?”

“No, no,” Lord Nyx answered quickly. “I was just having trouble sleeping, so I decided to take a walk.” He gestured towards the flowers that filled the room. The Lords adhered to a busy schedule these days, but they had a little spare time here and there, and some had taken up gardening in a handful of the city’s many arboretums to help themselves cope with the difficult circumstances they were caught in.

“Our Lord Archmage had me working nights for the last couple of weeks,” the youthful nobleman added. “I guess I’m not quite back on the regular sleeping clock yet. Um... and you?”

“A slight touch of insomnia,” Lady Istar replied.

“I hope it passes.”

“I’m sure it will. But thank you.” Laraea couldn’t help a small smile, and as soon as Lord Nyx saw it, he blushed and looked away.

Not yet sixteen at the time of the Fall, Erebus Nyx was by some nine or ten years the youngest of all the five hundred individuals that had returned to the lost city. He had inherited the slender, fine-featured physique which was one of the distinguishing traits of his House, and that combined with his age also made him one of the smallest of the Atlanteans. Even most of the women were taller or stronger, which set the young lord at an understandable disadvantage in any discussion, even before his relative lack of experience with court life could come into play. Given his age, size, and shy and introspective demeanor, many of the older Lords regarded Erebus as a little brother. Most of the Ladies, however, did not.

As a rule, the descendants of House Nyx were somewhere in the middle ground of good looks. Erebus’s father had been fairly typical of the family line, but the woman he married was a renowned beauty, and while their son retained the jet-black hair and deep blue eyes of his father’s blood, he took after his mother in almost every other respect. Far from being merely handsome, Erebus was beautiful; if he’d had four or five years to get used to court life and develop his confidence, he would have been an utter heartbreaker, but as it stood, he was absolutely no match for the young Ladies. Erebus tended to blush five or six times just trying to speak to a woman—very noticeable blushes, in light of his normally white skin—and the Ladies did their best to encourage such reactions. He was just so... cute.

Laraea was passingly fond of Erebus herself, but she made it a point never to go too far, or to let her guard down around him. As sweetly innocent as the young man was, he was still a Lord, in full command of his ancestral magic—and the power of House Nyx was the power of darkness. Erebus already had ten years’ worth of study in the magics of the dark element; of all those in the city, only Archon came close to having such experience in dark magic, and the master mage did not have the boy-Lord’s natural affinity. Under the right circumstances, shy young Erebus could become an exceptionally dangerous individual. Lady Istar would much prefer to be on his good side if that ever happened.

“What were you working on?” she inquired politely.

“Huh? O-oh. Master Archon had me cannibalizing the biomatter constructs we’d been using and converting them into a reserve of dark energy for the next mission. He would have done it himself, but he had his hands full overseeing the production of the new units and nexus.”

Lady Istar frowned. “And that took you all of two weeks?”

“Oh, yes,” Lord Nyx replied, nodding. “Elemental energy conversion can be very tricky. If you don’t get everything just right, you can lose all the energy you’re trying to acquire.”

“So I’ve been given to understand,” Laraea agreed. “I also happen to know that in the space of fourteen days—or nights—a mage with a reasonable amount of skill in dark magic could convert two or three thousand tons of raw material into energy.”

“You... don’t say.” Erebus scratched the back of his head and, right on cue, blushed. “Two or three thousand tons?” he asked weakly.

“Yes.” Suppressing an impulse to smile, Laraea added, “So why don’t you go ahead and tell me what you were really doing.”

“Um...” Lord Nyx glanced around, then turned back to Lady Istar and sheepishly asked, “Can you keep a secret?”

 

# 

It was early on Saturday morning. The clock radio showed it to be a quarter to six, and the sky outside was still dominated by the sinking, not-quite-full moon and the stars. A faint violet-blue glow far out over the ocean was the only hint at the approaching dawn.

On the second floor of the Mizuno beach house, a bedroom door swung silently open as a little girl with blue hair crept out and peeked around.

Although she looked and felt and was intending to act like a preadolescent human female, Calypso had not truly taken on human form. Doing so would have activated her latent genetics, forcing her into her true human body—the one that looked almost exactly like Ami would have at any given age. Nobody with eyes would have believed that such a person was Michiru’s cousin, least of all Rikou, so the Nereid was left with no option but to do this the tricky way.

Calypso had known before she started that keeping her real identity secret from Rikou would be a challenge, as she had been around the woman often enough to get a real appreciation of how sharp and observant she was, but posing as a human for the next few days without actually being one added a new level of trickiness to the affair. All possible hints of her nonhuman nature would have to be suppressed: no casual levitation; no blue-tinted blushing; no shapeshifting for the sake of momentary convenience. It would be quite a task.

Actually, Calypso was rather looking forward to it.

Right now, though, she was just making certain that everyone upstairs was still asleep before she headed to the kitchen for breakfast. The only traces of consciousness she detected were in Ami, and it was much too early for the Senshi to muster the suspicions she had been forming about her sister’s "accidental" encounter with her mother. So instead of greeting the mental contact with irritation, Ami merely smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Grinning, Calypso headed downstairs.

A light was already on in the kitchen by the time she got there, and she entered the room to find Rei poking around in the pantry, her hair, the hem of her nightshirt, and the open ends of a housecoat all hanging about the backs of her knees as she reached up into one of the cupboards. Minako was sitting at the table, her head pillowed on her arms, seemingly asleep.

Without turning around, Rei said, “Good morning, Calypso.”

“Good morning, Rei. How long did you know it was me?”

“Not until you hit the stairs. Even Luna can’t walk on them without getting a creak out of the second and sixth steps.”

“Ergh,” Calypso replied, wrinkling her nose. “Missed something already. Well, I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for mentioning it.”

“You’re welcome.” Rei pulled a box of cereal down and filled a bowl, then turned around and leaned back against the counter, eating the cereal dry. On her second crunchy spoonful, she noticed Calypso’s curious stare, and matched it with a questioningly lifted eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Calypso apologized. “It’s just that Vestia would never have done anything like sit in the kitchen in her nightclothes and eat breakfast almost straight from the package.”

Rei thought about that, and smiled around a mouthful of cornflakes at the thought.

“She would have died on the spot from pure embarrassment,” the young priestess chuckled. “Although to be fair, I don’t think I’d do much better if I walked into a place with twice the size and ten times the population of this house while I was wearing one of those sheer silk nighties Vestia always favored.”

Calypso tilted her head, considering that statement. “You’ve been trying Vestia’s suggestion about meditating to recover your memories?”

Rei made a face. “When I can find the time, yes. But that hasn’t been easy to do recently. If I’m not training or in the middle of a fight or attending to my duties at the shrine, I’m poring over the Book trying to find answers about long-lost Weapons or what to do about a ghost that doesn’t act like a normal ghost.” Rei sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t suppose necromancy is among your many talents?” she asked with halfhearted good humor.

“Not really. I can *perceive* astral and elemental energies, so a ghost would normally show up very clearly to my senses. The trouble is that Tokyo is so thick with both kinds of energy that it’s hard for me to perceive such things clearly. It doesn’t help that your shrine is built right on top of a nexus; once I get beyond the light-spectrum and into the elemental, Hikawa is just a blob of white noise.”

“So unless or until this restless spirit decides to show itself, you’re as blind to it as the rest of us.”

“That would appear to be the case.” Calypso frowned. “What really puzzles me about your haunter is why Ami hasn’t been able to detect it by now. I can understand how the strong fire energy centered on Hikawa might interfere with my senses or the water-based magic in Michiru’s mirror, but the Caduceus is specifically designed to compensate for such situations. It’s very peculiar for it to be confounded like this.”

The Nereid shook her head and walked over to the counter. Hopping off the floor, she hauled herself up with her arms and stood on the counter to get a glass and a small bowl from the higher cupboard. She sat down next to the sink and proceeded to fill up the glass and rinse out the bowl, then set the bowl aside and scooted over.

“What *are* you doing?” Rei asked in confusion.

“The same as you. Getting breakfast.” The index finger on Calypso’s left hand had already thinned and extended into a flexible white cord, complete with a plug, which now snaked forward into the wall socket behind the toaster. Expecting to see a light show like the one the Nereid had put on while investigating the wiring in Michiru’s living room those weeks earlier, Rei quickly made sure no part of her or her clothing was in contact with the girl-shape seated on the counter.

“You don’t need to worry, Rei. I’ve done some fine tuning.” There was not so much as a hint of a disruption in Calypso’s adopted form as she raised her transformed finger and waggled it slightly at Rei. “Accommodating the design of the intended interface allows me to control the rate of energy intake and avoid any luminescent side effects while I feed. It’s much more efficient and convenient this way.”

“Don’t use words like that at this hour,” a muffled, bleary voice advised from between Minako’s hair and arms.

“I’m sorry, Minako,” Calypso said, not missing a beat. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Hmmph.” Blue eyes that were red around the edges became visible long enough to glare at Rei. “It’d be a nice change. Miss Talks-In-Her-Sleep over there kept me up half the night.”

“I already said I was sorry,” Rei replied in an irritated tone.

“Feh,” came the response, as Minako’s head sank back down atop her arms. "If it happens again tonight, I’m kicking you off the couch. Even a Love Goddess needs her beauty sleep. In fact"—she looked up again and pointed in Rei’s general direction—“as the ranking officer here and as a divine being speaking to a miko, I *order* you to schedule some dreamless nights for yourself.”

What might have been a vaguely humorous remark at a more decent hour fell completely flat in the kitchen air, sparking a frown from Rei and a near-automatic reaction from Calypso. The combination of her smaller-than-life perspective and the presence of the Senshi of Venus and Mars triggered memories of being in the same situation between Ishtar and Vestia, which in turn set off the anti-squabbling mechanism a much younger Nereid had developed for dealing with those two: talking her mouth off.

“You had a bad dream, Rei-chan?” The sweetly concerned little-girl voice worked on Rei exactly as it had on Vestia, pulling her attention from the annoying blonde at the table.

“No, not really a *bad* dream. Just a weird one.” She glanced over at Minako. “Blame it on the company.”

“I doubt that was it,” Calypso said as a dark expression formed on Minako’s hair-shadowed face. “Michiru had trouble sleeping last night as well. I seriously doubt Hotaru was the reason, and I wouldn’t care to think that it was *my* fault.”

“What’s that about Michiru?” Minako asked, looking away from Rei with a slight furrow of worry on her brow. Calypso waved both hands reassuringly, her plug-finger tapping against the countertop in the process.

“It’s okay. She wasn’t having any nightmares or anything; I would have known. I think she was just having some trouble getting used to her new sleeping arrangements. She was fine after Hotaru-chan crawled into bed next to her.”

“Awww.” In spite of her dour and nigh-senseless mood, Minako smiled. "That’s sweet.” When Calypso covered a smile and a giggle, the blonde mustered the energy to inquire what was so funny.

“Oh, I was looking around last night to make sure everyone was resting comfortably. A while after Hotaru had snuggled up with Michiru, I checked in on Usagi and ChibiUsa, and they were doing the same thing, just with a lot more snoring. Then I checked Ami and Rikou, and *they’d* fallen asleep in *exactly* the same position. Granted, they were on different beds, but you could have taken Ami off that futon and put her right next to her mother with no problem.”

The small sound of amusement that Minako was able to produce got cut short by her head’s return trip to the cushion of her waiting arms.

“And on that note, I think it’s time for you to go back to bed for a few hours.” Unplugging her finger with a casual tug and shapeshifting it back into a normal human digit, Calypso slid down from the counter, marched over to Minako, and pulled imperiously at her pajama sleeve. “Come on. Up.”

“Love to. Can’t. Too tired.”

“Yes, yes. Come on.” In a process that bore some resemblance to an avalanche, Calypso dragged the much taller Minako off of her chair, somehow keeping the blonde on her own two feet and steering her towards the pull-out sofa in the living room.

Rei shook her head and finished off her cereal. She had just put the box away when Calypso returned.

“No trouble?” the priestess asked, putting her bowl next to the sink with Calypso’s.

“Minako let me give her a little nudge,” Calypso answered, tapping the side of her head by way of emphasis. She took up her glass and drank all the water in one long gulp. “She’ll sleep for another two or three hours, as long as nobody makes too much noise in the interim.” After looking at the dishes on the counter, Calypso quickly dug out a spoon from one of the drawers and put it in her bowl, completing her falsified evidence of a meal.

“I think we’re safe there,” Rei was saying. “Usagi and ChibiUsa probably won’t wake up for at least that long, and the others a-" She broke off and yawned. “Excuse me.”

“Am I going to have to put *you* back to bed as well?” Calypso asked with a grin.

“Little girls should be more respectful of their elders,” Rei advised dryly. “And no. I’ll finish waking up once I’ve gone through my morning meditation and exercises and had a shower.” Closing her housecoat, Rei walked towards the hall. “I’m going to get started on that. If you need me, I’ll be on the back porch.”

“Um... Rei?”

Rei stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Would you mind if I joined you this morning?” The expression of shy uncertainty added to the effectiveness of Calypso’s childish disguise. “I’ll understand if you’d prefer to be alone, of course, it’s just that I’ve never seen an ocean sunrise before. Not on Earth.”

“It’s okay, Caly,” Rei said, smiling. “I don’t mind a little company. Just promise not to make too much noise, okay?”

“I promise.”

The distant glow in the sky had added shades of red, rosy pink, and lighter blue, although the sun itself had yet to appear when Calypso stepped out onto the porch. Rei followed and folded her robe beneath her legs as she knelt on the wooden deck, facing the sunrise; Calypso picked a spot a short distance away and sat down to watch the dawn.

Their timing was good. They had only been sitting there for five or six minutes before the edge of the daystar lifted above the sea, setting a sparkling fire loose along the surface of the waves. Clear of the interference in Tokyo, Calypso saw that piercing sliver of light surrounded by a radiant aura of incandescent white, smoldering red, and molten gold, elemental energy which threaded its way through the glowing aqua mist that filled the air above the ocean. Next to her, Rei’s aura swelled up like a flame as her Senshi essence drew a little extra strength from the light and heat of the new day.

Had she come across another source of elemental fire that strong, Calypso would have taken flight in every sense of the word, but the sense of Rei’s sharply focused mind negated any chance of danger. She was in total control of her power, and thus totally safe for even a creature possessing significant heat-sensitivity to be around.

Perhaps ten more minutes went by, unbroken by any sound except the slow rhythm of the wind and the waves, before Rei let out a slow breath and opened her eyes.

“Feel better?” Calypso asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“And the lack of a fire doesn’t bother you?”

“Not really. It’s definitely *different* without the fire, and being outdoors adds a certain degree of distraction I wouldn’t have to worry about inside, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Rei smiled again. “Besides, it’s kind of nice to be outside for a change. Maybe not as warm as I’m used to,” she added, shivering and drawing her housecoat more tightly shut as a breath of cool, moist sea air raised goosebumps along her arms and legs. “But really not that bad.”

Calypso opened her mouth to say something, then turned towards the house, sensing minds that she had been too focused on Rei and the dawn to notice. "Ami, Rikou, and Setsuna are up.”

“We’d better go back in and let them see us, then,” Rei replied. “Coming?” she asked, holding out a hand. Keeping up appearances, Calypso slid her small hand around Rei’s fingers and let her lead the way.

Unnoticed, the large raven that had been looking down from the roof this entire time now turned towards the heart of the seaside district and took wing, flying off in search of his breakfast.

 

# 

It was nine o’clock, and Makoto was yawning and rubbing at her heavy-lidded eyes as she tipped the watering can over her flowers. After a solid ten hours of sleep, she wasn’t really tired, but she wasn’t completely awake yet, either; Hotaru had prodded her out of bed and through a Dimension Door only a few minutes earlier, before bouncing off to inflict a similar wake-up call upon Usagi and ChibiUsa.

*It ought to be illegal to get people out of bed before they’re ready,* Makoto thought drowsily. *Or to enjoy it as much as that little rascal seems to.*

*...Makoto Makoto Makoto Makoto...*

“Oh hush,” Makoto said, pulling her free hand away from the bunch of vines it had drifted towards. “And stop trying to cheer me up. I *want* to be grouchy right now.”

The plants did not react to that declaration, as far as she could tell, and Makoto grunted in satisfaction and moved to water the next bloom, rubbing at a mild itch on her arm as she did so. She found it incomprehensible that the soft fabric of her pajamas would irritate her skin after a single night’s rest, when the sixteen segments of the Aegis—hard, electrically-charged, and perpetually pressed against her throat and collarbone for the past few weeks—provoked no such reaction.

The water ran out before the plants’ thirst did, so Makoto ambled over to the kitchen sink to refill the can, looking longingly in the direction of her bathroom as she waited. It was *so* tempting to have a shower right now, in the privacy of her own home rather than the crowded conditions of the beach house...

Shaking her head, Makoto shut off the tap and returned to finish giving her plants their morning drink. Despite her stated preference, she once again felt her grim funk slowly fade away in the face of the unthinking, unconditional affection coming from the overgrown flowers and the miniature tree.

“Disobedient little sprouts, aren’t you?” she murmured, putting a hand on the base of the tree and smiling.

*...Makoto Makoto Makoto Makoto...*

“Makoto?”

“Huh—OW!” Makoto clenched her empty hand into a fist, then looked angrily at the small scratch across her index finger. “Dammit...”

“Sorry,” Hotaru apologized, an embarrassed half-smile on her face as she stood in front of the Dimension Door.

“Not your fault,” Makoto replied, sucking on the tiny cut. It was an absolutely pitiful injury compared to many she’d sustained, but like most tiny wounds, the sting was disproportionately large. Fixing the tree with a narrow gaze, Makoto murmured, “I wasn’t asking for your help when I said I wanted to be in a grouchy mood, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. I think I’m going to have to trim the thorns back.”

“Oh. Okay. Here,” Hotaru said, coming forward with her hands out. “Let me have a look at that for you.”

“That’s okay, Hotaru,” Makoto replied, raising her arm in a gesture of polite refusal. “It’s just a scratch. It’ll heal fine on its own. I’ve stuck myself on thorns and splinters a few times before,” she added, seeing that Hotaru was not totally convinced. “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.” Makoto went into the hall and put the emptied water can back in the closet, then returned. “Is the bathroom over there free?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” The tall brunette ruffled her hair with one hand and grimaced distastefully at the feel of it. “Because I need a shower.”

They went through the Dimension Door and back into the den, coming out in a mildly claustrophobic space with a bookshelf to the left, a desk to the right, one of two blanket-covered sleeping mats right at their feet, and an apparently solid wall behind them.

“You’re sure you want me to leave it open?” Hotaru asked as she stepped over the nearest mat, which happened to be Makoto’s. “You know the Shield won’t stop anything other than light and sound from going through.”

“It’s a better idea than the two of us trying to sneak up to this room two or three times every day without Rikou-san noticing. She’s not the sort of person to go poking around in someone else’s privacy, so as long as Setsuna and I remember to make our beds and handle our own laundry, she shouldn’t have any reason to come in here.”

Hotaru nodded. “Don’t take too long in the shower,” she advised. “Minako went jogging a little while ago. She’ll probably want the bathroom when she gets back.” She left the room, letting Makoto get on with her search for a change of clothes.

Back on the other side of the trans-spatial portal, Makoto’s living room was quiet and still, disturbed only by the muffled sounds of traffic and the slam of a door closing in the next apartment. The beads of water she had sprinkled along the leaves and stems of her flowers gleamed in the sunlight passing through the window, a good substitute for the spring rain and morning dew that could not reach the plants indoors.

Many of those droplets slipped and fell to the floor as every last leaf in the room abruptly rustled. The sapling gave forth a slow, high-pitched creak, as if it were an old tree swaying in the breeze, and then a single tiny shoot emerged from the fringe of soil between the base of the sapling and the inner edge of the large flowerpot. The new growth shuddered to a halt a moment later, the tiny bud at its tip just barely out of the dirt.

In her room at the beach house, Makoto finished selecting her clothes for the day and headed for the bathroom, a towel in one hand and a bottle of shampoo in the other.

 

# 

A male figure stood alone atop the hill, white hair dancing in the mid-morning breeze as he leaned on the low brick wall that separated those using the road and sidewalk from a long, tumbling slide to the ground below.

Behind him, a motorcycle that had zipped past a moment earlier now returned, the engine idling as the driver guided the machine to a stop alongside the wall.

“Come here often?” the helmeted biker asked casually, leaning one elbow on the stony divider.

“Not as often as you do,” Artemis replied. “This makes the fifth time in the last two weeks, doesn’t it?”

“Somewhere around there,” Haruka agreed, pulling off her headgear and setting it on the wall. “Which begs the obvious question of how you knew that. Communicators?”

“And this.” Artemis tapped his forehead, causing his crescent-moon marking to flicker into view and then fade out again. “It lets me access the resources of the Lunar Archive more or less at will, somewhat like Ami does with her computer.”

“Handy.”

“Very.” They stood there for a time, listening to the sounds of the living city drift up on the breeze. “Is there some sort of significance to this place that makes you keep coming back to it?”

“Nah. Nothing deep, anyway. I like to find out-of-the-way places to sit and listen to the wind. This one just happens to be along one of my favorite driving routes.” Haruka glanced over at Artemis. “Of course, if you’ve been having that giant computer track me, you already knew that.”

“Everything but the part about the wind. I probably should have guessed that, though.”

“Probably. So, we’ve established my motives pretty well; what brings you up here?”

“You did, actually.” Turning away from the view, Artemis looked directly at Haruka. “Was there any particular reason why you decided to hang around town instead of staying at the beach? Or did you just do it to annoy Usagi and Minako?”

Haruka started to respond, then chuckled. “I didn’t even think of that,” she admitted, smiling in amusement. “But spoiling their first real shot at ’perfect attendance’ for one of these getaways *would* get those two miffed, wouldn’t it?”

“So you did have another reason.”

“A few, actually.”

“Care to talk about them?”

“No.”

The transformed cat shrugged. “Fair enough.” Haruka glanced at him, mildly surprised and quietly grateful that, where one of the girls—or Luna, for that matter—would most likely have pressed for an explanation, Artemis was willing to drop the subject.

They once again lapsed into silence.

“I’m assuming you’ve been left behind on these little excursions before,” Haruka finally said.

“Plenty of times,” Artemis agreed, nodding. “Frequently voluntarily. I don’t really care for sand in my paws and fur.”

“And what exactly does a cat do to pass all that time on his own?”

“Sleep. Eat. Read. Wander around and make sure the city isn’t invaded while the girls are away.” He paused. “Sleep some more. You?”

“A lot more wandering, but otherwise, there hasn’t been much difference so far.” Eyeing Artemis speculatively, Haruka said, “Care to see what sort of diversion we can find?”

“Got anything particular in mind?”

“I thought I’d tear up the road a bit, maybe find some cute girls to flirt with. Go where the wind takes me, so to speak.”

“Sounds like a plan.” There was a blur as Artemis straightened up, plucking a sleek white helmet from empty air. It was thinner and less rounded than the riding helmets Haruka was familiar with, looking nearly as light as some of the headgear worn by skaters and bicycle-riders even with its face-masking front.

“Okay,” she said, as Artemis pulled the thing on, somehow getting all his hair tucked away inside the helmet, “you’re not going to tell me you went out and bought a helmet just on the off-chance that you’d need to ride.”

“If there were helmets even half as effective as this available today, Luna and I would have had you all buy one for combat.” At the press of a concealed switch on the side of the helmet, a crescent-shaped visor slid down to conceal the rest of Artemis’s face behind silver-tinted translucency. “With this on, my head could take a direct hit from an artillery shell and not get scratched. Of course, without the rest of the armor, the force would rip my head off, but...” He shrugged.

“That better not be a comment on my driving skills,” Haruka warned as she resettled her own helmet on her head.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Artemis produced a pair of white gloves and slipped them on as well, then tapped the side of his helmet twice more, causing it and the gloves to shift from bright white to soft black. Catching Haruka’s look, he explained, “I might need to use it for real some time. No point taking chances.”

“Sure you don’t want to do any more accessorizing, Mister GQ?” Haruka asked as she guided her bike out from against the wall and turned it into the lane.

“No, the full suit’s a bit much for this.” The bike settled on its shocks as Artemis climbed on, and he looked down at it. “Are you sure that this thing can handle both of us? I’m a lot heavier than your usual passengers.”

“Yeah, I noticed. I’m thinking it’s too much tuna.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Uh-huh.” Haruka flipped her own visor down and revved up the engine. “Just hang on, tubby tabby.”

 

# 

It was an informal and private meeting that took place in the royal quarters that afternoon. Talos stood watch in the hall with a pair of guardsmen, but most of the apartment was empty; Janus and Jenna were seated at the desk in the study, while Lady Istar stood calmly before them, weathering their perplexed double half-gaze with the same composure that she did everything else.

“Let me see if I understand correctly,” the prince said as he bowed forward slightly and rubbed at his side of the shared visage’s forehead. “We’re in a state of the utmost emergency, with a bare minimum of manpower, resources, and time, and you’re asking permission to send people to that city to conduct a long-term reconnaissance operation aimed at improving our *cultural, historical, and psychological* understanding of its people? And on this hypothetical mission, which would normally be undertaken by a group of specially-trained individuals from our sadly defunct intelligence service, you want to send Erebus Nyx?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Janus stared at Lady Istar. It was Jenna who said, “If I didn’t know you were serious, Laraea, I’d be laughing right now.”

The Lady smiled briefly and explained. “Our information on this era is still very limited. We know what the planetary geography, ecology, and environment are like, and we have acquired significant data regarding the capabilities of prevailing scientific, mystical, and military institutions, but it’s by no means complete. We also have extremely minimal information on the people themselves. It isn’t a concern for us now, but what about *after* the Rise? When all is said and done, we will need the people of this world as much as we do the energy, if we’re ever to reestablish the Empire. We dare not try to fight them; as superior as our capabilities are, we aren’t invincible, and we’re outnumbered by more than ten thousand to one. How many old powers like those of the Senshi still exist in the world, unknown to the general populace? How many new ones have developed? And how many of them will side against us if we try to conquer their world?”

“Your argument isn’t without merit, Lady Istar,” Janus replied, gesturing placatingly with his hand. “But why now? And why Nyx?”

“Several reasons. For one, Lord Nyx can be spared. His skills are only of moderate use in the repair effort, and for all his power and potential, he’s still too inexperienced to send on an energy-gathering mission.”

“But not too inexperienced to handle something as delicate as infiltrating a foreign society?” the prince asked skeptically.

“We have the resources to assist him in that respect, Your Highness. The watcher unit showed us how to manipulate this society’s information systems without being detected, and Archon’s apprentice could provide us with a firsthand insight into the culture. *She* is another reason why I suggest Lord Nyx. He is young enough that he could associate with the girl without drawing attention to himself.” Laraea paused, smiled, and added, “No more than he normally does, at any rate.”

Janus did not reply to that, but Jenna chuckled.

“Lord Nyx’s age would give him another slight advantage,” Lady Istar continued. “None of us have Japanese features, but if Lord Nyx were to make some errors early on, they might be excused due to his youth and obvious foreign origins. Any of the rest of us might be held to a different standard, due to our greater age.”

“We could use disguises,” Janus began, but almost immediately, the shared head from side-to-side.

“Not a good idea with a Mercury who has access to the Caduceus,” Jenna said. “We’d have to forego mind-shields for the same reason, which means that whoever was sent would need to be able to conceal his or her mind from telepathic detection by other means.”

“He or she would also have to be someone Your Highnesses could trust with knowledge of the Senshi,” Lady Istar added. “That alone rules out most of the mentalists and the lesser Lords. Archon is too indispensable here, and Lilith... is Lilith, and unsuitable for different reasons. Lord Nyx is very nearly the only candidate left.”

“We could just send you,” Janus pointed out.

“Not on a long-term assignment,” Jenna said firmly. Her brother blinked.

“You may have overlooked my family magic, Prince Janus,” Laraea offered politely. “It has a history of restlessness, and I cannot control it when I sleep without the use of external magic.”

“Ergh.” Janus made a half grimace. “You’re right, I did forget about that. But then, I never fully understood your House magic to begin with. Alright, so you can’t conduct a long-term study on your own. I still don’t see why Lord Nyx is so vital.”

Lady Istar paused. “Truthfully, Your Highness... he is not utterly indispensable. I had been considering a mission of this sort for quite some time before I thought to include him. But I believe it would be beneficial to send Lord Nyx, for reasons besides his usefulness to the mission.”

“And these are?”

“I... spoke with Erebus yesterday,” Laraea said carefully. “And I consulted the duty roster afterwards. He is a Lord of the First Circle and arguably one of the most gifted among us, but he has not been assigned a significant task since our return, and it bothers him. A reconnaissance operation would not be overly significant for the Rise, per se, but it would prove invaluable *after.* That is the other reason I suggest this to you now, Your Highness. We have suffered some setbacks, and there is a certain collective concern as to whether or not we can achieve our goals. Sending Lord Nyx on this mission would allow him to contribute something and would also reassure the Lords that *you* believe we are still capable of completing the Rise on schedule.”

Both twins sat in silence for a long moment. At last, Janus said, “When would you wish to begin?”

“As soon as possible, Your Highness. I would need to consult with Archon and his apprentice before I could form a reasonable plan.”

“Very well, then, Lady Istar. Proceed with your preparations, and contact us again when you have a workable strategy.”

Lady Istar nodded and, shortly thereafter, departed the Imperial quarters. Several minutes and several large hallways later, Lord Nyx appeared out of a side passage.

“How did it go?” the young man asked with quiet eagerness as he fell into step alongside her.

“Better than I had expected.”

“Does that mean-"

“I still have information to obtain from Archon,” Lady Istar said calmly, trying not to sound—or feel—too much like a cautionary older sister. "Their Highnesses will *consider* the mission when I present them with a more detailed outline. In the meantime, Lord Nyx, I would advise that you bring a stop to your extracurricular studies. It wouldn’t do for someone to find you accessing data on that city *before* you’ve officially become aware of this potential operation.”

The exuberant smile faded. “I understand,” Lord Nyx said in a sober voice. "And thank you, Lady Istar.”

Laraea nodded. They said nothing else, and the younger noble took a left at the next junction, while Lady Istar continued on ahead.

So far, so good. She had at least tentative approval for a scouting mission, and it seemed that no one was aware of her private studies or intense personal interest in the matter. Now she just had to find Archon when he had a spare moment and convince him to allow her to speak with his apprentice.

That, the Lady suspected, might take some doing.

 

# 

On the whole, Rikou’s day had been one of the most remarkable in her recent (and not-so recent) experience. She’d gone into this trip expecting a lot of awkward moments around her daughter’s friends because of her “mom status,” and the fact that she wasn’t used to talking to people as herself instead of as a doctor, but things were working out surprisingly smoothly. Not that there weren’t some awkward moments, but on the whole, they were far fewer than Rikou had been prepared for, and not nearly as embarrassing as she’d feared.

It helped that the girls themselves were so comfortable around each other. Even when Rei and Usagi bickered, when the others had to chase Ami away from her books, or when Minako said something that clearly stumped the lot of them; even at those times, the connections between the girls were almost tangible. Even though Rikou couldn’t understand when or how such a diverse group of girls had become so close, it was clear that they *were* a group. She still had some rough spots to overcome with most of them as individuals, but as a whole, they had already accepted her.

Usagi, Minako, and ChibiUsa were no problem. It was impossible not to like Usagi when you spent a lot of time around her, and the other two were similar, while being completely different. Rikou suspected ChibiUsa was quite a bit wiser than her cousin had been at the same age, and certainly, she had a more mature bearing. In her case, though, the maturity was a well-rehearsed act put on by the girl beneath, a girl much more like Usagi than she evidently wanted to let on; when Usagi acted mature... well, it wasn’t even an act. She just did it. Minako was somewhere in between the two, swinging from the energetic matchmaker to the calmer advisor, serious even when she was at her craziest.

Dealing with Makoto was also exceptionally easy, due no doubt to the fact that Rikou had had so much contact with her since Ami moved into the apartment with her. Rei was more difficult; she had a lot of the same pride and forcefulness as Makoto, and without as much common ground or experience with Rikou. The doctor could tell that the young priestess was used to keeping people at arm’s length, whether in her capacity as a spiritual advisor or in more personal dealings. She did the same thing herself, wielding her professional demeanor almost like a shield to maintain her privacy, and she was aware how difficult it was to set aside such defensive habits and let people get close.

In another time and place, Rikou would have been sorely tempted to take Rei aside and advise her on the kind of life she could expect if she kept pushing people away, but the first evening made it clear that someone else had beaten her to it. Rikou was glad to see that; she just regretted that she had to *hear* it as well.

Kari and Hotaru were delightful, smiling and bouncing around the house all day playing games, sometimes just on their own but far more often with someone (or several someones) they’d dragged into it. They also sat quietly (most frequently with Michiru) and talked seriously, or listened patiently, displaying a maturity well beyond their years. Rikou had seen such behavior many times during her years in the pediatrics ward, from children who had been through events children shouldn’t have to worry about—and she’d seen it at home during the last portion of her marriage and the years that followed. She knew the source of Hotaru’s accelerated emotional maturity; the disaster at the Mugen Academy had been all over the news, and the doctor had had a passing familiarity with the place and its owner/headmaster, as she’d considered enrolling Ami there some years ago. Kari’s grown-up behavior was harder to pin down, though it was entirely possible that she had some of the same sensitivities as her older cousin. Rikou did not pry; she was just happy to see that, whatever their troubles, both girls were coping well.

That line of thought could also be applied to Setsuna, who seemed to be perfectly at ease despite everything she had been through in the past few months. Rikou was glad to hear it, but she was also on edge around the woman, fearful of making a second mistake like the one that had pushed Setsuna into her brief depression those weeks ago. If not for that overlarge hurdle, Rikou thought she could really enjoy Setsuna’s company, but neither of them seemed entirely sure how to go about getting past that. Rikou’s social life had been rather curtailed over the last several years, and Setsuna had even less experience to draw on. Having the other girls around to act as go-betweens and conversation starters helped immensely.

Right now, they were sitting in the living room, watching as Minako pressed Setsuna for details on her “situation" with the handsome young Doctor Yotogi, despite repeated objections that there was no such situation.

“Now, come on, Setsuna,” Minako said patiently. “I remember the way he was looking at you that day you checked out. And Ami told us all about how he’s been asking after you. You can’t tell me that there isn’t *something* there.”

“I can, in fact,” Setsuna replied. She was bearing up well under the pressure, looking no more than mildly flustered where most people would have been reduced to stammering admittals—or tears—by Minako’s insistent prodding.

“What, not even after he rescued you from that fall out of the elevator?”

“Minako, I made a fool of myself, and I nearly knocked him through a wall doing it.” Setsuna’s voice was almost plaintive. “I’d hardly call that a good basis for any kind of relationship.”

“Depends on the relationship,” Minako said. “Some guys go for strong women-"

“Be sure to send one my way when you find him,” Makoto put in.

“-and more to the point, Yotogi-san was a gentleman about the whole thing. He’s good-looking, he’s smart, he’s got a good job, and it’s clear he’s interested in you.”

“Maybe,” Setsuna answered steadily. “Minako, Lucas is very nice, but-"

“You used his given name,” the blonde pointed out. As Setsuna finally lost her composure and started to blush, Minako grinned and added, “Now, why would you do something like that?”

“Okay, Minako,” Hotaru interrupted, “that’s enough.” The little girl was sitting between Setsuna and the blonde, and she now poked Minako in the ribs. “Stop picking on Setsuna-mama, or I’ll whomp you even faster the next time we play.”

Minako’s eyelid twitched. Hotaru had trounced her repeatedly in a series of Tournament Fighter Gods IV bouts this afternoon, defeating her favorite fighter—the Love Goddess, naturally—at least once with every character in the game. And that included a Love Goddess versus Love Goddess matchup, which Minako was still struggling to understand.

“I thought Michiru was your mother, Hotaru,” Rikou said.

“She is.” Hotaru looked across the room to where Calypso had claimed Michiru’s lap half an hour ago. “But Setsuna is too, and right now I think I love her more, because she doesn’t let certain nasty sneaky people take her away from me.”

“You are just a sore loser, Hotaru,” Caly replied, deliberately snuggling closer to Michiru, who sighed and looked disapprovingly at both girls.

“Am not,” Hotaru protested.

“Are too.”

“Stop that, Kari,” Michiru chided.

“She started it.”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

Smiling, Rikou glanced at Ami. “And to think, you used to be sad about not having a brother or sister.”

“I’m much wiser now,” Ami said.

Calypso started to say something, then humphed and hunched down to pout. Across the room, Hotaru stuck out her tongue, until Setsuna tapped her on the head as a mild reproof.

“Take note, Usagi,” Rikou said with a wry look at both little girls. “You may want to stop after one. Large families are nice, but there’s something to be said for a small family as well. At the very least, you get more sleep.”

“That would be important,” Rei noted blandly.

“I’d have to talk about that with Mamo-chan,” Usagi replied, after looking darkly at Rei. “I think, though, that it’ll be a while before I want to go through *this* again.” She put a hand on her stomach.

*Yes,* ChibiUsa thought, pressing her lips together to hide a smile as she thought about her mother’s second pregnancy, some seven years—and over nine centuries—in the future. *Quite a while.*

“There are times when I wish I could just get it over with,” Usagi continued, twisting her engagement ring as she spoke. “Only... well...”

“Nervous?” Rikou guessed. The blonde nodded.

“What’s it like?” Usagi asked quietly. “I mean... I’ve asked Mom what it was like for *her* when Shingo and I were born, and she always says it wasn’t difficult... but I asked Dad about it, too, and he got this funny look and mumbled something about car insurance and being thankful for the drugs.”

“Ah.” Rikou’s mouth quivered in a small, quick smile, and she looked around the room to see that the girls were all either trading nervous glances or watching her. “Well...” She paused and glanced at Setsuna.

“It’s alright,” the younger woman said. “I’d like to hear it myself, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” Rikou sat back on the couch. “But my recollection is a little fuzzy. I’d seen my sister go through a long and difficult delivery a couple of years earlier, and I decided then and there that I wasn’t going through with a clear head if I could help it.”

“It hurts that much?” Minako asked.

“Anyone who claims it doesn’t hurt is either lying or has no idea what they’re talking about,” Rikou answered, “but it all depends. Some women are well suited to childbirth and have a relatively quick and easy time; others go through a lot of difficulty. My sister was in labor for almost six hours that time. My mother claimed that was normal for the women in our family, and I swear they were positively annoyed with me when my delivery lasted a little less than an hour.”

The other girls all looked at Ami, who was blushing. “That’s our Ami-chan,” Minako said with a faint grin. “Always getting things done in a fraction of the time everybody else needs.”

“Minako,” Ami objected. Her mother chuckled.

“Considering how soon she was crawling, walking, and reading, her father used to joke that she must have been terribly bored, being shut up in a small space with nothing to do for nine months.”

“Maybe that’s why they kick,” Usagi said. “Boredom.”

“That or as a comment on diet,” Rikou agreed. “I had to give up seafood when I was carrying Ami; it always started her kicking.”

“Usagi doesn’t seem to have that problem,” Rei said. Shrugging, she added, "I guess the poor kid inherited her appetite.”

“Now listen here, you mean old—hmmnph fumh mmph!” Usagi glared at ChibiUsa, whose hand was planted firmly across her mouth.

“I think it’s time for *some* of us to go to bed,” the younger girl said.

“That’s a good idea,” Calypso agreed with a nod. “You go ahead and take her upstairs.”

“I believe ChibiUsa meant more than just Usagi,” Michiru said.

“Oh, that’s okay. I’m not tired. You aren’t, are you, Hotaru?”

“Nope.” Hotaru smiled, the short exchange of angry words from a few moments ago seemingly forgotten.

Makoto yawned suddenly. Hotaru looked at her sourly just before, as a result of their oft-contagious nature, she also broke into a yawn. Usagi and Minako followed suit, and ChibiUsa seemed to be struggling to keep her mouth shut.

“Makoto,” Hotaru complained, rubbing her eyes. “Why did you have to do that? Now I *am* tired...”

The next minute involved a lot of people getting up and helping others who were suddenly too tired to do so on their own. By dint of clinging pleading and sleepy-eyed looks, Hotaru managed to convince Setsuna to carry her upstairs; Calypso immediately repeated the process with Michiru.

“You know you two are getting much too big for this,” Michiru said as she carried the Nereid’s light-as-air body to the foot of the staircase. Hotaru and Calypso both put on a great show of being half-asleep and did not respond.

Usagi looked around hopefully.

“For-GET it,” Rei said witheringly, even as she—with assistance from ChibiUsa—helped the disappointed blonde stand and start towards the stairs. Makoto was right behind them, covering another yawn, and Minako disappeared in the direction of the downstairs bathroom. Since Luna had dashed up the stairs ahead of Setsuna, Ami and Rikou were left with a few moments of privacy.

“First-day thoughts?” Ami asked her mother.

“I find myself deeply thankful that this place has two bathrooms,” Rikou answered humorously. Her smile turned wistful. “But truthfully, Ami... I envy you. I could never have done something like this at your age.”

Ami reached over and settled her free hand over her mother’s. “I couldn’t have done it either, kaasan. Not without Usagi.”

“I know.” Rikou looked wryly at her daughter. “You’re aware that your grades dropped almost five whole points right around the time that you met her? And then there was that study program in Germany that you passed up...”

“I had my reasons,” Ami protested. “And it’s not like my marks have gone downhill.”

“Such a sensitive girl,” Rikou teased. “But seriously, Ami, we both know that if it wasn’t for your friends, your grades would be higher than they are. You’d be in your second year of that pre-med course, or another just like it, well on your way to a doctorate—and you wouldn’t be as happy as you are now, would you?”

Ami blushed and looked away. “No, kaasan,” she admitted softly. “I don’t think I would.”

“That’s why I never made a fuss about it. Even I have to admit that I’d rather see my little girl doing well and being happy than doing exceptionally and being alone.” Rikou laughed softly and ruffled her daughter’s hair. “We’re two of a kind, Ami, both too busy using our heads to pay attention to our hearts. We both needed to find someone who thought the other way to see what a mistake that was; I’m just glad that you chose better than I did.”

“How so?”

“You’re braver than I am, Ami. I could never open up as fully to as many people as you have these last few years; where you’re able to draw support from all your friends, I tried to rely on just one person.”

“Father?” Ami guessed quietly. Rikou smiled and brushed a few strands of hair away from Ami’s face, looking pleased at her perception. Then she sighed.

“I wish you could have seen us as we were back then, Ami, instead of how we were later on. You wouldn’t have recognized your foolish old workaholic mother, skipping classes to sit in the sun and listen to a handsome young man painting stories about the clouds, sneaking around the dorms after lights out...” Rikou chuckled wickedly. “You know, dear, if not for the vigilance of a certain dorm mother, you might have *had* that brother or sister.”

“Mother,” Ami protested, blushing.

“What? You don’t believe that your old mother used to be just as young and beautiful as you are now?”

Ami blushed again. “Kaasan... you’re embarrassing me.”

“You’ll have to work on that, dear. If just being paid an honest compliment embarrasses you, you’re going to have an exceptionally difficult time getting serious with Ryo.”

“Mother...” Ami put her now-scarlet face in her hands, then took Rikou’s arm and stood up. “That’s it. I’m putting you to bed before Minako comes back and hears any of this.”

“I’m just saying...”

“I know what you’re saying, Mother. It’s what *she’ll* start saying that worries me.”

When they were partway up the stairs and out of sight of the ground floor hall that led to the washroom, Minako emerged from around the corner, one finger pressed thoughtfully to a broad smile.

 

# 

The plants had been oddly quiet as Makoto watered and tended to them this evening. Her sense of them seemed muted, and when she’d placed her hand on the smooth bark of the sapling, the usual greeting of happy singsong nonsense had been reduced to a wordless murmur. She couldn’t explain it, though she was positive that there was nothing wrong with the plants in the context of their health, and when she finally returned to the beach through the Dimension Door, she’d done so with a touch of confusion and an inexplicable sense of guilt that made her dreams that night restless ones.

While Makoto was turning over and making faint noises in her sleep, back in her apartment, her plants were exhibiting very similar behavior. Not long after she had gone, the tiny bud which had developed earlier that day began to grow anew, and at a rate unequaled by anything the strange sapling had yet demonstrated; instead of days’ worth of growth taking place in a night, it was weeks of development crammed into the same span of time, almost as if the days of quiescence had merely been the tree’s way of gathering its energy for this new massive effort.

Over the next several hours, the plants shifted and rustled in their pots as that single pod grew larger and larger, weighing down its gradually lengthening stem until it reached the floor. Petals began to fall from some of the smaller blossoms, while here and there among the thick growth, a leaf or twiglet would shrivel, wither, and crumble to dust. And all the while, the bud continued to grow. Within half an hour, it was the size of a fat strawberry; thirty minutes later, a perfectly rounded growth as big as a grapefruit was sitting on the floorboards. By the end of the second hour, it had achieved the bulk of a healthy watermelon, and the floor around it was littered with dead foliage and dust. The third hour passed, and a green ovoid more than a meter long now lay between the half-withered network of flowers and the back of the couch. It was at this point, when the growth was nearly as thick around the middle as it was long and had mass enough to rival some of the largest pumpkins, that it finally stopped expanding.

But the development continued. When midnight crept by, mottled spots of paler green had appeared up and down the oblong shape, and by one in the morning, most of the fruit (or vegetable) had turned a deep, rich red, with just a lingering trace of green near its stem. It also rocked slightly at irregular moments, the heavy back-and-forth movement suggesting the presence of liquid inside the giant growth. One last crinkled flower broke loose from its bowed and shrunken parent, and then the greenery—or brownery—that remained to the plants ceased to fall.

Instead, it was the enormous pod which began to wither. Its scarlet hue did not fade, but the smooth surface roughened and shrank, revealing a dozen wrinkled seams that had not been visible earlier. This seemed to restore a measure of vitality to the drained tree and the adjoining flowers, for where leaves and blooms had been lost, half a hundred tiny new buds now emerged.

The pod had not dwindled very far when, with a wet squelch, it split apart along its many seams, rocking back onto its stem as its sides opened up like a huge flower.

Curled up on the sticky pink center of the exposed interior was a small creature that looked a great deal like a human girl, only with elongated points atop her earlobes, a faint greenish hue to her skin, and a trail of darker green along her spine. She was about as tall a four year-old, or would be when she stood up, but there was something subtly off about the size and proportion of her body; as tiny as she was and as childlike as her face appeared, her unclothed body looked closer to the age of ten than to four. She was covered from head to toe in a layer of fruity-smelling colorless fluid that was particularly thick on her emerald hair, rendered a darker shade than would be normal because of the sticky stain.

She lay there for a moment, eyes closed, just breathing. Then a shiver raised goosebumps along her body, and her eyes opened to reveal rich brown irises. The child did not move again for some time, not until another shiver raced across her skin. She sat up and looked around at the darkened room with unmistakable confusion, then lowered her gaze to study herself. She raised a hand to sniff at the substance that covered it, and did not seem to find the fluid objectionable or worthy of closer study. Her hands lowered to the pink, liquid-saturated core beneath her, and this prompted several moments of tactile inspection of the squishy center, fluid-dripping smooth interior, and dry, rough exterior of her birth-vessel. It all seemed to perplex her to no end.

A third shiver ended the little one’s examination of the opened pod and convinced her to get to her feet, but she stumbled and dropped to her hands and knees, voicing a whimper of pain as the fleshy cord that still connected her to the heart of the pod tore free from her stomach. She rolled onto her side and huddled up again, trembling and crying softly, her legs pulled tightly against her belly until the sting lessened. In due course, and much more cautiously than before, she made a second attempt to rise, one hand staying pressed against her sore stomach. The newborn was on her knees when she noticed that she had dried off significantly, and she glanced curiously at the still-damp center of the pod and the small puddles on the floor around it. The sight only held her attention for an instant before she looked more closely at what stood behind the ruptured globe.

“Aa!” With a musical cry of delight, the child scrambled to her feet, stumbled over the petals of the pod, and wrapped her small arms around the trunk of the sapling. She stayed like that for a very long while, kneeling on the floorboards with her face pressed to the bark of the tree, eyes closed above a blissful smile.

This time it was a creaky rustle from the tree that stirred the girl to movement instead of a chill from the air. She looked up with a pout, seeming less eager than ever to move, but the sound repeated. The child made another tiny noise, this time of disappointment, before she acceded to the third and most insistent hissing shake of the tree and got to her feet. She glanced around again, her gaze passing the rectangular space of the Dimension Door twice before—guided by another sound from the tree—she looked more closely. A few uncertain steps carried her halfway to the Door, and she paused, seeming to listen. Two more steps, another moment of waiting, and then she smiled again, as broadly as before, and scampered over.

She hesitated at the threshold of the unnatural passage, fear of its strangeness warring with her desire to cross over for a moment before she poked a finger through to test it. The poking examination was repeated, then expanded to include her whole hand, and then most of her arm. By now reassured that it was safe, she stepped through.

Dizziness overwhelmed the little one as soon as she was across, and she fell over backwards into the room where she had started, her legs still extended through the Door before she hurriedly pulled them back. She sat there for several seconds and watched the hole in the wall with deep suspicion before, in a burst of cleverness, she chose to crawl back through. The disorientation hit her again, but it wasn’t nearly so bad now that she expected it and was low enough to avoid vertigo.

She did not bother to stand once she was through, for the object of her search was right in front of her—a large, dark shape!

....

Wait.

That wasn’t quite right.

Frowning, the girl reached over and gave the object a push with one tiny hand. Then another. She pulled back her arm quickly as the big thing turned over, revealing Makoto’s sleeping face and her left shoulder. Smiling anew, the child moved forward and put her hand over Makoto’s, half-hidden beneath the blanket.

No response.

This wasn’t right, either, and the little one was starting to look a bit vexed as she reached out to give Makoto’s shoulder a determined shake. Again, Makoto moved, sighing in her sleep and rolling up onto her side.

That appeared to satisfy the child. She pulled the covers back and slipped up next to Makoto. The futon was not especially large, and Makoto was a fairly big person, but this didn’t trouble the little girl. She just snuggled close against Makoto and dragged her right arm down into a hug.

Brown eyes flew open wide, and the child flinched away as the back of her shoulder touched something that was hot and cool, soft and hard all at once. Turning herself over, she stared at the tiny pink spheres clustered between Makoto’s neck and the material of her pajamas and the mattress. As cautiously as she had tested the Door, the girl now tapped at the Aegis. The green glow of the Weapon was reflected in the child’s fascinated eyes, and she studied them for several minutes before a yawn overtook her. She turned her back on the luminous spheres and resumed her original position, yawning one more time and then closing her eyes. She was soon fast asleep.

Makoto’s arm tightened around the tiny body resting beside her, and both she and the child smiled contentedly.

 

# 

It was late. And it was early. The clock radio showed 3:58am, and Usagi, ChibiUsa, and Luna were all sound asleep in the master bedroom of the Mizuno beach house. Future-mother, future-daughter, and feline shared the bed, and the cat was so calm and still that an observer might have concluded her to have been struck deaf or utterly dead by the storm of snoring the room’s other two occupants had been raising earlier. Surely no living creature could sleep in the face of such discordancy while its hearing remained intact.

The truth of the matter was simply that Luna had long since grown accustomed to even the worst of her charge’s nocturnal noises. Ten thousand of those twin-throated thunders would not disturb her rest, but she would snap into wakefulness at the slightest whisper of a noise that did not belong in the room.

There were, however, some things that even Luna’s sharp ears could not hope to detect.

“Princess...”

ChibiUsa was dreaming about a picnic in Crystal Tokyo, a memory of an actual event from a year in her past. Claiming frustration with the constant ’royal treatment,’ her mother had gathered up the family and herded them into the palace gardens for a few hours of getting more or less away from it all. Her Majesty’s idea of family included not only her husband and children but all seven Senshi, their families, several other close friends from the royal court, and *their* families besides. If someone happened to be talking to one of those people when the Queen passed the message along, she invited them, too. By the time everyone was lounging on the lawns or getting lost in the hedge maze, Serenity had pretty well depopulated the higher levels of her own government, leaving the lower-ranking officials to wonder where their superiors had gotten to and generally bringing all other business in the palace to a grinding halt.

All in all, it had been a good day, and ChibiUsa was enjoying this recollection of it.

“Princess...”

She just wished she could place that voice. It sounded familiar, but she’d swear it wasn’t one she’d heard at the picnic, or at any other time in her recent past. ChibiUsa’s sleeping face creased in a slight frown, as did the face of her dream-self. That ChibiUsa wore a rosy pink dress in the style she had inherited from her mother, and she was moving slowly through the maze in search of the source of that voice.

“Princess...” It seemed to be coming from the center of the maze. ChibiUsa walked a little faster and began making turns, trying to recall the fastest way to the center of the leafy labyrinth. Since she was in a dream, the shape of the garden did not conform to her memories, and she was soon quite lost.

“Princess...” the gentle voice called again. The voice didn’t sound as if its owner was in any kind of rush, but neither did it sound any closer than before, and ChibiUsa began to worry that she would not find the unknown person in time. That thought bothered her greatly.

“I’ll be right there!” her dream-self called back as she increased her pace once again. The hedges whispered all around her, as if her words had stirred up a light wind, and when ChibiUsa turned the next corner, she suddenly found herself at the heart of the maze.

Even asleep, ChibiUsa noticed three things very clearly. First and foremost, the center of the maze was not as she remembered it. Instead of low benches, there was a colonnade of tall marble pillars along either side of a broad path. Rather than the crystal fountain with the symbols of the Moon and the nine planets set into the bowl, there was a large pond with marble fountains out over its surface at either end, and white lilies floating calmly on the surface. The rosebushes were not where they belonged, and they were accompanied by many other plants that should not have been there at all. The hedge walls of the maze had been replaced by tall trees, their dark green leaves spreading out near the base of the trunk and narrowing steadily towards the top without looking as if they had been trimmed back. And rather than the 30th century skyline of Crystal Tokyo, the only building ChibiUsa could see was at the far end of the pillar-lined path, a beautiful white structure that most closely resembled an ancient Greek temple.

The second thing ChibiUsa realized was that despite the change in scenery -and it was definitely a change; she turned about and saw that the garden maze she’d just stepped out of had instead become a path into a forest—she was still alone. Wherever she had ended up, there was no one else around except for some songbirds, and they didn’t appear to be taking any notice of her.

The final thing ChibiUsa noticed was the incredible realism of this dream. She could feel the gentle breeze and the soft fabric of her dress, and the faint scents of the flowers and the grass were as clear as the crystal-blue water. The blurring that normally hung around at the edge of her vision in her dreams was gone, allowing her to see everything with perfect clarity, and everything she looked at was incredibly beautiful. Each stone in the path, every blade of grass, the clouds in the sky; they were all different, and each of them was as perfect as the next.

ChibiUsa was familiar with this phenomenon, and although she didn’t quite recognize her surroundings, she suspected that she had in fact been here before. As for the voice...

There was no noise or flicker of movement to betray it, but between one moment and the next, a presence appeared behind her, one that was readily apparent to her dream-senses. ChibiUsa closed her eyes and bowed her head. "Hello, Helios.”

“Hello, Princess. It’s good to see you again.”

“Thank you.” She opened her eyes and studied the fantastic dreamscape before her. “This is Elysium, isn’t it?”

“Of course.” His tone was one of mild amusement. “After all, I promised to show it to you when the damage caused by the Dead Moon Circus had healed. What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” ChibiUsa replied honestly. “Everything is so bright and alive... and peaceful.”

“I’m glad you like it.” There was a pause, filled only by the bubbling of the fountains and the song of distant birds. Then Helios asked, “Is there something wrong, Princess?”

“No,” ChibiUsa said softly, clasping her hands together in front of her body. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

ChibiUsa stood mute, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes shut.

It was hard for the future princess to describe her feelings towards Helios. On the one hand, as Pegasus, he had been her secret companion for all those weeks, someone wise and understanding to talk to when she was confused or lonely. He had been both a powerful ally and an endangered friend, wrapped up in an air of magic, mystery, and wonder. The reality of Helios was... different. He was no less magical, no less a friend, but compared to the form of the ethereal stallion, Helios’s true body was... real. Not a dream, not like the warm, almost-solid feeling radiated by Pegasus, but *really* real. Alive. During her last stay in this era, that reality had been confusing for ChibiUsa. She had been just old enough at the time to appreciate that her special, gentle friend was a handsome young man, and to understand what it might mean that she noticed that about him. Now she was older, and understood a little better—and part of her was disturbed by that.

ChibiUsa did not turn around now because she did not know which Helios she wanted to see more, the beautiful winged horse or the handsome young protector of the dream-realm. She did not want to speak because she could not think of how to explain this to him. But she owed it to him to at least try.

“It... it’s been a long time, Helios,” ChibiUsa began uncertainly. “I... I don’t...” Her voice faltered.

“You don’t what?”

“I... I went home, Helios. For years. I grew up, and I... I never saw you again. I didn’t know what that meant, if you were choosing to stay away, or if you *couldn’t* find me... if something had happened to you... or to me...”

“Ah,” Helios said softly, his gentle voice touched with a sympathy that made ChibiUsa want to smile from relief that he understood, and a sadness that made her want to cry in shame for hurting him. “I see.”

They stood there, silent. Even the birds and the water seemed to have quieted themselves. “Is it my fault?” ChibiUsa whispered into that waiting hush. “Did I do something wrong—did I change too much for you to find me?”

A familiar warmth brushed against her cheek, and in spite of everything, ChibiUsa pressed against the horse’s long nose, drawing reassurance from the contact. “You did nothing wrong, my brave little Princess,” Helios replied. "Growing up didn’t change you as much as you fear—or else I wouldn’t have been able to find you tonight.”

Holding the head of the majestic creature that was her friend, ChibiUsa reluctantly pulled away and looked into his great shining eyes. “Then... why...”

“I can’t say for certain why you never saw me in your own era,” Helios admitted. “Time works differently in Elysium than in the real world, but even for me, the age of Crystal Tokyo still lies far in the future. You know better than most just how much can happen in such a span of time.”

“And now?”

“There *are* two of you, ChibiUsa,” Helios pointed out, his voice now mildly embarrassed. “In some ways, your unborn self is even more real to me than you are, because she is not only real, but a dream—her mother’s dream of love and hope for the future. You are that dream realized. It took me some time to notice the difference. I’m sorry.”

“No,” ChibiUsa said. “I’m sorry. For doubting you. For doubting myself. I should know better.” She smiled as Helios gave her another gentle nudge.

“I knew it!” a new voice said suddenly. ChibiUsa gasped in sudden fright and jumped, forcing Helios to brace himself as she clung to his neck. “She hasn’t been here five minutes, and he’s already sneaking kisses!”

Blushing, ChibiUsa released Helios and stepped back, marking in passing the reddening of his equine face as she whirled to confront the new speaker.

A trio of flamboyantly-dressed figures faced her. The first was a tall blond man in a white shirt and black-and-yellow tights, and he was leaning against one of the nearer trees, grinning. In the branches above him sat a man dressed mostly in faded violet, and whose hair was a vibrant red; he was *not* grinning, but rather sat with his arms folded and his shoulders hunched in a pose of disappointment. The third member of the group wore a blue costume with rounded sleeves and legs, and sat next to the shore of the pool, one hand trailing in the water and the other propping up a feminine face that was every bit as glum as that of the red-haired man.

“Come on,” Tigerseye said, reaching up and tugging on one of Hawkseye’s hanging feet. “I won the bet, now pay up.”

“Oh, fine,” Hawkseye replied grouchily, pulling his foot free. He fished something small and glittering out of his vest and flipped it down to Tigerseye, who caught the object easily.

“You too, Fish,” Tigerseye added, holding out his other hand. Fisheye’s response was an inaudible mumble and a throwing motion that sent a spray of glittering water arcing through the air towards Tigerseye. ChibiUsa thought she saw another of the small shining items amidst the jewel-like droplets, but Tiger’s empty hand closed around the thing before she could be sure, and her attention was on other matters anyway.

“What are you three doing here?” ChibiUsa demanded hotly.

“Eh?” Tigerseye asked, glancing up as he pocketed his winnings. “Oh, don’t mind us. Go on with what you were doing.”

“Not until you answer my question.”

“We live here now, remember?” Hawkseye said whimsically. “Thanks to you and your friends and Helios here.”

“I know that,” ChibiUsa replied impatiently. “I meant, what are you doing *here,* as in here and now?”

“Oh.” Hawk’s position on the branch changed, and he fell off it backwards, the curl of his legs spinning him around and into an aerial somersault before he landed next to Tigerseye. “Just catching the best show in town -and laying a few friendly wagers on its outcome.”

“But like I said,” Tigerseye added quickly, “don’t mind us. We aren’t even here, so you can do what you like.” He and Hawkseye grinned wickedly, and ChibiUsa felt her blush deepen even as she glared daggers at the pair.

“Cut that out, you two,” Fisheye said. “You’ve already killed the mood; there’s no need to mangle it.”

Hawkseye and Tigerseye looked at each other in puzzlement, clearly not understanding what their counterpart was talking about. Eyes rolling upwards, Fish sighed.

“Now what’s *that* supposed to mean?” Tigerseye demanded.

“Just that you two still have a lot to learn about romance.”

“Tch,” Hawkseye tched, leaning towards Tigerseye and sticking a thumb in Fisheye’s direction. “This coming from the cold fish.”

“Hey!” Fisheye protested, slapping the surface of the water with one hand.

“Ahem,” Helios interrupted, tapping his right front hoof on the path with a clear *clip-clop* to break up the building argument. The Trio glanced at him and fell silent, all of them now looking grumpy. “Thank you.”

ChibiUsa looked at Helios. “Are they always like this?” she asked, proud of the level, controlled tone she was able to manage.

“Elysium has certainly been more... lively... since they came, but don’t let their antics mislead you. The realm would not have recovered from Nehelenia’s assault so fully and quickly without their assistance. Come. I’ll show you.” Helios turned and began walking towards the temple-like building; after casting a doubtful glance at the sulking Trio, ChibiUsa followed him.

It was an unusual walk. Elysium was an unspoiled arboreal paradise that just happened to include the architecture of some bygone civilization. Every body of water enclosed at least one exquisite marble fountain, each of them different, and the trees shared space with graceful columns and lifelike statues, some of them arranged in rows while others stood alone. There were animals, as well. Tiny birds with bright plumage were singing from many of the trees, and fish with jewel-like scales swam in the ponds and streams, some of them leaping up from the water to investigate the travelers. ChibiUsa had no name for the adorable little furballs that rolled out from behind one statue to cluster around her, nosing curiously at her dress and looking up with large, liquid eyes. Not long after the small creatures had scurried into the bushes, ChibiUsa and Helios passed a majestic white stag with tall antlers of a golden brown. As they walked by the small field where it stood, the stag bowed its head with regal grace; Helios responded in kind, and ChibiUsa returned her most formal curtsey, feeling that anything less might have been an insult to such a noble creature.

A short time later, they reached their destination. Looking more closely, ChibiUsa decided that ‘temple’ was a good description for the complex. Like everything else she had seen, the buildings were made of pure white marble, cut and raised according to some ancient school of architecture and yet looking freshly-built. Combined with Elysium’s air of peace and harmony, that timeless appearance created a sense of sanctity which would have done well at Hikawa or any other holy place ChibiUsa had ever seen.

What interested her the most were the rosebushes. A thick ring of them surrounded the entire temple, growing right up to its foundation on all sides, except for where the path led up to the stairs. The leaves of the bushes were a deep emerald green, making the roses themselves stand out all the more spectacularly.

“Your father’s ancestors planted them here long ago,” Helios said, noticing the direction of ChibiUsa’s gaze. “The roses symbolized their love for the beauty of Elysium, and their oath to guard it.”

ChibiUsa bowed her head to smell the roses, being careful to keep her hands clear of the very realistic thorns. She knew a thing or two about such plants; it was in her blood. The princess smiled at the fragrance of the roses, but as she stood, a sigh escaped her lips.

“It’s all so wonderful, Helios... but...”

“...but you want to know the other reason I brought you here tonight,” Helios finished. Even though her back was to him, ChibiUsa could hear the sound of the smile in his voice. “I was wondering how much longer you’d be able to restrain yourself from asking.”

“I’ve had a few years to practice my ladylike virtues,” ChibiUsa said lightly, turning around. “Is this something I ought to be sitting down to hear?”

“That might be best,” Helios agreed, stepping off the path and half-extending his wings as he lowered himself to the grass outside the ring of roses. ChibiUsa sat down in front of him, folding her dress beneath her legs.

Helios thought for a moment before asking, “How much has your father told you about Elysium, Princess?”

“He said there were some things he couldn’t tell me until I was older—some tradition he decided he wanted to uphold—but he told me everything else.”

“Then you already know where we are.”

ChibiUsa nodded. “The layer of reality shaped by the mental and emotional energy of living beings—the Astral Plane.”

“That’s right. Every thought and emotion experienced in the real world leaves an echo on this plane, and when they are strong enough, or repeated often enough, those thoughts and feelings take on astral forms that will persist for a time even after their creator stops generating them. These forms eventually fade, unless they find others that they can merge with, in which case they will go on for a longer time.”

“That’s about what Father told me,” ChibiUsa said. “He said that the reason part of the Astral Plane looks like Earth all the time is because every creature that’s alive on the planet recognizes its surroundings in some way, and that carries over into this plane. If one person sees a particular wall just once, it doesn’t do much, but if he sees the wall every day of his life...” She let it trail off meaningfully.

“Exactly so,” Helios said, nodding. “Elysium formed in the same manner many millennia ago, as people’s most beautiful and vivid dreams achieved astral form and then merged with each other, and it has continued to grow. Nor is Elysium the only dream-realm.”

That made ChibiUsa blink. “There are others?”

“Many others, Princess. Each of them is different, formed from a certain kind of dream. Look. I’ll show you.” He turned his head to the left, and ChibiUsa followed suit. Helios’s golden horn glowed a little more brightly than normal, and the air in front of them shimmered, becoming a kind of window on a great silvery space. ChibiUsa looked closely, but at first she saw only an expanse of nearly unbroken grey featurelessness, empty except for countless widely-scattered points of light. Then some of those points came closer, growing into silver spheres whose outer surfaces faded to reveal what was inside.

In one sphere, she saw a realm similar in mood to Elysium, a happy, peaceful place full of light and life. Here, however, there were a great many people, all of them dwelling happily in cities of incredible beauty that made the Princess think longingly of her distant home. Instead of the simple, arboreal splendor of Elysium, the people in this dream-realm surrounded themselves with the equal beauty of the things not found in nature, the things that humans created to brighten or explain their lives. ChibiUsa saw fantastic art and cunning devices of science; she heard the words of brilliant thinkers and gifted actors; and around them swirled the ethereal chords of a beautiful symphony.

That dream slipped away, and ChibiUsa found herself seeing a realm whose beautiful landscape was marred with places of darkness, the lairs of deadly beasts and evil beings. But this place was also beautiful in its way, for great forces stood arrayed against the darkness; armies of heroic warriors guarded the land, venturing forth on quests whose toil, pains, and terrors only made the final victory sweeter. In this place, ChibiUsa saw brave knights and wise wizards, good-hearted scoundrels and pious defenders of a thousand faiths. Here, even a lowly farmboy or an ordinary schoolgirl might suddenly be caught up in a great adventure, a crusade against the darkness. Sometimes the heroes won and returned home, their tasks accomplished, their role played and done. Sometimes even the greatest heroes failed, falling into the darkness and never returning, and yet these were also triumphs of a sort, for where one hero fell, another would rise to the challenge, called on by the stories of their predecessors and the spark of adventure.

And then ChibiUsa was seeing another dream-realm, where the people all seemed to walk in pairs. Some danced together, and others sat side-by-side at ease. For some of them, the sky was bright and sunny, and for others, the moon and stars shone. There were old couples and young, there were some that started out as couples and were soon joined by children, and there were couples that separated, yet remained linked over great distances, even when one or both of them paired with another. Here, ChibiUsa realized, was a dream of love and romance, a world where everyone had that special someone who completed them, or challenged them, or gave them whatever it was that they needed most to be happy, and who received the same from them.

Helios showed her a dozen different realms in all, and as he had said, each of them differed from the rest in some important way. Each of these tremendous dreams was based around some concept, an idea that shaped and defined everything within it. For Elysium, that concept was purity—purity of form, purity of intent, purity of essence. For the realm of cities, the dream was imagination and achievement, and in the land of heroes and villains, it was adventure, and the courage to seek it. And then there was the dream of love. The more dreams that ChibiUsa saw, the clearer the importance of their central themes became.

She noticed something else as well. Though different from Elysium, the first few dreams were still beautiful in their own special ways, but as the line of dream-realms continued, the worlds ChibiUsa saw became harder and less wondrous. One dream was dominated by the notion of material wealth, and had an equal share of generous philanthropists and cold-hearted misers, and another of the realms was a place of solitude, inhabited by people who had the freedom to do whatever they wished, but who were so few and so widely scattered that they must almost never meet. The outer surfaces of these realms and those nearest them lacked the bright sheen of the earlier ones, and were instead a duller grey; beyond them, ChibiUsa saw that the color continued to dim, until on the very edge of her sight, she beheld an ominous black stain. It was tremendously distant, but it made ChibiUsa shiver.

“Helios... that dark spot...”

“It is the border,” the young guardian said in a firm voice. “Beyond it lies the domain of nightmares, where Nehelenia and her minions were once imprisoned. It is one of the things I wanted you to see tonight. Look closely at the wall, and at the mists around it.”

ChibiUsa did that, not without some reluctance as, in accordance with her will, the distant image drew much, much closer than could be considered comfortable. She understood from lessons with her father that the Astral Plane was shaped by all the aspects of the human mind and heart, dark as much as light. Just as every emotion had its equal and opposite, every dream-borne object or creature had its terrible, nightmare-spawned counterpart. Some wandered the mists freely, but most were drawn into the impenetrable black void far below. It was death and madness and worse for any living mind that entered.

Looking at the barrier, ChibiUsa realized with horror that it was *moving.* Rather than the smooth, immeasurably vast black wall that her father had warned her of, this was a shifting, writhing surface of things that were—in every sense of the words—the stuff of nightmares. They lashed out at the formless mists nearby, absorbing motes and wisps of the grey ether, and reaching hungrily towards the dream-spheres far above.

Reaching for her.

The princess shuddered and pulled her gaze away from the window, which Helios promptly sealed, shutting out the grey expanse of the astral, the twinkling dreams, and the black nightmares all together.

“I’m sorry,” Helios apologized, reaching forward to touch the side of ChibiUsa’s head with his long horse’s nose. “But you needed to see that to understand.”

“Understand what?” ChibiUsa asked. “Helios, what’s going on? Why was it moving?”

“The events of the past few months have been having a profound impact on the Astral Plane, Princess. Dreams, nightmares, and mists have all grown increasingly active. This sort of thing happens whenever there is a particularly large degree of emotional unrest on Earth, but this time is different, and dangerous.”

“How?”

With a soft flash of golden light from his crystalline horn, Helios created an image of Earth in the air. A grey mist surrounded the entire surface, light and slow-moving in some places such as the open oceans, but thick and swirling in many others that ChibiUsa knew to be the sites of cities. Where the motions were more intense, it was possible to see that the mist actually moved through a narrow envelope that mimicked the shape of the ground below, and when the globe rotated to bring Japan into view, the space above and around Tokyo was so thick with grey that the city itself could hardly be seen. What caught ChibiUsa’s attention were the bright lines leading into and out of the grey overimage; they twisted and bent and *almost* connected in a way that couldn’t possibly have been representing roads.

“The ley lines?” she asked in a stunned voice. “But how’s that possible? Nobody can *see* them...”

“Not consciously, no, but there are other layers of the mind. Few humans can access them directly, but all perceive things that the waking mind overlooks or misinterprets. And even if people cannot see magic or do not understand how it works, many of them still believe in it. That’s really all that’s required.”

ChibiUsa looked from Helios to the globe, and back. “Helios, if the ley lines are being reflected astrally, can they be tapped the same way?”

The guardian nodded. “Yes, they can. In its purest form, magic is the potential to be or do anything, as long as it is given proper shape and force by a command. And a command is nothing but a thought, a desire.”

“A dream,” ChibiUsa said quietly. “Then, if a dream comes into contact with these astral ley lines...”

On cue, a small silver sphere drifted down towards the image of Earth and touched the network of silvery lines. There was a flash of light and color, and a small portion of Tokyo was suddenly visible. Not because the astral energies around it had been dispersed, but because they had become a perfect reflection of the reality. In there, among the buildings, a small silver object was moving around.

“It has happened before,” Helios said somberly, “in places with much lower levels of magic and far fewer inhabitants than Tokyo now possesses. It’s one of the things I’m sworn to prevent, by collecting the living dreams and guiding them to their proper places, but even I need some time to track the dreams down. If the astral Earth remains this active, sooner or later, dreams are going to cross over before I can find them. Once they do, they’ll be beyond my reach.”

“What do you mean? You can still come to Earth, can’t you?”

“No,” Helios sighed, “I’m afraid I can’t just now. The energy of the Golden Crystal nourishes dreams, and taking it into the physical world would only intensify the image of the astral Earth and make it easier for the dreams to come across.”

“Oh. Then... if what you’re describing starts to happen... you won’t be able to help us?”

A smile appeared on the guardian’s face. “I didn’t say that, Princess. There are a few things I can do to aid you. Hold out your hands.”

Although puzzled by the request, ChibiUsa complied and lifted her arms. Helios lowered his head, and his horn glowed anew, sending forth a golden mist that spread in all directions. Eight small white rings appeared on ChibiUsa’s fingers, each band inset with a single diamond-shaped stone of sparkling golden crystal. To ChibiUsa, the rings felt so different from the material of her dress or the grass beneath her that she was sure they would still be on her hands when she woke up.

“I can find you easily enough now, Princess,” Helios said, “but it would be best if I spoke to the other Senshi all at once, and it could take a long time for me to find them all. If you give one of these to each of your friends to wear to sleep tomorrow night, I’ll be able to bring all of you to Elysium quickly.”

ChibiUsa took a moment to look at the rings, then closed her hands and nodded. “I’ll tell them.” The golden glow was fading now, and she looked up.

And stopped.

As had happened before, Pegasus had disappeared back into the light of the crystal. Helios remained, unchanged from ChibiUsa’s memories. In fact, kneeling on the ground as she was allowed her to look up at him from almost the same angle that she always had before.

Smiling gently, Helios held out his hands to assist ChibiUsa up from the ground. Years of training in etiquette took over, causing the princess to accept the gentlemanly offer almost on instinct. She attempted not to dwell on how smooth and warm Helios’s hands were as they closed lightly around her fingers. She struggled to ignore the fact that the end result of his helping her to her feet was the two of them standing close together, holding hands. She tried very hard not to stare into his eyes, so very deep, so very close to her own. She fought valiantly to hold back the warm, rosy blush threatening to spread across her face.

This battle was being lost on all four fronts, but the effort had to count for something. Whatever that might have been, though, ChibiUsa was at a loss to say; her mind felt fuzzy in a way that had nothing to do with being asleep. The last two times—the ONLY two times—she’d stood with Helios like this, he had kissed her...

The memory of those moments and the accompanying list of reasons as to why she did *not* want to kiss Helios right now hit ChibiUsa like an Aqua Illusion, jolting her brain out of its haze.

“Helios,” she began in a soft voice.

“Princess,” he said, at the same moment. They both blinked, looked at one another, and then laughed, more than the little mishap was really worth. Somewhere in the midst of it, their hands parted and they stepped back from each other.

“I... should be going,” ChibiUsa said, smiling nervously.

“The night is passing,” Helios agreed, his expression almost perfectly matching hers.

“Alright, then.” The princess dipped into a graceful curtsey. “I will see you again tonight, Helios.”

“I look forward to it, your highness,” the guardian replied, left hand crossed over his chest as he bowed in return.

“Aw, come on!” Tigerseye’s voice suddenly called out. The princess and the priest both started and whirled around, spotting the entire Trio at the edge of the temple’s clearing. Hawkseye was glancing skywards while Fisheye glared at Tiger, who ignored both of his companions and encouragingly added, "You can both do better than that!”

ChibiUsa covered her flaming face with both hands, so she missed the blush of consternation that passed across Helios’s features, as well as the disciplinary smack-to-the-head which Fisheye dealt out to the annoying Tiger.

“Ow! What the heck was that for, Fish?!”

“Will you just shut up, Tiger? Honestly, we’d all be better off if that mug of yours came with a muzzle...”

“MUZZLE?! If there’s anybody around here who needs a muzzle, it’s you, buster!”

“And just what do you mean by that?” Fisheye demanded crossly.

“Oh, puh-leaze. That falsetto isn’t fooling anybody, Fish. And I’d rather rake my claws across a blackboard than listen to that awful screech you call a laugh.”

The precise identity of Fisheye’s original species was a little uncertain, but if the way the knife-thrower’s face swelled up in anger was any indication, blowfish seemed likely.

“Now, now,” Hawkseye said, trying to defuse the situation. “Come on, you guys. Tiger, you know Fish didn’t mean it with that muzzle crack, even if you do talk too much... and Fish, there’s nothing wrong with having a high-pitched voice...”

The other two were on him in a flash, with the intensity of piranhas on meat. Several Elysian animals poked their heads out of the trees and the bushes to see what all the ruckus was about, while Helios shook his head in dismay and ChibiUsa sweatdropped.

“I think I should go now,” the princess said.

“That would probably be best,” Helios agreed. They smiled at one another, and ChibiUsa waved with one hand as her dream-form began to fade.

“Good luck,” she mouthed silently, with a final glance at the whirling dustball that was the feuding Trio. Then she was gone. Helios stood there for a time, just looking at the space where the alizarin-eyed princess had been.

“It’s done,” he said at last. “They’ll be here as you asked.”

A woman had appeared to Helios’s right. Half a head shorter than the guardian, she had such perfectly white skin and was so impossibly slender that she seemed to be formed of whispers and moonlight. Pale silvery locks fell lightly about her shoulders and down her back, the ends waving in the Elysian breeze along with the loose folds of her grey robe, which looked as if it just might weigh more than its owner. The woman’s eyes had no color between the dark pupils and the clear whites except for the kind of bright sheen one finds on a crystal or in a single drop of water.

“Thank you, Helios,” she said, as one delicate hand came to rest upon the young man’s shoulder. “I know how difficult this was—and will be—for you.”

“It’s alright, milady. I can survive some discomfort over the letter of my oaths, as long as I’m able to obey the spirit of them.”

“And it doesn’t hurt that you can see your little princess again in the bargain, does it?” she asked with an arch smile, eyes glowing with affectionate humor. Helios blushed again, and his companion chuckled. “Ah, well. I always knew you’d leave me for a younger woman. Now,” she continued briskly, linking her arm with his, “let’s get your friends settled down and put them to work. Elysium will have to look its best for tonight; it’s not often that we play host to living goddesses.”

 

# 

When ChibiUsa regained a measure of consciousness, the first thing she noticed was the cool, hard metal of the rings. She’d turned at some point in her sleep so that her head half-rested on one hand, and the stones of the rings on that hand were pressing into her cheek. It didn’t really hurt -whatever the gems were made of, their edges seemed smooth and blunted—but it was hardly comfortable, and she was already sitting up with a disgruntled groan before she remembered what the rings were. She held out one hand at gazed at it sleepy-eyed, smiling in the dimness of the bedroom. Next to her, Usagi was still snoozing, and Luna as well.

“Did you have a nice dream?” a voice that sounded like Ami’s asked in a glum tone.

“Guh?” Looking around, ChibiUsa saw an angry little blue-eyed girl in fluffy pajamas sitting next to the bed, hunched forward with her chin resting on her hands and her face screwed into a pouty expression. “Caly? What’s wrong?”

“Hmmph,” the Nereid said. “Rei’s big dumb raven made me look like an idiot by hiding around the house all day yesterday without my noticing, and now *you* go traipsing off into the Astral Plane without telling anyone and come back wearing things that absolutely *burn* with psychic energy. Meanwhile, some juvenile female member of a species that I don’t recognize—but am assuming to be dryad—wanders through the Dimension Door and tucks herself into bed with Mako-chan.” In a moody voice, she added, “I hate it when people think of things before I do.”

ChibiUsa blinked sleepily. “You said what?”

 

# 

_(It is nighttime in Makoto’s apartment. Nobody is around except for the tree, the flowers, and the little dryad-girl, who is watching the tree that is her brother-self. The tree begins to ‘speak’, rustling and creaking and making the occasional sharp scratching click by striking branches together, and the dryad listens intently, nodding every now and then and humming thoughtfully after particularly intense bouts of sound. When the tree finishes, the dryad gets a look of profound amazement on her face and then grins, applauding in admiration. Her tree rustles again, giving off a sense of not-so-humble acceptance of the praise.)_

_(The camera pans left, revealing that Artemis—as Arthur—and Haruka have been watching the entire thing. Haruka glances at her companion, who is nodding sagely, as if the rattling tree had just divulged one of the great secrets of the cosmos.)_

**Haruka** : Don’t even *try* to pretend that you understood that.

_(Fade to black.)_

18/06/03

What’s this? Helios with another woman? Ooooh, he must die...

As it happens, THIS time I at least have a partial good reason for the delay. I spent a couple of weeks writing up the first chapters in a “short" Escaflowne-fic that’s been taking up space in my mind for some time now. It’ll be up on Fanfiction.net when it’s complete, if anyone’s interested.

Imminent if not sooner:  
—Who’s the mystery woman?;  
—How much trouble can Artemis and Haruka get into together?; and  
—I promise and swear, Mamoru is going to appear for one episode VERY soon.


End file.
